View Full Version : Emergency Food Reserves?
I've noticed in a few discussions that several folks have mentioned having some food stored for unforseen emergencies. I'm rethinking this and was sort of curious about how much food people have stored and any general philisophy or reasoning behind this. I would guess I have about a month in canned goods and dried beans and rice. If electricity is functioning, probably another few weeks in the freezer. I have a camp stove and white gas for several weeks of cooking. I noticed that Costco has these neat little five gallon buckets with preserved meals to last about a month for one person for a little over a hundred dollars and have been considering getting one. Or maybe just more beans and rice.
I think the chances of ever needing these are pretty slim. My thinking is maybe the interuption of food distribution at worst, and a general catastrophe where we loose electricity and other utilities for any long period as unlikely but not impossible.
Anyway, curious what other are doing.
shadowmoss
11-1-11, 12:13pm
One thing you want to take into consideration when stockpiling food is to make sure it's things you will actually cook and eat. Another is to make sure that if you get an already compiled 'bucket' of food is to make sure the contents bought separately wouldn't cost less than the bucket. Beans and rice are fairly inexpensive bought in bulk. If that is the majority of what is in the 5 gallon bucket, then it shouldn't be $100. http://waltonfeed.com/ is one site of many that talks about a lot of this stuff, the how and why. Then shop around.
Personal disclaimer: I used to be really into this being prepared stuff. Moving around so much the past few years has made me more conscious of only keeping what I will eat, and not a lot of that at any one time.
flowerseverywhere
11-1-11, 12:45pm
I am in the process of evaluating the same thing.
I am reading a great book on exactly this by Bradley called Disaster preparedness. One thing that I see sensible websites and books promote is to store what you actually would eat.
I have a dozen cans of soups and fruits, cans of tuna and vegetables, several jars of tomato sauce and packages of pasta for example. Although we don't eat a lot of canned food, about once a week I use a can of soup, fruit or tuna to help rotate the stock, and give to the local food banks generously. We would have some pretty strange meals but I think we could eat at least 2 weeks just with canned goods. I also have lots of food in the fridge and freezer which we could eat depending on the season. For example, if we have an ice storm and have no electricity, I could put some of the food outside from the freezer and in the garage for the fridge. In the summer it is a different story. And with electricity and water I could make tortillas to fill with rice and beans, bake bread and biscuits, and make all kinds of pasta.
Much depends on the make up of your house. If I had a baby I would be much more aware of their needs for example. Two older adults can get by much more flexibly.
I am not preparing for an armageddon, but where I live we have snowstorms, ice storms, and occasional freak power outages. At any time we can lose power for up to a week. when there is no electricity stores cannot operate their cash registers, gas won't pump and supplies may have difficulty being delivered.
regarding a bucket of food for $100, I bet if you shopped the sales I imagine you could get food for one person and you could have a lot of variety - some boxes of crackers and a big jar of peanut butter, cans of soup and vegetables, cans of spaghetti, boxes of cereal or granola, nuts, dried fruits and some dry milk or those boxes of milk that don't need refrigeration are all things that keep and most people would eat. It might cost more but for me it would be worth it. I would suggest going to a camping store and getting a dehydrated meal and seeing if you like it at all before investing $100.
another thing to consider is where you live. I live close to the cows and chickens and I imagine that after a short while local solutions to some food distribution would occur. If you live in NYC for example that relies on a daily flow of goods in, then I would think more carefully about what to keep on hand. We also have a camp stove and a grill so could heat up a lot of stuff. Dont forget some matches and a non electric can opener. We also check our flashlights and hand crank radio every few months and have about two sets back up batteries for everything. Not a huge amount but enough to prevent running to the store is a hurricane or ice storm is coming.
If the end of the world as we know it happens I will be one of the people out of luck as I am not going to have a bunker full of food that I am prepared to shoot people over.
Our food reserve is quite minimal, Rogar. I can fresh garden goods each year, so there is are a variety of homemade canned goods on hand, bought canned goods too (not much in the way of bought although as I prefer cooking from scratch), but aside from a few select cuts of beef in the freezer to add, we don't concern ourselves overly much over stocking for an emergency.
A big plus Re: where we reside, more or less dictates how marginally we prepare for emergency food requirements, i.e. high concentration of wildlife. Another added plus is the closeness of our community. People really know how to pull together during times of need. It does provide a sense of comfort and security.
HappyHiker
11-1-11, 4:32pm
I don't have a lot stored--and nothing in my freezer, as we have hurricanes and don't want to lose any food, but I could probably eat out of my pantry for a couple of weeks if need be. Have assorted beans, barley, rice, lentils, cereals, oils, vinegars, soy sauce, honey, oatmeal, canned vegetables in there.
One of my favorite purchases a few years back was for eight half-gallon wide-mouth jars with screw lids. I have the lentils, rice, barley, other grains, cereals and flours stored in them...easy to see the stock on hand and it keeps out the pesky insects that would invade the grains if they had a chance.
My freezer is so full, I'd have a hard time getting a toothpick in there. Most of it is tomatoes, tomato products (salsa, spaghetti sauce, etc) potatoes, onions, etc, etc, some meat. I thought I had about a years worth of all that, now I'm not sure since DH#1 will be here several months. If we had no electricity for an extended period, I'd have to do some serious canning in a hurry on the wood stove.
For the stuff on the shelf, I could easily go about 3 months, maybe longer. I don't get into the heavy stocking like some of the preppers, I just like having my own little grocery store here. Most of the stuff I buy doesn't go on sale too often (or at all). When it does, I tend to stock up, but I don't want to deal with 200# of flour or something.
Usually we have ~ 6 months stuff that we eat stored, but right now we are down to the bare minimum of ~ a month, with some things there is more, other things there is less. We are going to an area that has lots of stores, and no snow, so we usually stock up in March, before headed to another place that takes a long time just to get to a store.
All of the stuff we have stored is things that we eat normally. We have solar panels and enough propane to last six months. Or enough diesel to get us somewhere else. Of course, living in a RV helps. :)
Our food-storage back-of-the-envelope plan goes as such:
- 2-3 months: food in pantry that's part of our regular cooking regime, mostly because we don't go shopping all that often. You'd be surprised, or perhaps not, how many people have less than 3-4 days' of food handy in their home. I've seen it happen many times in my neighborhood when we have a snowstorm, some of the part-time folks run out almost overnight. I suspect they shop every 1-2 days. We were snowed in for ~2 weeks the day after Thanksgiving a couple of years back, and the neighborhood was full of folks up for the long weekend. When their leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner ran out, they were in trouble.
- 3-12 months: deeper stores of canned goods, pastas, beans, and rice, freeze-dried/dehydrated Mountain House-type products.
- 12+ months: whole grains stored to last "forever", 25+ year shelf-life freeze-dried/dehydrated products meant to be used as ingredients to make grains into tastier meals.
- 24+ months: goats, chickens, cows, sheep, fish, clams, oysters, crab, prawns, deer, rabbit, seaweed, garden, ...
We always have the 24+ month-style production going on, I'd just step it up if there were a Long Grinding Disaster in play.
Even in most disasters here, I don't expect to usually need more than a few weeks worth of food, but having extra allows me to help out neighbors.
flowerseverywhere
11-3-11, 7:08am
hooray, bae is back.
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