Monday, August 4, 2008

Food Storage

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I do the church bulletin. In one section I have a list of things for preparedness. It's divided up into months. I suppose the idea is to make food storage and other things easier by putting it into smaller increments. I didn't write this list, it's just been sent to me with instructions to put it into the bulletin.

So in the month of August, we're instructed to get 100 quarts of fruits and vegetables per person.

What? This is bite size and easy to do? So a family of four (small by Mormon standards but it's what I'm down to now), would be 400 quarts. Lets say I don't can. I buy cans. How many cans make up a quart? Lets say it's two cans a quart and I find this amazing deal of two cans for a dollar which is being very very modest. That's 400 thousand bucks just for fruit and vegetables. That doesn't include the rest of the list. Yeah, there's more on the list. Add to that, although it's designed with the idea that you don't have fresh fruit and vegetables, you're still supposed to rotate your food supply and I'm sure none of us are giving up fresh unless a crisis happens. You're going to have old cans of fruit and vegetables sitting around for awhile. A long while. And not everyone can store that amount, and even if they do, and then they have to move, who wants to move thousands of cans of food? Books I can understand, but old food? Books don't go bad over time.

This defeats me before I even start.

2 comments:

Jennifer @ Fruit of My Hands said...

If 2 cans for $1= 1 quart.

100 quarts per person for family of 4=800 cans

It's only $400 dollars, not $400 thousand dollars. More likely though, around here where food is relatively cheap, you aren't going to get it for less than about 79 cents a can.

But $400 is still my entire food budget for the month.

I'm working to get my storage. We used to eat out a lot, and I'm redirecting that money to food storage. Right now, I'm trying to buy 100 lbs of wheat a month, which according to the provident living site will feed my family for 1 month. I'm also trying to stock up on a few other things that are on sale each month as well. So I'm spending about $100 a month on food storage, and it will take me about 1 year to gather my years' supply.

Also on provident living, they have a list of foods that can be stored for 30 years without being rotated. Wheat, pasta, beans, powdered milk (20 years on the milk) etc. I have my short term (2-3 month) storage already of foods we usually eat, so I figure my years supply can simply be things that would sustain life, but that I don't have to rotate. And in 20 years when the powdered milk expires, it will be fabulous fertilizer on my garden b/c I have no desire to use it unless I have to, lol.

(Provident living says my family of four needs 1200 lbs of wheat and 240 lbs of beans to sustain life for a year. I'm assuming I would also need baking soda to soften the beans, some oil, sugar, and powdered milk to make it liveable. Once I get those things we will work more on diversity. Oil is the only thing on the list that will spoil in the short term.)

Anna Maria Junus said...

Okay, the 4000 was a joke. I should have said 4 billion because it's just as out of reach.

I'm still defeated.

Where does anyone put thousands of quarts of fruits and vegetables anyway?