Food Storage : Why and step 1

Canning Day

Having touched on the subject and had a few comments, I propose to do a series of small steps towards creating a food storage plan.

I do not intend to tell you what to store, that will be for you to work out, but what I can offer you is some ways of thinking about food storage, the reasons why it makes sense in today's society and a variety of practical ways to store food.

Why store? The world we live in today is fast moving, ever changing and full of surprises. On top of this, there has never been a time when the average family has had less food in their homes than now. A hundred years ago, people generally didn’t go to the store very often. As a rule, families were much more agrarian than today, with people growing the majority of the plants and animals they ate. Today, many of us would be at our rope’s end after just a couple of days of not being able to go to the grocery store. Listed below are some of the things that can happen to break up a normal family’s food supply channels:

• Loss of employment
• Strikes
• Fire
• Floods
• Droughts
• Hurricanes
• Wind Storms
• Earthquakes
• Civil unrest

It’s a good guess that every family will have at least one serious crisis during their life time. During such times, a family shouldn’t have to worry about what they are going to eat.

STEP 1
a. Create a list of 10 to 20 meals.
b. Create a separate list for breakfast and lunch foods, as appropriate and if desired.
c. As you begin this process you may not think of many foods. Post this list in a prominent place in your kitchen for the coming 2 weeks. Each time you think of a new food write it on the list. Ask the family for ideas and suggestions. Make the list reflect what your family typically eats and enjoys.

It will be different for each family, but in order to store the foods we are most likely eating we need to do some research.

In the meantime, whatever you store, the main thing we need to stay alive is water. Go check the availability of water in your home, check how you can save water and what you need to make water safe for consumption if it was not available.

On your shopping list this week, purchase 1 bottle of water for each member of your family.
For a family of 5 and 1 dog I have calculated the amount to be 40 litres in the house. That would be for 1 week if there was no water at all. Watre in the stores comes with its own sell by date, so check what the length of storage is and then find a place to put it in your home that is accessible. Rotate.