Posted on 03/23/2008 11:36:40 PM PDT by nw_arizona_granny
Americans finding soaring food prices hard to stomach can battle back by growing their own food. [Click image for a larger version] Dean Fosdick Dean Fosdick
Home vegetable gardens appear to be booming as a result of the twin movements to eat local and pinch pennies.
At the Southeastern Flower Show in Atlanta this winter, D. Landreth Seed Co. of New Freedom, Pa., sold three to four times more seed packets than last year, says Barb Melera, president. "This is the first time I've ever heard people say, 'I can grow this more cheaply than I can buy it in the supermarket.' That's a 180-degree turn from the norm."
Roger Doiron, a gardener and fresh-food advocate from Scarborough, Maine, said he turned $85 worth of seeds into more than six months of vegetables for his family of five.
A year later, he says, the family still had "several quarts of tomato sauce, bags of mixed vegetables and ice-cube trays of pesto in the freezer; 20 heads of garlic, a five-gallon crock of sauerkraut, more homegrown hot-pepper sauce than one family could comfortably eat in a year and three sorts of squash, which we make into soups, stews and bread."
[snipped]
She compares the current period of market uncertainty with that of the early- to mid-20th century when the concept of victory gardens became popular.
"A lot of companies during the world wars and the Great Depression era encouraged vegetable gardening as a way of addressing layoffs, reduced wages and such," she says. "Some companies, like U.S. Steel, made gardens available at the workplace. Railroads provided easements they'd rent to employees and others for gardening."
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
If you build it out of the fiber glass, you will be able to open the bathroom window and let the heat into the house.
Yes, I have used the water/passive storage in all sized containers, up to 55 gallon barrels.
I also had the soda bottles with water stacked the around my wood stove, figured they got free heat and released it later.
Check on solar greenhouses, it is a world of its own.
Even if your main light comes from the east, you will still grow a lot of food in it....The west is too hot and they always say to use the southern facing greenhouse walls, and that gets hot too.
I planted 4 Thompson Seedless grape vines and in 3 years the ceiling of my greenhouse had grape vines producing, on supports and by not trimming back the vines.
That worked fine, leaves and shade in the summer, loss of leaves and sun in the winter.
If possible, have the greenhouse open into the house or close to it, as you will visit it more often, than if it is detached and it is easier to get that extra heat in the house.
http://sharonastyk.com/columnists2/slashing-the-grocery-budget-by-melissa-norris2/
Slashing the Grocery Budget by Melissa Norris
Sharon February 22nd, 2008
The food budget is one place that most people can save tremendously. As energy prices increase over time, the prices for any food purchased in grocery store will naturally increase as well. Many of the foods you buy travel hundreds of miles before they end up on your plate.
My goal is to spend less than $50 a week for a family of 6 people, 2 adults, and children ages 13 to 19. I am able to maintain extensive stores as well as feed my family daily with this amount of money.
These items are included in my food budget: any food purchased at the grocery store, farmer’s markets, restaurants, farm stands etc.. and any seeds or garden plants, also canning supplies. I count the cost of lids but not the cost of jars.
Here are some of my favorite ideas.
A few things I rarely ever or never buy: mixes, convenience foods, hot dogs, lunch meat, white anything (rice, pasta, bleached flour,ramen noodles) I don’t buy much meat in the stores either. My husband hunts and that supplies most of our meat. Chicken and pork is purchased from organic sources.
Drinks: We drink milk, tea (herbal, decaf we don’t drink anything with caffeine, use honey for sweetener), lemonade (from real lemons), real juices, cider, tomato juice. We rarely have kool aid or pop. We also make lots of fruit slushies with fruit, yogurt, ice, and some oats or wheat germ blended into it.
Garden: I raise a huge garden and can everything I can get my hands on. I also get a lot of excess produce given to me from other people’s gardens. I will can it and give them some of it to repay them for their generosity. We are able to put back about 1000 jars of home canned foods and lots of stuff in the freezer as well.
Do you need to plant trees around your house??? We planted a few oak trees and then we decided that every other tree we planted would be a fruit tree. Now we get peaches, apples, pears and cherries right here on the homestead. Every year we plant at least three or four new trees. I plant them anywhere I can find a little spot that I think they might thrive. We have also started grape vines, shrub cherries, hazel nuts, blackberries and raspberries. I always think the day may come when we will be extremely glad that we have these items here on the place.
Do not be shy about asking people for their excess fruit. Ask if they would like to sell any of the apples off of their trees. Most people who are not using them will tell you to take them, and you can give them something nice like a fresh apple pie, or home canned applesauce to repay their kindness.
Forage for what you can.. You may find mushrooms, berries, nuts, wild greens and much more right in your yard or woods.
Cook from scratch, Yes it is the only way to achieve black-belt tightwad savings on food. It is much better for you too. I am able to use my own eggs, and real butter, honey, whole wheat flour, etc… to make rgood, high quality meals. If you aren’t a proficient cook, head to the library, don’t buy a lot of expensive cook books. You can go to the library and check out 3-4 books every few weeks. Go through them to get new ideas that make your cooking more exciting, using basic ingredients you have on hand. Practice really does make perfect. As you develop the habit of cooking from scratch, you will wonder in amazement why you ever felt that gravy had to come from a jar.
Start an herb patch. For literally a few dollars worth of seeds, you can have hundreds of dollars worth of fresh herbs right outside your door. I grow basil, parsley, sage, dill, garlic, chives, oregano, marjoram, and much more.
Plan your meals early in the day. I know what I am having for supper before I eat breakfast. I have found that planning it early helps me to get myself organized and I am not standing looking into a full freezer at 4:00 in the afternoon, wondering what to have. Planning and organization are key to saving money on food. Using what is available in the garden or what needs used in the larder are both essential tools to saving in the food budget. If you have tomatoes going bad in the garden, but you are eating canned items from your stores, that is bad planning. Use what needs used first.
When you are in the grocery store, look for unexpected bargains and specials. You never know what you might find. I do not shop with a predetermined list, except for the really good sale items I want to get. I go looking for the best deals, then I cook according to what I have available. Never NEED anything. I always try to have things ahead, so that I am not desperate for something, because without a doubt if I have to have something, the price will probably be double.
I always shop with cash. I only shop at about 3 stores, but I don’t always go to each one every week. I look over the sale papers and check for the lowest prices. Most stores have some fresh fruits and veggies on sale each week. I buy a good supply of these when they are marked down.I don’t normally use coupons. Very rarely I will find one for something I would actually buy. They seem to be mostly for gimmicky foods, not real ones, so I never got into the coupon habit.
Eat oats. I can buy them in bulk very cheaply and they are the best breakfast you can get. I wil not buy any sugary cereal. I pay less than $1.50 a box for cereal. But my kids are not big cereal eaters, so I don’t need more than a box a week.
Soups are the cheapest, easiest foods you can make. Very filling and nutritious for a family or single person. I have soup at least twice a week in the fall and winter months. My husband came from a family that was used to having big platters of meat on the table. However they always had money troubles, and never owned their own home. I truly believed the money they spent on meat alone would have bought them a nice house. I told my husband that we would have to eat a lot of soup to own our own house. We were able to build our home mortgage free. With no debt and everything paid for on an income of less than $20,000 a year for the last 20 years.
Leftovers: Use all food you buy or prepare. I try not to waste anything. I use all the leftovers to make a soup or casserole. Save bits of things for snacks, or make your own homemade TV dinners. Last night’s stew was made from leftover boiled potatoes, carrots, a jar of deer meat, a jar of tomatoes, a small onion, lots of herbs, and a spoonful of hot mustard. It was very healthy, good and there was plenty for us and for company and some leftover as well for lunch today.
On the rare occasion I have to throw something out, I give it to the chickens, so they have a treat and we still get some eggs.
Think Healthy- In the last few years, I have made a commitment to not buy certain things. I do not buy anything with hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil. When I started reading the labels I was shocked at everything it is in… I do not use bleached flour, white anything (flour, rice, pasta, ramen noodles etc..) I have found that while whole wheat is a bit more expensive, by cutting out the other things I am still spending less and less money.
Snacks are a nice treat. Our family enjoys a good snack. I try to make most snacks from scratch or using healthy natural foods. One of our recent snacks was pumpkin bread, popcorn, apples slices with caramel dip,and peanuts. To drink we had apple juice I heated up with a cinnamon stick and some cloves. It was so warm and good. This whole snack costs about $3, which is less than a bag of chips and a bottle of pop, but was much healthier and nutritious.
Stocking up is the key to really saving money. Sometimes I feel like I should spend less, but then I realize that with the amount I am spending I have a lot of food put back also. It takes a while to get ahead so you can stock up, but the peace of mind is worth it.
http://sharonastyk.com/category/victory-gardens/
http://sharonastyk.com/category/victory-gardens/
It is Time for a New Victory Garden Movement!
Sharon February 10th, 2008
There is little question that it is time for us to create a new Victory Garden movement. That’s one of the central premises of Aaron’s and my book, and I don’t think there are very many people who understand what we’re facing who would deny that this is true.
In fact, there are quite a number of people in the Community Garden movement, and the blogging community who have supported the creation of a new Victory Garden movement. Some people doing this work include Bob Waldrop, whose call to action on local food systems has drawn considerable attention here (among other places):http://depletion-abundance.blogspot.com/2008/02/bob-waldrop.html , Foodshed Planet’s site has inspired others, http://www.victorygardendrive.blogspot.com/ and the group Revive the Victory Garden, who have called for 2 million new gardens to combat climate change in 2008: http://www.revivevictorygarden.org/, and there are literally too many others for me to list. But the movement is nascent, still beginning, and seems to need a little midwifing to get things moving along.
The reality is that interest in really, really local food is growing, and so is interest in food production, as food prices skyrocket and quality falls. And the best news is that this is a case where grassroots action not only can work, but it is the only thing that ever has worked - that is, in the US during both World Wars, in Cuba, in Russia - gardens for food security began and grew under the aegis of ordinary people acting to improve their world. While we can enable it from above, the creation of a victory garden movement is a person to person, blog to blog, neighbor to neighbor project. Why do it? A host of reasons, personal and political.
Victory Gardens Mean:
-Better Food - Fresher, better tasting, straight off the plant food money literally cannot buy!
- Better Health - More nutrition in just picked vegetables, grown without chemicals, while getting the kind of exercise many of us pay the gym for! Safety from industrial food contamination and toxic imports.
-Food Security - Food in your pots as prices get higher, supplies that can’t be disrupted by energy shortages, greater regional self-sufficiency. Millions of new gardeners can make sure that Americans don’t have to wait for distant food supplies to be trucked in - weeks after they are needed. Every gardener makes your region more secure.
-Higher Quality of Life - A more beautiful environment, stronger community, a better environment.
-More Money in your Pocket, More Time for What Matters - If you don’t need as much money for food, or to work as many hours to pay the grocery bills, you can use that money or take that time for what you really care about.
- The Chance to Serve Others and Create a More Just Society - Your Victory Garden can be a strike against hunger and poverty - you can have food to donate, and the ability to teach others to fish (ok, garden), and thus, eat for a lifetime.
- Reduce Corporate Power and Improve Democracy - We cannot simultaneously deplore the power corporations have in our society and depend on them to supply our most basic necessities. If we stop giving our hard earned money to the corporations who undermine our democracy, they will be less powerful!
-Protect Against Climate Change - Humus rich soils, full of organic matter can sequester tons of carbon, quite literally - and grow the best vegetables. We reduce our carbon emissions when we don’t have to drive to the store or buy fossil fuel grown food.
-Reduce our Energy Dependence - Fossil fuels are used in agriculture, both industrial and industrial organic at every step, from the fertilizer in the ground to the refrigerated truck to plastic bag they come in. We can eliminated fossil fuels from almost every step when we grow our own.
- Create Peace - We’re at war for oil right now. If we can cut back on our need for the stuff, we don’t have to kill or die for it.
-Hope for the Future - In a changing world, the ability to grow food, to share and enjoy it, and to live in a healthy world full of beautiful gardens may be the best legacy we can our children and grandchildren.
Ok, so we agree that we need Victory Gardens. How do we bring all the participants in this movement together, and create a real and national Victory Garden movement? How do we bring together professional farmers, with Victory Farms and city Gardeners, schools and community resources, and backyard advocates? How do we get Victory Gardening onto the national agenda? How do we teach millions of people how to grow, cook and eat their own, and why?
One part, of course, is the person to person work we’re doing now. The next step is to create a large-scale Victory Garden umbrella organization guided by people in every part of the Victory Garden movement - chefs and cooks helping people learn to eat, teachers helping children get involved, churches, corporations and community groups all putting gardens on public and private greenspaces, local “garden farmer markets” where very small scale producers can exchange or sell their extra in their neighborhoods, climate change and energy activists working on this simple way to cut our energy usage and reduce atmospheric carbon. That is, we need a movement - a real, serious movement. And we can do this.
And to get those new gardens and gardeners started. And for that, we need your help. We’ll be asking for more specific help as we go along, but getting started, we’d love all of you who blog to put out the Victory Garden idea, even if you usually write about other things. If you can, start a Victory Garden blog, and post a link in comments - I’ll put links up on this site and my other one.
And make the effort - reach out to one neighbor, at least, and help them get started gardening. Share seeds. Talk to your community, your synagogue, mosque, church, neighbors, school about gardening. Take a risk - for greater security later. Plant a front-yard garden, centered around a “V” for Victory (cabbages look great like this, particularly mixed with nasturtiums or calendula, but use your imagination). Be courageous - we need this Victory!
Shalom,
Sharon
http://sharonastyk.com/resources2/victory-gardens2/
Victory Gardens
Sharon February 22nd, 2008
We need victory now just as much as during World War I or II, when virtually all Americans grew victory gardens in place of lawns. There’s a lot we could learn from our grandparents (http://www.victorygardening.com) Food production is an enormous part of our energy use, and every American needs to do their part by growing some of their food. The more dependent we are on foreign oil the more vulnerable we are to hunger. The more resources we waste transporting out of season tomatoes from drought-stricken California to the wet east, the fewer resources we’ll have for things we really need. So everyone needs to grow a victory garden - no matter how much space you have, everyone can grow something.
If you’ve only got a windowsill…GROW SPROUTS! Sprouting seeds from broccoli, alfalfa, wheat, radishes, spinach and other vegetables are delicious, highly nutritious and an excellent substitute for out of season things. You can have something crisp, crunchy and delicious on your salad even when there are no peppers or lettuce to be had. Everyone can grow their own sprouts. Here’s how (http://www.sproutpeople.com).
If you’ve got a south facing windowsill…GROW HERBS. In addition to sprouts, anyone with a decent amount of sun in their windows can keep a few herbs growing over the window, enough to add a fresh taste to their food and save them money and resources at the grocery store. Rosemary, dill, thyme and sage are among the easiest. Learn more here (http://www.uvm.edu/pss/ppp/articles/herbs.html).
If you’ve got a balcony or a window box…GROW VEGETABLES, FRUITS and EDIBLE FLOWERS in containers. Even a window box 40 feet above the ground can grow some tiny, delectable alpine strawberries, some spicy nasturtium leaves and blossoms that look beautiful and taste better, some tomatoes, a hot pepper, maybe even cucumbers. A bigger space means more containers and more food. There are people who grow most of their own vegetables in containers. One of the best at it is Pat Meadows. She has a blog here (http://www.entire-of-itself.blogspot.com) and runs a container gardening list. She can tell you what the best varieties of melon for a container are, or how to mix your own potting soil. You can buy seeds of vegetables that grow best in containers here (http://www.containerseeds.com).
If you’ve got a little plot of front yard in the city…, TURN IT INTO AN EDIBLE LANDSCAPE. Check out this recent program that appeared on the ABC nightly news (http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2344206&page=1). Instead of rhododendrons, grow blueberries. Instead of ornamental maples, grow edible crabapples. Instead of lawn, grow beautiful vegetables. And don’t hide your efforts - spell out VICTORY in multicolored cabbages, or with petunias. Remind people that we’ve got something worth fighting for!! Check out what these folks do in an ordinary city yard (http://www.pathtofreedom.org). This family has grown many thousands of pounds of their own food on their front lawn, and are working their way to complete energy efficiency.
If you’ve got a big, sunny, back or front yard,…GROW A BIG VICTORY GARDEN! Gardening is fun - instead of mowing the lawn on your days off, get down and grow sweet corn, peppers, peas, strawberries, eggplant, squash, raspberries and other delicacies. Here are some websites than can help you learn how (http://www.gardenguides.com/articles/veggie.htm, http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/yeager74.html) Remember, we can’t do it without you! Unless people grow their own food, we are in danger of becoming food insecure in the longer term. Every meal of your own you grow saves fossil fuel for your grandkids, and it saves you money and gives you better food as well. Learn to put food up - dehydrate some, make jam, make pickles, or store vegetables in a cool place for the winter (http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/clay53.html, http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extnews/askext/canning.htm)
If you have…KIDS, garden with them!! Children love to dig in the dirt, grow their own, and learn about food, soil, ecosystems. And they love to eat what they grow. Get the whole family involved. Here are some ideas for a kid’s garden. http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/clay69.html
Consider some livestock as well!!!!!
If you live in a tiny apartment…KEEP WORMS!! Seriously, worms will eat all your garbage and return perfect potting soil for you or a friend, and fertilizer for your house plants. They don’t smell, attract bugs or make noise. They just eat what you would normally have thrown in the garbage and return fertile compost and liquid fertilizer. They are cheap, easy to maintain and surprisingly fun! Anyone can do it - learn how here http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/bse/442-005/442-005.html
If you live in a slightly larger apartment or urban house…KEEP RABBITS!! They are quiet, soft, make good pets and can be housebroken. They are useful meat animals, being very efficient turners of grass and yard waste into meat. You can collect many weeds (especially dandelions) and they’ll turn them into useful manure. If you don’t want to eat them, the manure is still good, they’ll still eat your yard waste, you can sell babies in many cases, and angora rabbits have usable fleece that can make yarn. http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/bse/442-005/442-005.html; http://www.qsl.net/ki0dz/rrr.htm
If you’ve got room…CONSIDER GETTING A FEW CHICKENS!! (Just don’t get a rooster if you have near neighbors). 4 hens will give you a couple of eggs each day. Their manure will fertilize your garden, and their pleasant habits of scratching and cooing will be fun for you and your family. They’ll eat pesky bugs and flies, and your garden waste and dinner scraps. You won’t need to buy eggs from a factory farm, which will save energy and keep hens from being mistreated. And you’ll get the pleasure of listening to them laying your eggs and scratching around your yard. Many cities and suburbs permit rabbits - just check with your local zoning board first. And if they don’t, consider petitioning to change that law. Check out these chickens living in downtown Seattle! http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/06/02/424265.aspx Bring back the Backyard hen!
If you’ve got a big place…CONSIDER GOATS. They’ll eat weeds, don’t take up much space and can provide a family with enough milk, cheese and yogurt to keep everyone happy. Back during the great depression, a New York City department store sold goats to New Yorkers to keep on their balconies (no, I’m not kidding)! So if they can do it, you certainly can. http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/shaffer64.html
[There are several more to be posted, after this on seeds...granny]
http://sharonastyk.com/category/seeds/
Storing Seeds
Sharon March 19th, 2008
One of the essential elements of growing your own is having enough seed - as y’all know, this is a big subject for me this month. One of the most important ways of staying secure is knowing how to store seed so that it will stay viable as long as possible.
So, if you want to store seed for more than one year, you have several options.
1. Keep them in a cool, dark, dry place.
-This will enable your seeds to have about the usual storage life. The estimated storage life of seeds is listed here. I would note, however, that this is one of those YMMV things - I’ve had no trouble keeping spinach seed for several years, for example. If you have a fridge, are very, very careful not to let them get moist (use silica gel and package them carefully), you can keep them in the fridge. Me, I’ve got way too many seeds for that.
2. Vacuum Pack Them
- Lack of air exposures will extend the seed’s life a bit. You can buy pre-canned and vacuum packed seeds or pack them yourself with a food saver or a straw. Remember, they still have to be cool and dark. This should add at a minimum one year to their lifespan.
3. Freeze them. Thanks to Pat Meadows for explaining how to do this to me.
-Obviously, this only works while the power is on, but will substantially extend the life of your seeds while the freezer is working. I keep and use too many seeds to do this with all of mine, but I plan to use this technique for short lifespan seeds, such as onions, parsley and parsnips.
Pat double packs her seeds in two layers of plastic, and before using them but after taking them out of the freezer, allows them 24 hours to come to room temperature before opening the packages, so that any condensation forms on the outside of the packet, not where it could hurt the seeds.
Before you do any storing, however, make sure that any seed you grew yourself is completely dry and ready to be stored.
And remember, never plant all your seed if you can avoid it - even the best gardeners have crop failures, and the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. The reality is that seed varieties are lost all the time - it is never wise to assume that there will always be more of a particular variety. So save a little extra, and store it carefully for next year.
Sharon
There is a chart and many links for growing information on the next link.
the chart on time for stored seeds appears average, but if you have a seed, then granny thinks it should be planted.
Onion is a one year seed and yet I got a crop out of 10 year old seeds, I figured half of them grew.
granny..
http://growingtaste.com/storage.shtml
http://sharonastyk.com/category/seeds/
Growing or Buying Fresh Food For Root Cellaring
Sharon March 12th, 2008
If you are going to use natural cool storage to keep vegetables and fruits in a root cellar, it matters a great deal which varieties you grow or purchase from farmers. Some varieties simply will not keep, others will last nearly forever. So as you are planning, make sure that if you intend to root cellar, you are choosing seed varieties (or talking to your local farmer) with keeping qualities in mind.
The definitive (and highly recommended) book on this subject is Mike and Nancy Bubel’s _Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables_ and they list many varieties there. I’ll list varieties that have done well for me here, but their book is definitely worth owning if you are using natural cold temperatures.
(BTW, I’m going to try and put together a store section of books on preserving food fairly soon, so you should be able to get most or all of the books I recommend through my site, if you’d like to.)
One note on root cellaring - while you don’t have to keep your food in a cellar (we keep ours in a partly insulated above-ground porch), you do have to keep it in a place that gets fairly cool. In warm climates, even shallow under-ground spots may not be cool enough - but if you live in a warm place, you may be able to grow year ’round, and not need a root cellar. So think about whether your location has the right combination of cool temps, frostlines, and a need for storing fresh food for long periods.
Ok:
Apples - We store *tons* of these, and the best keeping varieties we’ve found are: Roxbury Russet, Northern Spy, Winesap, Lady, Winter Keeper, Smokehouse, Winterbanana, Mutsu, Sheepnose, Cortland.
Some apples, by the way, turn into mush instantly - Macs and summer apples are the worst, but lots of other varieties don’t store well, so make sure you are storing the right kinds.
Beets - Lutz Longkeeper is by far the most famous storage variety, but Fedco reports it may have been dropped entirely from the commercial trade - Seed Savers still has it, a good reason to become a member and save your own! Detroit Dark Red does reasonably well, but our favorite storage variety is Rote Kugel, huge and dense and delicious. Seed is available from http://www.abundantlifeseeds.com
Cabbage - January King and Glory of Enkuizen are my best keepers - I got seed for both from www.rareseeds.com. Mammoth Red Rock, a red cabbage, stores almost as well. I’ve had great luck with older heirlooms, and not bothered with hybrids here. We’re still eating our own cabbage, and will run out before it spoils.
Carrots - I’ve found that most large carrots store fairly well. “Oxheart” stores very well for us in buckets of moist sand, but any thick variety will do well.
Garlic - All my garlic lasts just fine - no issues there.
Potatoes - The big issue with potatoes is that you want to store late-crop potatoes, for the most part, because they haven’t been sitting around. Katahdin, Green Mountain, Carola, Yukon Gold, German Butterball, Purple Peruvian - all store well for us.
Pears - Bosc, Anjou, Bartlett and Kieffer all store a couple of months
Quince - I’ve only grown one variety - it seems to keep several months.
Rutabagas - Laurentian keeps very well in sand.
Turnips - Purple Top White does the very best keeping for us, but Golden Ball is a close second and tastier.
Daikons - all seem to keep a couple of months
Onions - Of the OP Onions, New York Early does very well for me. Stuttgarter, the common set hybrid also does very well. For sweet onions, Candy will keep a month or two. New York early came to me through Fedco, listed below.
Sweet Potatoes and Squash like the same winter temps we have - 50s and 60s houses. So don’t store them in the root cellar, bring them into the house and keep them in closet, under your bed, or in a convenient corner. I’ve not noticed any difference between the sweet potato varieties we grow (Georgia Jet, Porto Rico). Johnny’s sells northern adapted sweet potato varities http://www.johnnyseeds.com as does Pinetree http://www.superseeds.com
Squash varies a great deal - there are lots of excellent keepers out there, but some of our favorites are - Marina de Chioggia, Butternut, Green Hubbard (the big ones keep much better than the little hubbards), Pink Banana, Futsu, Hopi Orange, Thelma Sanders - I get most of mine either from seed savers http://www.seedsavers.org or Fedco http://www.fedcoseeds.com.
I hope this helps someone!
Sharon
Pinetree Nursery http://www.superseeds.com
http://sharonastyk.com/category/seeds/
A Seed Savers Garden: Part I
Sharon March 8th, 2008
Note: This is part of my four part series on seeds and the issues of seed availability in a post peak agriculture. I’ll write more about seed saving generally shortly, but I wanted to start this part of the series now, while I was thinking about it, and while we’re still planning/starting our gardens.
I get my best ideas from the questions of my readers, and Stephen gave me a dilly. He mentioned that he felt intimidated by the problem of setting up a garden that could, besides feeding his family, also provide their seed needs, and did I have suggestions on this one. And that reminded me that I’ve wanted to write on this topic for some time. So I thought I’d talk about some model gardens people might set up. I wish that I had any design skills at all, or I’d show them to you, but you’ll just have to follow along verbally - and if any of you draw them out, and feel like posting them, submit a link and I’ll add it to this post.
What are challenges of growing food and enough seed to keep the cycle going? Well, different crops present different challenges, and I’m going to go through my design, easiest crops to hardest ones, and the solutions available to each. This will take multiple posts, however.
First of all, I recommend that all of you look into the very basics of seed saving - how it works, what the general issues are. The best basic reference, pointing you to useful books, websites and growers is at Sue Robishaw’s excellent website, ManyTracks here: http://www.manytracks.com/Garden/seedsave.htm#top. Personally, the very best explanations I’ve ever seen of basic, garden level seed saving came in Robishaw’s book _Homesteading Adventures_ - I believe (but have not read) that her book _Frost Dancing_ also includes tips for very northern seed savers. Just FYI, if you buy her book, HA is a book with a ton of useful information, and a very, very annoying format. It is worth getting through the conceit (Robishaw talking to two dumb new homesteaders) to get the information, though. There are good online guidelines for seed saving here: http://www.victoryseeds.com/information/save_seeds.html
The two most useful books for seed savers past the very beginning stage are Suzanne Ashworth’s _Seed to Seed_ and Carol Deppe’s _Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties_ - I strongly recommend that these be part of every gardener’s library. The second one may sound intimidating, but even if you have no intention of breeding, it is full of fascinating and useful information about plant genetics, presented in an accessible and fun to read (I know that sounds nuts, but it really is) way. The reality is that seed saving *is* plant breeding - each subsequent generation becomes better adapted to your region and its conditions.
Ok, now we’ve got the absolute basics down. So the first question is how you design a seed saver’s garden. You want to plant a full variety of foods, with enough to eat, and enough to save seed. You also want to minimize the amount of work you have to do in terms of hand pollinating, and caging, and make sure that your seed comes true. But you don’t have acres and acres of farmland - you have a suburban garden. (I know some of my readers do have acres of farmland, but for the purposes of this discussion, we’ll imagine we’re all dealing with smaller spaces.)
Now how much land generally speaking is needed for seed crops? Well, first it is useful to distinguish between the crops where seed can be saved *and* you can eat the plant, and those where one has to make a choice between the two. There are also some middle ground plants, where you can derive some benefits from them.
Plants where you harvest the plant more or less normally and the save the seeds: Winter squash, pumpkins, some melons
Plants where you can harvest leaves and stems fairly steadily and still have the remainder of the plant make seed: Celery, parsley, most leafy greens, lettuces
Plants where you have to choose between saving seeds and eating the plant: Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, onions, all grains, peas, beans and plants where you actually eat the seeds, all brassicas, all summer squash and cucumbers (although some of the summer squash can be eaten like winter squash at the seed saving stage), most root crops.
So how much of your garden will you have to devote to seed saving? Well, it depends on the size of the garden - some very small gardens won’t be able to save seed from some crops, particularly if you live in an area where others are growing gardens nearby. It also depends on the sheer number of crops you want to grow - if you are content to grow a single member of each plant that could potentially cross with another, you can save more seed than if you have to maximize every inch between plants. And generally, the smaller the garden, the larger the percentage of crops that have to be devoted to seed saving. In their booklet _Growing to Seed_ by Peter Donelan (available through Ecology Action) Ecology Actions says that the *average* space required to save enough seed for the next year is 3% of your garden. I would suggest that people average that up somewhat, both for reasons discussed in my prior post on seed availability, and assume that in the first year of a crisis, and while unless you are an experienced seed saver, 5-10% of your garden might be needed for adequate seed production.
There are a couple of factors here to understand. They all affect how much land you need to devote to seed saving.
The first, and most important, is that you want to select for good traits, and the best of your plants. This is perhaps the most fundamental way that a seed saver’s garden is different from everyone else’s - that is, seed savers have to track their plants even more carefully than gardeners. Because you want to select seed from the plants that have the qualities you want to perpetuate - for example, if you grow a tomato because it is especially early, you will want to save seed from the earliest crop. That means that instead of biting into that first red tomato, you might want to leave it on the vine - which is tough. But you also have to be careful here - some plants, when allowed to set seed, will stop fruiting, because their ultimate objective is the perpetuation of the plant - so sometimes you won’t want to leave the earliest fruits. You might be selecting for texture, color, vigor, resistance to disease, etc… - that is, you have to think about what plants to save seed from and why - and that means more than ever, making sure you are observing your plants and spending a lot of time with them in the garden.
In order to ensure genetic health, most crops have a minimum plant population necessary to keep them healthy. That is, if you save seed for a couple of years from too small a population, eventually the plants will begin to inbreed, and the seed will get weaker and less viable. Some self-pollinators need only one plant. Others, such as corn, need a large population to ensure long term viability. Suzanne Ashworth lists minimum plant populations for all her crops, and I’ve used that as a guide here.
Next is “isolation distance” - that is, how far away plants will cross pollinate by accident. Sometimes it is very close, sometimes quite far. But if you want your varieties to come true, you need to respect this distance. You can often stretch this by using barriers, like your house - plant one pepper on one side of the house, another on the other, and the odds are ok that they won’t cross. Sometimes even a row of tall plants like corn or sunflowers are sufficient. A very small gardener will have to grow fewer different varieties of plants that can cross with each other (sometimes people are surprised by what crosses with each other - for example, new gardeners often don’t realize that chard is a beet, and will cross with beets).
Then there is “Storage Space” which applies to biennial crops in cold places and with long dry seasons. That is, biennials are crops that make seed in the second year - most brassicas and many roots fall in this category. In mild climates, many will simply overwinter in the garden and make seed the next year. In very cold places, or places with long dry seasons, however, you have to find a way to dig them up and store them over the winter or summer and replant, so that they can make seed. For home scale gardeners, this is pretty doable, but it does take time, space and planning.
And finally, there are rotation issues, which are really a larger gardening issue. That is, most crops shouldn’t be grown more than once every few years in the same space. Which means that if you are growing out a plant that requires a large population, like corn or quinoa, you need to have several such spaces to grow seed so that you can rotate next year - or you have to have enough room to grow out seed one year for 3-4 years.
Confused yet? Seed saving gardening is different than simple vegetable gardening, and if you haven’t ever grown a garden, or are just getting started, I’d encourage you to start with the easiest crops for seed saving, and wait a little longer to get into practice with the others. It will be hard enough to simply design and set up your garden - adding a whole lot of other considerations is too much. So give yourself a year or so and a successful garden, and print out what information you need so that you can plan for a seed saver’s garden in the future.
So today we’ll start with the easy seed saving plants, the ones that even beginning gardeners can do without trouble. We’ll get into more complexity later. Remember, anyone can save seed - it just seems hard when you are getting started, like almost every new skill. Give it time, and keep practicing - this is one of those things that is too important to give up.
Potatoes and Sweet potatoes are both grown from pieces of existing plants, rather than seed, generally speaking. You can plant potato seed, but what you get won’t be anything like its parents. It can be fun to do, and the advantage of potato seed is that it lasts 3-5 years, so if you couldn’t plant one year and then no seed potatoes were available, you could get a crop. Not all potatoes will set seed, but some do, and it might be worth saving it. The process is simple - wait til the seed ball is mature, and then make sure the seeds are dried fully before storing them. This is a useful hedge - but whether the potatoes you get will be good is another bet, so this should be a side-venture. More generally, potatoes and sweet potatoes present no trouble - plant them one year, dig them up, save your best tubers to replant in the case of potatoes, or put a few sweet potatoes in water to generate slips, and go on from there.
Most Grains won’t be a crossing problem, unless you live in a heavy grain producing region. That is, if you grow wheat in my neighborhood, or suburban LA, you don’t much have to worry about crossing - no one else will be doing it. The same is true of most other grains. If you do live in the wheat belt, the need for you to grow wheat on a home scale is probably pretty small - grow oats or something instead. So generally speaking, if you are growing small amounts of grain, simply harvest them and save some of the seed. Corn and Quinoa are the major exceptions, and I’ll discuss them a bit later on.
Legumes are really easy - Peas and Beans are both, at best, marginal self-pollinators, that can cross, but are unlikely to. In fact, there’s some debate about whether beans actually cross at all - they are a crop that is highly likely to send out sports or mutations, so it may not be that they are crossing. You can usually grow peas (unless there’s a huge field of field peas next door) with just a row or two of taller plants in between them. Beans you can pretty much grow right next to each other, except Soybeans, which need a little more space - more like peas. But it is perfectly common for bean collectors to grow 20 or 30 varieties in a garden. All you do is save some pods on the vine and let them get completely dry, and put them away. Just remember to save your best pods for seed if you want to improve your stock.
Lettuces are extremely easy - it doesn’t cross very much, and even grown side by side, you’ll have 5% crossing or less, according to Suzanne Ashworth. And as long as you harvest individual leaves, you can have your salad and seed too - just remember, you want to save seeds from the *last* lettuces to bolt, not the first ones.
Spinaches cross more, because they are wind pollinated, but I haven’t had any noticeable decline in quality saving spinach seed even well within the 5 mile limit. That is, my seed is probably crossed, but it seems to come out pretty much like spinach. Otherwise, spinach is a lot like lettuce.
Tomatoes are another marginal self-pollinator - they do cross, but sufficient garden space - growing two varieties on either end of the garden is usually sufficient. You may have a few offtypes, but generally speaking, you’ll be ok. A barrier will almost always do it, so if you want to grow paste tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, just throw your cherries in a pot on the side of the house, away from the garden. Tomatoes must be unpleasantly overripe and mushy to save seeds.
So here’s where a seed saver’s garden has to get selective - you might need to narrow things down to an early variety, a paste/drying variety and a cherry. Or, you might have to get creative about where you grow them - remember, properly stored tomato seed lasts at least 3 years (and usually much more), so let’s say that you want to grow 20 varieties of tomato, but you also want to save seed from your three main crops. Well, since you can grow out enough seed to last you three years with just a few plants, perhaps you’ll find a spot away from the garden, over by the house, where you can grow three plants. The first year, you’ll plant your early variety there, and save seed (by letting tomatoes get overripe, and then fermenting and drying it) enough for three years, while you grow 20 other varieties in the garden. You won’t save seed from any of these - or maybe a few to test pollination distances. The next year, you’ll grow out your drying tomato, the third year your cherry - and then the rotation starts again (of course, you can’t grow tomatoes forever in exactly the same spot, so I’m assuming you are rotating them a little). You could also do this with a neighbor’s yard - offer them some tomatoes, and ask them to simply leave a few tomatoes on the vine to get overripe.
Peppers and Eggplants do self-pollinate quite a bit, and many of us will want to grow more than one - at least one sweet and one hot. Again, this is an argument for growing a few out each year as seed crops in a place isolated from the rest of your garden or in a neighbor’s yard. But there’s another trick that can be used with both of these plants. Unlike tomatoes, which are essesentially annuals - that is, they live only one year, in their native places, peppers and eggplants are perennials. That is, one way to save seed for them, if you have bright windowsills and a warm spot, is to dig up (or plant in pots to begin with) one of each kind of eggplant and pepper, and bring them into the house over the winter. If conditions are right (experiment before you depend on this) they will continue to fruit over the winter, and you can save seed from those plants, which had no wind or insects to crosspollinate them. Both crops have to be way past ripe to save good seed from.
Next post on this subject: More crops, and designing your garden with all these bits in mind.
Sharon
http://sharonastyk.com/category/seeds/
What I’m Growing - Part I - Things I Start Ahead
Sharon February 24th, 2008
I thought it would be fun to talk about favorite plant varieties. When I get sick of winter, I start seeds - there’s something so magical about the process. And one of my favorite projects is choosing varieties. Perhaps some of what I grow will be useful to you. This is going to be long - I like a lot of plants, and so I’m doing it in pieces as I get around to it. The first one will focus on tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, ground cherries and tomatillos, among the first things that I start indoors. I actually start much, much more than this, but one thing at a time.
BTW, as we discuss this, we should probably note locations and what your garden is like - the plants I have success with in my cool, wet, heavy soil in upstate NY might not suit your arid, cold high plains garden or your humid, warm midwestern loam, and vice-versa. Still, almost anything is worth a shot!
First, there are tomatoes. Everyone loves tomatoes, and discussing tomato varieties is one of those things that no gardener can get enough of. I have quite a few favorites - I could never choose one or two.
My favorite OP (open pollinated, that means not a hybrid) cherry tomato is right now is a variety I tried for the first time last year, “Black Cherry” - I’ve always liked black tomatoes, and this one has the rich flavor of a large black tomato in a prolific cherry.
I’ll admit, my favorite cherry tomato of all time is Sungold, a hybrid. Baker Creek Heirlooms www.rareseeds.com was offering a dehybridized version of this for a while, and I grew it, but it was definitely inferior to the tropical taste of the original. But sooner or later someone will create a good dehybridized version, and in the meantime, I love it and so do my customers. For containers, I was growing “Red Robin” which is good (although I got a batch from Tomato Growers Supply that was *terrible* so not all strains are equal), but I’m even more excited by “Balconi Yellow” from Thompson and Morgan which tastes really good.
I don’t grow grape tomatoes - most are hybrids, and I’ve usually found them inferior to cherries. Anyone found a non-hybrid grape tomato worth growing? My CSA customers asked for them last year.
The best early tomato I’ve grown hands down is Glacier - I don’t bother with anything else at this point. Not quite as early, but slightly better tasting is _Cosmonaut Volkov_ - generally my goal is to have potted tomatoes by June 10, and my first decent sized tomato by July 4, which is pretty good in our climate. I start these in February, along with a few sweet and hot peppers. I don’t always succeed - this year I was running late on my seed starting - but I usually make my July 4 goal.
Ok, big tomatoes. My favorite multicolor is pineapple - I got my seed from Pinetree seeds www.superseeds.com - it is a wonderful tasting tomato, and I’m wildly in love with it. My favorite big red is Costoluto Genovese - weird crinkly, terrific flavor. Smaller tomatoes I’m fond of are “Rose de Berne” “Jaune Flamee” and “Red Bobs.” (That last is a great container tomato - and I’m excited to try “Paul Robeson” this year in containers, after they were praised by Pat Meadows). Of the Brandywines I’ve tried, I like the “Black Brandywine” quit a lot although it doesn’t yield spectacularly for me.
Finally, pastes. Polish Linguica and Opalka are the best in my garden, without a doubt, although Orange Banana is very popular here - the kids thing bright orange tomato sauce is a kick.
Ok on to peppers - it is very hard to get peppers to ripen fully in my climate. I’m up at about 1400 feet, and in a cool region, and summer nights are routinely in the 50s - and sometimes in the 40s. Peppers really don’t like cool nights, and most of the ones that mature best are hybrids. I’ve been growing some because of the customers, but this year I’m going to try and restrict myself entirely to OP peppers.
Ace hybrid has been a reliable, reasonably early red turner here, as has Jupiter and Sunbell. King of the North is my favorite OP, which I get from Fedco. Albino Bullnose, a very old heirloom has also done well here, so these will probably be my main crop peppers. I’m also going to try using my pop-up greenhouses this year over some peppers and melons to retain night heat and give them the warm temps they like. Perhaps I’ll even be able to get the super-hot habaneros I love so much, but can’t mature here. Growing in containers is also important for us - because the containers get warmer than the soil in the summer, peppers mature faster and better. “Fish” hot pepper is a stunning container plant, and a delicious pepper.
Eggplants, oddly aren’t nearly as much of a problem for me as peppers. I have no idea why - so many people have it the other way around. The only hybrid I bother with is a mini-variety called “fairy tale” which grows in containers. Eggplants in containers are more prolific and earlier for me than in the ground. In the ground, I’ve done very well with “Lousiana Long Green” (lovely flavor) Rosa Bianca, and Italian White.
We love tomatillos here, and eat a ton of salsa verde both fresh and canned, and I mostly grow the common green variety. But I tried “Purple de Milpa” last year, and really liked it - it was a bit sweeter and more complex. Tomatillos and Ground Cherries are no fuss crops - plant ‘em, ignore ‘em, harvest ‘em. Both are so prolific that I just don’t bother thinking much about them. I like straight Ground Cherry jam pretty well, but my family mixed ground cherries with fall raspberries, about 50-50 last year, for something truly transcendent. Not only is it good jam, but it tastes really good with meats, and a little less sweet would make a great ketchup - something to try next year.
Ok, more soon - greens and lettuces! Boy will that take a while!
Shalom.
Sharon
http://sharonastyk.com/category/food-storage-quickie/
Friday Food Storage Quickie: Holiday Sales Time!
Sharon November 21st, 2008
Well, it is time to take advantage of the holiday sales to stock up - maybe even for next holiday, when harder times are coming. This week we’re going to focus on the deals that are out there around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Grocery stores usually are willing to take a certain loss this time of year, on the expectation that people will spend more. My guess is that the margins are tighter and the deals may not be as good, but they will probably still be out there. Here are some things to look for, and some ways to use them outside the holidays:
- Baking Materials - Baking powder, the “sweet” spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, cloves, allspice, etc…), flour, cocoa, sugar, pie cherries, etc….
Obviously, you can think of uses for flour (remember, whole grain ground flours don’t keep that long, so don’t buy more than a six month to 1 year supply) and the rest - most of this stuff doesn’t go on sale very often, so now is a good time to stock up.
- Canned Pumpkin, sweet potatoes and squash. Skip the ones that are already sweetened and have marshmallows in them, but the ones that are just the pureed vegetable are pure gold. Rich in vitamin A, they can replace fat in baked goods, and give them a golden color and delicious flavor, and adding a light sweetness. We add pumpkin to bread and biscuits, to lasagna (surprisingly good), make pumpkin bread, pumpkin cake and pumpkin pudding along with pumpkin pie. The whole vegetables are also often a good deal around now, and are even better, because they come with the delicious and highly nutritious seeds.
- Turkeys. If you have a lot of freezer space and reasonable confidence in your power situation, or if you are handy with a pressure canner, and your grocer is offering a deal like a free turkey or dirt cheap one, now’s a good time to get an extra or two, and cut them up or can or freeze them. I’m not a big fan of industrial meat, but for those who are worried they might not have any meat, this is a good time to get a little ahead.
- Root vegetables. Your local farmstand may well be offering good discounts right now on those veggies that most Americans eat only at the holidays - Parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, etc…. They all keep in a nice cold spot, so stock up, and look around on the net for some recipes.
- Chocolate chips. Need I really make a case for this? Chocolate keeps easily a year, and the occasional batch of chocolate chip cookies is the closest thing to universal comfort food on the planet.
As for a non-food item, this week, I’m going to remind you to have a couple of good quality manual can openers if you have any canned goods at all. I’ve never used an electric can opener, but I’m continually surprised by how many people don’t have one. And manual can openers can wear down - so having a spare somewhere accessible isn’t a bad idea. Heck, there’s a decent chance the can opener will be on sale this week too!
Cheers,
Sharon
http://sharonastyk.com/category/food-storage-quickie/
Friday Food Storage Quickie: Now’s the Time to Take Inventory
Sharon October 24th, 2008
Ok, I have no idea whether the fact that world markets are falling like stones and Karl Denninger started drinking at 5:30 am means anything. Could be a big deal, could not be - my bet would tend to be on “big deal” but y’all know I have predilictions in that regard. But now is as good a time as any to call for an inventory - how are you situated? What’s missing?
Now let me be clear - I’m not suggesting you should panic at all. Even if we are having a stock market crash, the reality is that the present economic model of “a rising tide swamps all boats” will probably take a while to trickle down to most of us. If you’ve already lost your job or are in crisis, you may not be able to do much - but inventory of your resources is valuable even then. What I’d suggest for those already in crisis is to begin to consider your options - could you consolidate housing? Take in a boarder? Take a job outside your field? There are a lot of things you can’t control right now, but you might as well take control of the ones you can.
If you are just beginning to store food, look at these posts: The first explores the very basics, for people on a low income. The second covers things in more depth, and the third explores other cheap ways to get food. I’ve also included my suggestions for food storage shopping if you ever have to do it in an already developed crisis, as the last piece here. Note, that I really recommend you *not* wait that long.
http://sharonastyk.com/2008/03/04/food-storage-101-part-i/
http://sharonastyk.com/2008/07/15/food-storage-on-no-budget/
http://sharonastyk.com/2008/10/02/crisis-shopping-food-storage-when-you-havent-been-storing-food/
If you’ve been working on this, but you don’t feel you are ready, here are some questions to ask yourself, and some possible remedies.
1. Do I have staple foods that I can rely on as the basis of my meals? A staple is a nutritious starch that contains some protein as well, and that can meet most of your needs. It could be a grain - most Americans rely on bread for our staple starch. But it can also be oatmeal, corn (if you are primarily relying on corn, it must be corn that is nixtamalized, so that you won’t get a major nutritional deficiency - you only have to worry about this if you are mostly eating corn, not if you eat an occasional meal of tortillas - so if you are storing whole corn, know how to process it, and if you are buying cornmeal, buy masa, not plain corn meal), barley, quinoa - or root crops. You can also rely primarily on potatoes, sweet potatoes, rutabagas, turnips and other roots, or a combination of those.
You can order bulk grains online or through a coop or whole foods. This time of year, you can often get a 50lb sack of potatoes or sweet potatoes quite cheaply. Ethnic markets often have good deals on grains as well. Don’t forget popcorn and pasta.
Here are a couple of posts about staple foods: http://sharonastyk.com/2008/07/17/the-storage-life-of-grains-major-and-minor/
http://sharonastyk.com/2008/03/11/living-the-staple-diet/
2. Do I have protein foods that can supplement my staples? This is not as important as the staples - if you had to, you could get along quite well with just a starch for some time, but you wouldn’t enjoy it. And diabetics, hypoglycemics and others would struggle with this. For most people with normal diets, you need about 1/3 to 1/4 protein dense foods.
What are some choices here? The traditional choice is some kind of legume - beans, split peas, lentils, cowpeas. You could buy dry milk - mixed with oatmeal, or into flour in a dairy bread recipe, that would be enough to sustain you, but it gets kind of boring. You could can your own meats and fish, or buy pre canned meat and fish that your family likes if you like meat. You could also add seeds - sunflower, flax, pumpkin seeds, or nuts like almonds or filberts. Powdered eggs don’t taste very good, but they will allow you to bake, and add necessary protein. Or perhaps you have eggs, if you just store enough chicken feed. What you do is up to you and your budget. Think about foods you know your family will eat and that they like.
3. Do I have some fruits and vegetables to add flavor, fiber and nutrition? The two hardest to cover vitamins are vitamin C and A. So choosing C and A rich fruits and vegetables to add to your storage reduces the danger of both nutritional deficiency and constipation. For vitamin A, canned pumpkin, squash or sweet potatoes, or fresh stored orange vegetables are the best option. For vitamin C, dried elderberries or rose hips are an excellent source. You can and should also have some seed that can be sprouted for fresh green vegetables if you live in a place where you can’t easily go out and forage a safe, unsprayed supply of greens (dandelions, plantain, chicory, etc…) all year ’round. Or you should have them if you don’t know how to recognize those foods. Wheat seeds are easy to sprout, but you might prefer broccoli, radish or others. These can be bought online or at a supermarket or health food store. I would recommend more vegetables and fruits as well - either dried, canned or kept in cold storage.
4. Fat. You need some cooking oil. You probably already have preferences on this, but most oils will keep a couple of years in a cool dark place. Oh, and everyone will probably want some salt (salt is necessary for life, so buy a few boxes) and sweetener. These are cheap and useful at making food palatable. Add in as many inexpensive spices as you can afford, or as many home-dried herbs as you can gather. These make the difference between survival and misery.
4. Do I have the basic ingredients of making meals we eat? Think about what you actually eat for breakfast, lunch and dinnner. Do you like granola? Well, then you need some oats, nuts, maybe a bit of honey and oil. Can you not imagine a meal without bread? Make sure you have yeast and salt. Think about what you need in terms of the things that make you happy.
5. Do I have water stored? This is an easy one - go raid your neighbor’s recycling bins and fill the bottles with water. If you don’t plan to rotate them every few months, add a drop of bleach to each one. All done. Now make sure you have something to flavor the water, because stored water tastes a little icky - you can get tang, which has vitamin C, tea, coffee, or just go pick some mint to add to your water. Think again about what you need to feel good.
6. Do I have multivitamins at a minimum? What about other supplements that I might need? Our family keeps not only multivitamins for kids and adults, but also vitamins C, E and fish oil capsules (the latter don’t keep long). Do I have a reliable way of getting necessary medications?
7. What about basic hygeine items? Think soap, shampoo, toothpaste and tooth brushes, vinegar or some other cleaner, laundry detergent or borax, as well as toilet paper. You can substitute for some of these - you can use diluted Dr. Bronner’s soap for almost all these needs, baking soda in place of tooth paste and deoderant, and use cloth for toilet paper if need be, but if these items will make you happier and more comfortable, store them. Make sure you have plenty of soap! Washing hands will be essential.
8. If my basics are covered, are there luxury items I’d like to add? Are there things my family needs or wants that would be useful? If the crisis overlaps holidays or festivals that are important to me, are there ways of storing items to allow us familiar treats or special foods?
Have I prepared for household pets and livestock? Do I have adequate food for them, or ways of making a nutritious diet for them out of my stored staples?
9. Do I have warm clothes, blankets, a way of heating myself, my home and/or food? Do I have flashlights and batteries, a cell phone charger? How will I cook, bathe and do laundry without power? That is, am I ready for an emergency? My claim is not that we are facing an immanent one, but that we’ve already seen an increase in emergencies, and a slow down in our response to them - being able to take care of your own needs.
Am I prepared to deal with basic medical needs, or to handle an acute situation when I cannot reach a hospital or when they are overflowing? Do I have a book on first aid, or better yet, have I taken basic first aid, CPR and medical response classes? Do I have a good first aid kit? Does my household have a supply of basic OTC medications, and perhaps a broad-spectrum antibiotic (and the wisdom to use it only when truly necessary?) Do I know how to handle the range of basic injuries? Check out Chile’s first aid kit info: http://chilechews.blogspot.com/2008/10/building-first-aid-kit.html
10. Do I have mental health needs met? That is, can I handle the stress of a difficult period - a job loss, service loss or other crisis? Do I have ways to keep busy, to feel productive? Do we have games and educational materials to keep kids entertained and learning? Does my family have the habit of supporting each other through difficult times - do I have a strategy for dealing with stress productively? Do we have ways to have fun - music, games, sports equipment, books whatever our family likes to do? Can I not panic, and keep a sense of perspective
Again, none of this should panic you. Answering “not yet” to some of these is not the end of the world. It should simply move you towards the next step, and the next.
Shalom,
Sharon
http://sharonastyk.com/category/food-storage-quickie/
Friday Food Storage Not-Quite-So Quickie - $5 Week Beginner Food Storage
Sharon October 17th, 2008
This is a guest post by a little mouse who’d like to remain anonymous. I think she’s written a superb piece for such a small creature, and that this might help someone who feels unable financially or personally to begin with food storage to take a step. The piece is long, but valuable I think.
The Curious Tail (er…Tale) of How This Piece Came to this Blog:
I was surprised … no, shocked…when I heard Ms. Anon E. Mouse squeaking
at me yesterday afternoon. Ms. Mouse and I have frequent chats, but always
before they have been in the dead of night, when EvilKitty is safely shut
into the laundry room, dreaming of catching a…….well, never mind that.
The dogs are also sound asleep, and only the twitch of a paw or a soft
puppy-bark reveals that rabbits are romping through their dreams.
‘Ms. Mouse,’ I said, ‘What are you doing out of Mousel in broad daylight?’
(Ms. Mouse does have her little harmless affectations and naming her Mouse
Hole after a village in Cornwall is one of them. She spells it the way it
is pronounced.)
‘Urgent, urgent, urgent,’ squeaked Ms. Mouse in reply. ’It has come to my
attention that some Feckless and Foolish Humans have no food storage
whatsoever!’
‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s true,’ I replied.
‘Everymouse knows that food storage is important. Everymouse has bread
crumbs, cheese and peanut butter set aside for an emergency!’ squeaked my
small friend.
‘I have even heard,’ continued the furry creature twitching her ears, ‘that
some humans think they don’t have enough money for a basic food storage.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s true also,’ said I.
‘Foolish humans! I always knew that mice are more intelligent!’ said Ms.
Mouse in reply, hastily adding ‘Present company excepted, of course,’ so as
not to hurt my feelings.
‘I’ve written a Very Cheap Food Storage Plan for foolish humans,’ continued
the benevolent rodent, ‘and I want you to send it to Sharon so that she can
use it.’
‘But Ms. Mouse,’ I protested ‘Sharon is a sophisticate,’ I continued ‘She
already knows about food storage.’
‘Cat? Cat? Where’s a cat?’ exclaimed my furry pal in alarm, glancing
nervously over her shoulder.
‘No, no, Ms. Mouse,’ I reassured her, ‘Not that kind of cat.’
‘Oh,’ she said, mollified.
‘But even if Sharon is a … sophisti…no, I cannot say that
word. Even if she is knowledgeable, how do you know that she doesn’t have
friends or neighbors who don’t already know these things?’ demanded Ms.
Mouse.
I was forced to admit that I don’t know.
‘So,’ instructed Ms. Mouse, ‘Send it to Sharon! But don’t reveal
my identity,’ she instructed.
‘But Ms. Mouse, don’t you want to be credited with the Plan?’
‘No, no, no, positively no. No time to answer questions, no time at all,’
she replied.
‘OK, OK, Ms. Mouse,’ said I, ‘Would you care for a thimbleful of mint tea?’
‘No, no, must rush, must rush, work to do, work to do,’ exclaimed the
rodent.
‘What are you doing now, Ms. Mouse?’ I inquired.
‘Must rearrange food storage, must move bread crumbs behind cheese to make
more room for winter food,’ squeaked Ms. Mouse. ’Must go, must go, must
go: too much work to do!’
And with scarcely a twitch of her ears, Ms. Mouse scampered back into
Mousel, and dragged out a very long piece of paper.
‘Here’s the Plan,’ she exclaimed, ‘Send it to Sharon!’ and off
she disappeared into Mousel.
I.
The ANYWAY, Very Cheap, System of Food Storage for
Emergencies and/or Inflation for People Who Think They Cannot Afford Food
Storage
While people in other countries MAY think that their government will come
to their assistance quickly in a natural disaster, and Americans *used to*
think this, we know from bitter experience in New Orleans that this is no
longer true, More recently, three entire years after Katrina, we know that
many, many people in Houston received very inadequate help after Hurricane
Ike.
We have a very large country, very prone to natural disasters of one
kind or another. Hurricanes, forest fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, ice
storms, mud slides: fortunately, the bad effects of at least some of these
disasters can be mitigated by sensible preparations.
Americans have also seen TERRIBLE inflation in food costs for the past
year. Foods costs across the USA vary a lot by area, but my husband and I
estimate that - in our area - the prices for foods have risen from 30% to
40% *IN THE LAST YEAR*.
These figures are, of course, not reflected in the official
government-issued statistics on inflation; the government removed both food
and energy costs from the inflation statistics a while ago. But we are
experiencing this terrible inflation in food costs, and we know darned well
what we are experiencing. We aren’t stupid.
OK, moving right along - what can we do?
Can you scrape together $5 extra each week for about three months (at MOST,
and maybe you will need the extra $5/week for less time than this)? If you
can, I can suggest a food storage plan for you. If you cannot, then I
cannot help you with storing food.
I believe that most people can manage $5 extra per week for about three
months (at most - and it should be less time than this, as you will see in
Part Two). This can be in food stamps instead of in actual money;
food stamps will work for this. If you can get food from a food pantry or
food bank, that will also help.
If you can get more money together, you can accomplish this plan faster.
But if you can only get that little bit extra money together - and not
permanently, only for a while - you can do this plan; you cannot do it
*instantly*, but you can do it.
In what follows, I’m assuming that you live alone. If you live with other
people, you’ll need to increase quantities.
1. First step: Set a goal, make a plan, write it down. Write down what
you need to do each week to accomplish your goal.
The initial goal I suggest is this:
To have on hand, at all times, enough water to keep you alive for one
month.
To have on hand, at all times, enough natural and nutritious food -
no junk food - to keep you alive and functioning for one month *without
needing to cook anything*.
This food must not require refrigeration, and it must keep for a fairly
long time.
This - to me - seems like a very reasonable *initial* goal. When you have
accomplished this initial goal, then you can stop and re-assess the
situation.
You may want to stop there. You may want to increase the variety of food
that you store. You may want to get some means of cooking in a power
failure (assuming that your kitchen stove is electric, which is the worst
case).
You will probably cook some of the foods that I suggest *in normal times*.
But you can safely eat these foods without any cooking at all, if
necessary.
If you need to evacuate the area, if you have a car, or a friend or
relative with a car, you can take some of this water and all of this food
with you.
If you need to evacuate the area and you must do it by public
transport, then you can only take what you can carry. Some things cannot
be helped. So there’s no point in worrying about them. I try hard to be
prepared for what I can be prepared for, and to let the rest go without
fretting about it. I pretty much succeed at this now.
OK, so how are you going to accomplish this initial goal?
First, you must learn and follow the Basic Rule of Food Storage: Use what
you store, and store what you use.
This means that you must ONLY store what you will actually eat. You will
*regularly eat all the items you store*.
People with more money can afford to buy other foods for storage.
But people with very little money - like you and like me too - cannot
afford that. We must USE WHAT WE STORE AND STORE WHAT WE USE.
I am assuming also that you can only get to a regular, normal supermarket.
So I’m going to suggest a plan that can be accomplished completely, totally
at a normal supermarket (as they exist in the USA, the UK, Canada, probably
Australia and all of Europe and so on).
If you have an Aldi’s you can get to, or a Wal-Mart Supercenter, these will
probably have the same foods cheaper, so that would help. If you can get
to a store that sells bulk foods, you can probably get one particular item
cheaper, so that will help. But if you cannot - OK, you can do this at a
normal supermarket.
Don’t forget - you are going to set your own goal (which may be the goal I
suggest or may not). And you are going to write down a plan to accomplish
this goal; week by week.
Then you will start on your Plan.
Here’s what I would suggest for Phase One of your Plan. Phase One may take
you a week; it shouldn’t take more.
1. A hand-operated can opener. I think there are people who only have
electric can openers (I myself have never had an electric can opener). If
you only have an electric can opener, then please buy a hand-operated can
opener the first week. It can be a cheap one. You can buy these in normal
supermarkets, although perhaps a Dollar Store will have one cheaper.
2. If you have a gas stove, make sure that you have matches. We have a
gas stove; it has electric ignition. But when the power is off, we can
light the top burners (only) with a match. We cannot light the oven with a
match, because the burners are sealed in and inaccessible. But we can light
the top. So far as I know, you can light the top burners of ALL gas stoves
with a match. So buy a box of matches if you don’t already have them.
4. Do you have a bottle of multi-vitamins on hand? If not, please buy a
bottle of multi-vitamins. They don’t need to be expensive ones, the
cheapest ones available will do. If you can only afford a small bottle,
buy a small bottle now and get a larger bottle later. We try to keep one
year’s supply of multi-vitamins on hand. But please get enough for at
least 30 days, that’s important.
3. Store enough water for a month. Water should definitely come before
food: people can go without food an awful lot longer than they can without
water.
So far as I know, everyone who has running water in the USA and Canada can
safely drink the water that comes out of their taps. You cannot afford to
buy water. So you will store the water right as it comes from the tap. You
are going to store enough water to keep you alive for a month.
This is a minimum of one gallon per day. You’re not going to drink a whole
gallon of water any day, but you are going to wash your hands at least once
per day and you can splash some water on your face (then catch it in a
dishpan or pot and use it to wash your hands).
So you’ll need 30 gallons for one person, for one month. What can you keep
it in?
You may already have this much water: if you have a hot water heater in
your home or apartment, see if you can figure out to drain it. You might
need to slide a dishpan under the drain place, but you can probably do
this.
I don’t want you to do it now; I just want you to know that is a
possible source of water if you need it. I want you to know how to do it
if you need to. If you cannot figure it out, ask someone who knows how if
you possibly can.
Large, empty clean soda bottles, with tops, are great for storing water.
Ask everyone you know if they can please give you the empty bottles if they
drink any soda at all.
Empty clean apple juice bottles are equally good - or any fruit juice
bottles. Ask everyone you know to give you fruit juice bottles. I drink
V-8 juice occasionally, and it comes in very nice reusable bottles too.
Empty clean whisky or wine bottles are also fine - again, ask everyone you
know. (Some cheap wine comes in gallon or half-gallon glass jugs - these
are perfect.)
If anyone you know buys bottled water, those bottles are fine too.
If you cannot find ANYTHING else, then you can keep water in clean plastic
milk jugs. They are not the best container, but they are better than not
keeping any water at all. Milk jugs will become brittle and break
eventually, but they should be OK for a month. (Meanwhile you can work on
getting better containers.) Wash milk jugs very carefully and rinse,
rinse, rinse - then fill with water and keep them out of the sun.
If you have any empty 5-gallon buckets, they will be fine too.
I do not recommend drinking water from a bucket UNLESS THAT BUCKET IS FOOD
SAFE; some are, but some aren’t. Would I drink water from a bucket that is
not food safe IF IT’S THE ONLY WATER AVAILABLE IN AN EMERGENCY? You bet I
would; it would be an awful lot better than no water at all.
You might be able to get large buckets by asking at a doughnut shop - the
icing for doughnuts comes in buckets. They are food safe. You might be
able to get some from a supermarket bakery and again they will be food safe
- also perhaps from a sandwich shop.
If you have a cat, you may have empty cat litter buckets. I do NOT
recommend drinking water stored in a cat litter bucket - although they are
not dirty: the actual cat has been nowhere near them. They are not
food-safe plastic. But if you have no other possible way to store water,
it would be better than having no water at all. Maybe you have a friend
with a cat who will give you some of these.
You don’t need to treat water in any way if you replace one-third of it
every month. Just count how many bottles of water you have stored, and
dump out, rinse, and refill one-third of them each month on the first of
the month. Then none of the water will be more than three months old.
Where to put the water? Let’s just say this: if you really want to do
this, you’ll find a place to put the water.
I will also make one more suggestion about water: for some natural
disasters, people have considerable warning. Hurricanes do not sneak up on
people; ice storms or blizzards generally don’t either. We have warning.
I have always seen advice to fill your bathtub with water if you think the
power may go off. It seems to me that this is terribly bad advice: I have
always tested the bathtub in every one of the many, many places where I
have lived and every single one of them has a slow leak through the drain.
No bathtub that I ever lived with will store water overnight - in the
morning, it’s all gone.
But what you can do is to put any kind of large container(s) in your
bathtub and then fill the container(s) with water. I’m thinking here
specifically of the very common 18-gallon Rubbermaid or similar totes used
to store various items. Many people have these around. But ANY large
container will do for this purpose.
That way, if the container should spring a leak, OK, it’s in the tub
anyhow, no problem. If the container does not spring a leak, you’ll have
more water.
You can flush the toilet with this water or drink it (in an emergency only)
or wash with it, whatever. If you have warning, you can also fill any
large pots and pans you have with water, and any 5-gallon or cat-litter
buckets you have too. Fill any containers you have with water if you have
warning of a hurricane or ice storm.
You should be able to accomplish the initial water storage goal (and the
can opener, matches, and multivitamins, if necessary) within one week.
Next you sit down and think about water. You might decide to store more
water, or you might decide that this is enough water. You can work on
getting better containers for the water too, especially if you had to use
milk jugs - they will become brittle and fall apart eventually.
Congratulations on a job well done! You’ve accomplished Part One now. Now
we’ll move right along to Part Two.
II.
By the way, I’m calling this the ANYWAY, Very Cheap System of Food Storage,
because you are going to eat these foods *anyway*. You’re going to eat
them as part of your regular diet.
People with more money can store foods that are different from their
regular diet. People with very little money cannot do this. They must
store foods they’ll eat anyway…. problems or (hopefully) no problems!
In Part One, you took care of water storage for a month. You also
determined that you already have - or you bought - a manual can opener, and
matches if you have a gas stove, and at least a month’s supply of
multi-vitamins.
Now we need to think about food. The initial food goal I suggest is this:
This food must not require refrigeration - and it must keep a long time.
This seems to me a very reasonable *initial* goal; after you have
accomplished this, then you can reassess the situation and decide where you
want to go from there. You may want to stop there. You may want to get
more varied foods. You may want to get some way to cook in an emergency.
You may want to continue to with more of the same foods.
OK, how to accomplish this initial goal, and to spend the minimum necessary
amount?
This is what I suggest; but I caution you: you are going to be eating
these foods *regularly* and *anyway*. If you are allergic to any of the
foods I suggest or cannot eat them for some other reason, or you just
cannot stand them, then you need to find a substitute.
The quantities given are for one month for one person. If you have more
than one person in your household, you will need to increase the
quantities.
The first food that I suggest you buy is rolled oats: you can buy - in
every supermarket that I have ever seen in the USA or Canada - regular
rolled oats or quick-cooking rolled oats. (I hope you can eat oats; it is
difficult to find a substitute for them because you can eat them uncooked,
and that is not true of most grains. I know of two possible substitutes,
but they cost considerably more. More on that later.)
Please don’t buy instant oats which are generally jammed full of sugar and
artificial flavor and are a rip-off. But regular or quick-cooking rolled
oats are a very valuable food.
You may call these ‘oatmeal’ or (as in the UK) ‘porridge’ or ‘porridge
oats’. They’re the same thing.
The usual brand I see in supermarkets is Quaker Oats. Store brands would
be fine, and might well be cheaper. If you can get to a store that sells
foods in bulk, they might well be cheaper there.
Yesterday, we bought regular rolled oats - in two large plastic bags - at a
little general store here that has a few bulk foods. We paid $0.71 per
pound - we bought approximately 15 lbs of rolled oats.
I eat these regularly. My husband also eats ‘porridge’ for his breakfast
regularly - he prefers the quick-cooking oats and he has enough on hand at
present; so we didn’t need to buy any for him yesterday.
We’ll come back to the price per pound in a little bit…..
You can eat these oats in one of three ways - and two of them do not
require any cooking because oats are actually partially cooked before we
buy them, as part of their processing. This is why we can eat them
uncooked. I do eat them uncooked, regularly, in homemade muesli.
1. Cooked, in normal times. Then you have hot oatmeal for some of your
breakfasts. This is a very valuable and nutritious food. Add raisins, or
other fruit, and if you wish, serve with milk. My father didn’t put milk
on hot cereal (including oatmeal), he dotted it with butter or margarine,
then sprinkled a little cinnamon and brown sugar on it. Hot cereal is nice
that way too. You can cook oatmeal either on the stove top or in the
microwave. Just follow the directions on the box. If you cook it in the
microwave, it wants to puff up and get all over the place. Use a VERY
oversized glass cup or casserole dish: that will prevent this.
2. Uncooked, and mixed with fruit and yogurt - this is called muesli. I
eat it for breakfast most days. Just the uncooked oats, fruit, plus
yogurt. Add raisins and sunflower seeds if you wish, during normal times.
You can soften the oats by mixing them with yogurt (or fruit juice) ahead
of time, or you can do it, and then eat them right away.
3. As a cold cereal: in this case (and I eat this too), you put the oats
in a bowl, add raisins if you have them, perhaps a sliced banana if you
have bananas. Then you pour milk over them and eat them as a cold cereal.
If you have no milk, you could use fruit juice. If you have no fruit
juice, you could use water.
The nutritional value of rolled oats (with no additions) is as follows:
Rolled oats, dry - 4 oz Calories - 434
Grams of protein - 18
You could eat - IF YOU HAD VERY LITTLE OTHER FOOD AVAILABLE BECAUSE OF SOME
EMERGENCY - 8 oz of oats daily. That would give you 868 calories and 36
grams of protein. This is a *very* substantial part of a woman’s calorie
and protein requirements; it’s even a substantial part of a man’s calorie
and protein requirements, for that matter.
So I’m going to recommend that you wind up with 15 lbs of rolled oats *per
person* for storage for emergencies - figuring on eating 8 oz of them per
day. I do *not* recommend that you eat this many ounces of oats except in
case of dire emergency.
I do recommend that you eat oats for breakfast two or three times per week
*in normal times*. I do this, I eat about 4 oz of oats for breakfast
(about 1/2 cup), along with fruit and yogurt. Or if I want a hot
breakfast, then I cook the rolled oats with raisins, then slice a banana on
top, and add milk. It’s a very substantial and good-tasting breakfast.
How much will this 15 lbs of rolled oats cost? Well, let’s assume that you
must pay more than the $0.71 we just paid per pound. Let’s assume you pay
as much as $1.00 per pound. The 15 lbs of oats will have cost you about
$15.
Once you have managed to save the 15 lbs, then you just keep replacing it;
never let it go much lower than this. Or you can decide to buy more and
keep 20 pounds on hand, if you prefer. Or 30 lbs or even 50 lbs. I
wouldn’t keep much more oats per person on hand than that. But they do
keep a long time.
Note that you are now buying the oats *as part of your normal breakfast
regime*. So you don’t need to set aside separate ‘food storage money’ for
oats anymore; you can use your normal food budget for this. This gives you
more money for other food storage.
If you cannot eat oats for some reason, the only two substitutes that I can
think of *that don’t require cooking, do not require refrigeration, and
keep a long time and are very nutritious* are sunflower seeds or
Scandinavian-style crisp bread, such as Kavli and Wasa Brod. The crisp
breads are available in normal supermarkets. The crisp breads are mainly
whole grains; they are nutritious. I don’t know if sunflower seeds are
available in normal supermarkets or not. If they are, you want to buy
uncooked, unsalted, sunflower seeds if at all possible. They won’t keep as
long as oats or crispbread, however. (Sunflower seeds would be a really
valuable addition to your oats, if you can afford to buy them. In normal
times, they should be kept refrigerated or frozen.)
Now what other foods do I recommend you start buying for the *bare bones
minimal, cheapest possible, useful food storage*?
I recommend that you buy canned beans too. Not baked beans, just plain
canned beans. There are many kinds, they all have approximately the same
food values, and they all cost about the same as far as I know. If you
live alone I suggest you buy the small cans of beans - approximately 16 oz
per can. There are black beans, kidney beans, white beans, pinto beans,
many, many varieties.
In normal times, you can base many, many dinners on beans - tacos, chili,
soups, frijoles refritos, salads, beans and rice, etc.
In normal times, you’ll probably want to cook most of the beans (but they
are used in salads and cold plates too). You don’t *need* to cook them.
You can buy one kind of beans only, or two or three, etc.
I base our dinners on beans *at the very least* two nights per week. I
recommend that canned beans be rinsed very well with cold water before
eating (in normal, non-emergency times) if you are concerned about sodium.
Even if you aren’t concerned about sodium, I think they taste better if you
rinse them first.
You can find hundreds, probably even thousands, of bean recipes on the Web.
RecipeSource.com is one of my favorite recipe sites; just put ‘beans’ in
the search box and you will be presented with 2008 recipes using beans!
That’s a lot of bean recipes.
Beans are *good food*, and they are a very versatile food. They are also
good for your health.
I’m looking at a can of black beans; they are probably my favorite kind of
beans. The can of beans has (the whole can, in total) 315 calories, and
24.5 grams of protein. If you ate the whole can of beans, which I only
recommend in case of emergency, plus 8 oz of oatmeal, this would give you:
1183 calories, which - together with two other foods I will recommend in a
minute - would be enough for a woman to keep going for quite a while in an
emergency, indefinitely, in fact - unless you are already emaciated BEFORE
the emergency. You also probably have at least some other food in your
house, which you could add to your diet.
It would also give you 42 grams of protein. This is not the RDA for a
woman’s protein, but it would certainly keep you going for quite a while,
well more than a month. You wouldn’t develop malnourishment in a month’s
time if you were eating this much protein each day together with the
calories you would have. Many women throughout the world live *their
entire lives* with lower daily protein figures.
Other beans have very similar food values.
What does a can of beans cost? We can get them (or we could get them
anyway, until very recently for about $0.50/can ON SALE ONLY). But let’s
even say that you need to pay $1.00 a can. I don’t think you will, but I
don’t know what food costs in other places, after all.
If you plan to store 30 cans of beans (per person), then you would need to
spend $30. BUT you can also start eating these beans regularly, as part of
your normal food. And I would recommend that. Then if you know that you
have eaten two cans of beans in a week, and you are still increasing your
supply of beans, you buy four or six cans. Simple.
When you get up to 30 cans of beans, then reassess the situation. You can
maintain that inventory, or buy more beans. Up to you.
Let’s assume that you want to accumulate the 15 lbs of oats and the 30 cans
of beans before you start eating them…. You have now spent $45. If you
can only spend $5 per week for food storage, this will have taken you nine
weeks. If you can spend more, you can do it faster.
But it’s really not fair to consider these costs all as food storage costs;
you are going to put these foods into your regular diet, after all. Some
of this money can come out of your regular food budget.
Now what other food do I recommend you buy as part of your basic,
bare-bones food storage?
I recommend that you buy cans of tomatoes too; they are very useful when
cooking beans (in non-emergency times as well as in emergencies). You can
buy stewed tomatoes, or diced tomatoes, or whole tomatoes - they are
equally useful. Perhaps the diced tomatoes are a little more useful. You
can eat them without cooking them. They are perfectly safe to eat
uncooked.
These will provide you some vitamins and some more calories (but not many).
They will also make the beans much more palatable.
So for a month’s storage for one person, I suggest you buy - as quickly as
your money will allow - 30 (small - 16-oz) cans of tomatoes. I recommend
that you use them as part of your regular diet also.
When you have 30 cans of tomatoes, you can either maintain that level, or
increase it. Treat the tomatoes just as you are treating the beans: always
replenish or increase your supply of them. Rotate them - eat the oldest
ones first.
The last recommendation for a basic, bare bones emergency food storage
supply: I’d get cans or jars of fruit. Applesauce is very useful and
nutritious, and most people like it. If you live alone, get the smaller
jars. It will make the rolled oats more palatable. Many people normally
eat applesauce; it can fit into your normal food regime nicely.
I also recommend that you get some other fruit in cans - both my husband
and I like canned pineapple packed in its own juice, so we keep a supply of
that on hand. If you prefer peaches, then get peaches, or some of each, or
some other fruit altogether.
I’d recommend building up to 30 cans or jars of fruit, just as you did with
the beans and tomatoes. Treat the fruit just as you treat the rolled oats,
beans, and tomatoes - replenish whatever you use.
At the end of this plan, you’ll have the following on hand, and your supply
of these will not diminish: you will always replenish them.
15 lbs of rolled oats
30 cans of beans
30 cans of tomatoes
30 cans or jars of fruit
All of these are now being eaten as part of your normal food regime, so all
the money to replace them should now come out of your normal food budget.
NONE OF THESE FOODS IS EXPENSIVE. And you would have enough to live on for
ONE ENTIRE MONTH.
Don’t forget to take one vitamin pill per day.
Now that you have one entire month’s food supply safely on hand,
congratulate yourself on a job well done! Then think about what you want
to do next.
The foods I personally would add next would probably be raisins and dry
skim milk. Both would add interest to the rolled oats. And you can use
both of them in your normal food regime.
The next thing I would probably want to buy is a guaranteed method of
cooking food: Sterno would do (don’t forget that you need matches to light
it). You can probably buy it in a normal supermarket or hardware store - I
have often seen it in regular, normal supermarkets. You can build a little
holder for it from bricks. Then you put your pot on the bricks, and the
Sterno under the pot.
After that, I would probably want a few herbs and spices - maybe oregano,
cumin, and chili powder for the beans, and cinnamon for the oats. Some
brown sugar would be nice on the oats as well. Maybe you already have
these in your kitchen.
I cannot think of any food storage plan that would be cheaper, and yet have
the following features:
1. The food must all be nutritious.
2. It must all keep a long time without refrigeration.
3. You must be able to eat it uncooked if necessary.
4. It must all fit into a normal diet.
If you do this, I absolutely guarantee that you’ll be glad, and that it
will give you a very good feeling of security.
I hope you will never have an emergency, but even if you don’t, you will
always feel a more secure with (at least) one month’s food on hand. This is
definitely worth the little bit of work and expense it requires.
You may want to continue and gradually build up to a three-month’s supply
or to vary the foods. You may want to think about non-food items too:
garbage bags, a basic first-aid kit, whatever you would really need in an
emergency.
But always keep that bedrock, bare-bones one month’s supply - always
replenish what you use.
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Friday (well, Saturday) Food Storage Quickie: A Bit Late
Sharon October 4th, 2008
Hi Everyone - Sorry for the delay in yesterday’s food storage quickie.
Let’s look over what we’ve added to food storage so far - we’ve added Popcorn (which can be used for grinding or popped), pasta (which nearly everyone will/can eat, since there are varieties made with almost everything), dried fruit, orange vegetables, legumes, salt and spices. Right now, whether you’ve been using this as a supplement to your usual food storage, or if you’ve just been getting started, you probably have a reasonably balanced diet. Still, there are some important gaps. So let’s focus on two of them, flour and fat.
Most people in the US are accustomed to eating bread quite regularly. Some of us are accustomed to it because we derive from wheat-based staple cultures, such as large chunks of Europe and the middle east, as well as Northern China. In cultures not far removed from their staple foods, bread is part of most or all meals. And most of us who derive from other cultures, but have lived any length of time in the US have also become accustomed to enjoying breads, biscuits, buns, noodles, wheat cereals, etc…. quite regularly. Even those who can’t eat wheat products often find it hard to do without a non-wheat equivalent.
So the question of how you will get your daily bread becomes a non-trivial one. Add to that the importance of other baked goods in celebratory occasions, and most of us will want to have some source of flour. There are several ways you can do this.
The simplest is to buy long storing, unbleached wheat flour and store as much as you might want. White flour lasts pretty much forever if protected from insects and moisture. So you could buy a lot of 10 or 25lb bags of white flour, packaged them securely and store them as long as you want.
The problem, of course is that white flour really isn’t that good for you - it fact, it is pretty rotten. And since your family may be relying on this for basic nutrition, there are real issues with this.
The next possibility is that you could go and buy whole wheat flour. The problem is that once whole grains are ground, they begin to oxidize. After a certain point - a matter of months - they begin to go rancid. Rancid oils in grain can both make it taste bad and cause stomach problems and also contain free radicals that can cause cancer. This is not good - and some people can tell whether grains are rancid, while others can’t. So generally speaking it is probably not wise to keep whole grain wheat flour for more than 6-12 months. So you could buy a year’s supply of wheat flour, if you were to be very disciplined about using it or giving it away, but this requires more attention and maintenence than you might ideally want. You have to make sure you rotate it, you have to pay attention to the timing, you must use it up - and if you are eating less bread now than you imagine you might in tougher times, it can be rough to use it. You could give it away, of course, but not all of us can afford to donate a large chunk of our yearly staples.
So there’s another choice - this is to get a grain grinder (I’ve done reviews of grinders here: http://sharonastyk.com/2008/03/18/tools-part-ii-grain-mills/) and purchase whole wheat. Whole wheat, properly stored, stores for 30 years or more. And fresh ground flour is much, much tastier than anything you will get anywhere else. The down side is that since you will probably want a grinder that works even if there is no power, you do have to spend some time and a bit of effort to get your flour, and it does take some practice to learn to bake well with all whole grains. So many of us will probably take a middle course - we will store some whole grain flours, some white flour perhaps to lighten up our bread and make an occasional treat, and some whole wheat as well.
Where do you get these? Well, white and whole wheat flours can be bought almost everywhere that food is sold - and if you are really struggling economically, often these can be bought at a hefty discount from stores, if you are willing to take broken bags. Because they are shipped in paper containers, they often leak and break. So talk to your store managers and ask if you can purchase or take any open flour bags (bring a roll of duct tape and some plastic bags to get them home) - or consider dumpster diving for them.
Prices on both flours and whole wheat are better on larger quantities. These can usually be ordered through a coop, health food store, or bulk store. The new crop is just coming in - in some places, you may be able to get something of a discount if you are willing to buy last year’s crop - talk again to the manager of the store about this.
Ok, the next thing this is missing is fat - and while a lot of us worry about too much fat, in a crisis situation, the concern is too little, particularly if you are doing heavy labor. Also, if you have young children or infants, they will need more fat than most adults.
There is a fairly large range of choices in fat sources, so I’m going to skim over them, and discuss where to get them. There are also strong cultural connections - different fats make different foods taste different, and people may have different reasons for preferring them. But here’s a sense of the range.
Animal fats: Schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) and lard (rendered pork fat) are probably the most commonly used animal fats, but goose fat, beef suet, mutton fat and others are also used in many cultures. A reliable supply of these probably depends on a good relationship with a local butcher (who often will give fat away or sell it very, very cheaply) or on having livestock. If you have a cool way of keeping rendered animal fats (do some research on this, I’m not going to cover the techniques here today, but will another time), these are very tasty, provide some saturated fat in your diet (which depending on who you believe may or may not be necessary), and can be quite inexpensive. Although I keep kosher, I can attest to the fabulousness of lard pie crusts (We were visiting Amish friends, and we ate slices of elderberry pie our friend made. We rhapsodized about the crust, about how beautiful and wonderfully textured and delicious it was to her, and I told her that I was dying to know how she did it, and well….she told me ;-). Even though I’m not going to be duplicating her recipe, it was still pretty good ;-).) and schmaltz cooked potatoes are nothing sort of spectacular.
Fish oils are something else - they are very important for neurological health and development, but they don’t keep well - months, rather than years, so it doesn’t pay to stock up large quantities of these - but if you can afford to add them to your diet, either in the form of codliver oil or as supplements, they are worth it. Flax and hempseed oils last a bit longer and have some of the same benefits, but also degrade quite quickly. Generally these are not cooked with, because heat reduces their benefits, but are bought in small quantities as an accent. I can’t think of any really cheap way to get them, unfortunately - it is probably easier, if budget is tight, to eat canned fish, and buy whole flax or hemp seeds.
Nut and other seed oils: Other than peanut, mustard and sesame oil, these are generally incredibly expensive, and usually used in very small quantities as a flavoring. Peanut oil has the advantage of an extremely high smoke point, and is often used in asian cooking and frying. It is probably cheapest at the asian grocery store. Sesame oil comes in two forms - toasted and plain. Plain is often used in middle eastern cooking, while toasted is added late in cooking or at the end as a flavoring for chinese dishes. Sesame oil is not a great frying or high-heat cooking oil, but it often available at Indian or middle-eastern grocery stores. Mustard seed oil is a common ingredient in indian cooking, a healthy oil and quite delicious, and also available through Indian grocers.
Dairy fats: If you’ve got a cow, or goats and a cream separator and the patience to use it, you can make your own butter. If you don’t, you can drink whole milk and get away with using very little fat for other uses. But this implies you have dairy animals and want to milk. Even if you don’t, you can make your own butter, if you can find a reasonably priced source of cream.
Butter will last some months if salted and kept in a cool place. But it can also be preserved in the form of ghee more or less indefinitely. To make ghee (clarified butter), you heat butter and skim off the white foam until all you have left is the clear, yellow, clarified butter, without the milk solids. This can be put in a crock and put in a cool place and will last forever, more or less. This is unlikely to be cheap, unless you have a dairy animal.
You can also buy butter powder from emergency food storage manufacturers. I admit, it isn’t something I go out of my way to eat, so I can’t comment on it one way or another.
Vegetable fats: These vary a lot in quality, cost and taste, and I’m honestly not going to spend the time here to sort out nutritional advice and claims. IMHO, if you are trying to figure out what fats to use it is useful to read a lot of information - to start you might read Marion Nestle’s wonderful _What to Eat_ and Sally Fallon’s _Nourishing Traditions_ which disagree quite profoundly, and rather usefully on this subject. They will lead you elsewhere. Some people may want to do a lot of research, others may simply need to find a cheap option. Other people may be influenced by the desire for familiar tastes, to support local producers of oils, etc…
The one thing that is true is that if you can afford it, buying organic oils is definitely worth the money. They are pricey, but because most conventional oils are extracted using chemicals and may even be contaminated with heavy metals, organic oils make a big difference. This is not feasible for everyone, but if you are trying to reduce the chemical burden on your body or the planet, buying organic makes more of a difference here in personal health than in many fruits and vegetables.
Most oils wills will last 1-3 years in a cool place, including olive, peanut, coconut, canola, soy, corn and other vegetable oils. My own strong preference is for olive and coconut oil as primary oil sources, but again, this is such a large and controversial subject that I’m going to forgo the details here.
Then there’s shortening, you know, that horrible Crisco stuff. This stuff is disgusting, bad for you, doesn’t taste good, and generally is bad stuff. The only reason I mention it is that it will last until the next apocalypse. This is, of course, because it is hydrogenated and isn’t really a food. But if you are storing food you might not touch, and if you believe you are more likely to starve than die of heart disease (not even remotely true at this stage in the Western World), you could store it. And it does have uses - seasoning cast iron pans, and preserving eggs, for example. But don’t buy it because I said so. There are a couple of organic, non-trans-fat versions of this stuff, but none of it tastes as good as coconut oil, and the lifespan of most of it is under 2 years, and it isn’t cheap so probably no reason to prefer it over coconut oil.
Best sources for cheap oils? Well, ideally, if you can avoid it, don’t buy the cheap oils. If you can’t, don’t worry about it, and try your asian grocer, Sams Club, etc…
This week’s non-food item is blankets. Remember, it is always easier to warm your body than it is to warm a room. A good bit cheaper, too. If you are not accustomed to “sleeping cold” you may find that with some practice adapting, you like it. I strongly prefer it over sleeping in a warm room. The key to doing so quite comfortably (and my bedroom is often 50 degrees or below) is lots of cozy blankets. And since these end up in landfills and dumps fairly often, buying used is a great thing to do. So make sure you have plenty - the best blankets are wool (hard to find but very nice - even if you can’t have wool against your skin, it is a useful layer), down, cotton filled comforters (flannel ones are especially nice) and polarfleece. But honestly, all blankets are good if you are cold and need layers.
Those of you in hot places can just ignore this one ;-).
Cheers,
Sharon
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Friday Food Storage Quickie: Week 3
Sharon September 26th, 2008
Ok, so far we’ve added pasta, popcorn, orange veggies and dried fruit. This week, we’re adding legumes and herbs and spices.
I know you already probably have some beans or peas in your food storage, but this week, I encourage you to get something leguminous you like to eat, but don’t store. It is so easy to just buy one kind of bean or pea at the most - all navy beans or all split peas or something. But the range of tastes and textures involved is really quite vast and wonderful. So even if you are primarily relying on one thing, maybe add a little extra for variety - some 16 bean mix, chana dal, anasazi or Jacob’s cattle beans, or even some nice black soybeans. The more you vary your legumes, the less it feels like “beans and rice…again?!?!”
What are the best sources of interesting legumes? Well, in some areas you may be able to get local beans or peas worth trying - Maine Yellow Eye, Southern Cowpeas…. Indian, caribbean and asian grocery stores are excellent sources of inexpensive legumes, as are coops and supermarket bulk bins. And if you have a little money to spare and are really adventurous, seedsavers.org has beans available on their sites, showcasing dozens of rare heirlooms. And don’t forget to pick up some seed to grow some for next year.
Next up, herbs and spices. You are not going to be happy eating grain and legume meals unless you can vary them using seasonings. And since asian, indian and caribbean grocers are such great sources of interesting legumes, you might as well take some time to check out their spice offerings while you are there. They are one of the cheapest sources out there for seasonings - and they often sell whole spices which keep much, much longer than ground ones.
Coops and bulk stores, odd lots stores, drug- and dollar stores are all great sources of inexpensives herbs and spices. Think quantities here - you aren’t going to flavor a big pot of lentils and pasta with a teaspoon of curry powder - cooking lots of staple foods means using a lot of seasonings. So if money is tight, look for the ways to get lots of bang for your buck. Obviously, if you can afford it, buy fair trade and organic when you can.
Of course, many herbs can be harvested in your garden - or someone else’s. Seriously, consider asking a neighbor who gardens if they ever have extra herbs - most of us have mints and oreganos that regularly try and take up more space than they are allotted. You can take rooted cuttings and plant them and any trimmings and dry them for winter. Plants can be brought inside for winter or the dry season as well.
Other seasoning plants can often be found in the wild - wild onions and garlic dry beautifully for garlic and onion powder, and many herbs have naturalized into landscapes - wild thyme ranges free here, as do several mints, while other flavoring herbs have also escaped in other regions. Harvest reponsibly, of course.
This week’s extra is not a tool - it is a medical basic - the tetanus shot. Just like it is wise to keep your flashlights charged and ready, IMHO, anyone living sustainably and playing the dirt needs a current tetanus shot going into the crisis. I know there are those who don’t vaccinate - personally, I feel strongly that this should be the exception for anyone who works or plays in the dirt, works with tools or does any of the other things that we’re all doing. We vaccinate selectively, but our kids always have a current tetanus shot.
Keep it updated - tetanus is a horrible disease endemic in the soil. So if you can’t remember when you last had a tetanus shot, now is the time to get an update - and to check on everyone else in the family. This is especially the time to push a little for teenagers and young adults who might otherwise just skip it. So please, please consider getting updated - who knows how long we will all be able to do this.
Ok, have a great weekend everyone!
Sharon
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Friday Food Storage Quickie
Sharon September 19th, 2008
Ok, last week concentrated on two common starches - pasta and popcorn. This week, we’re going to try and diversify your holdings a little bit by adding some orange vegetables and dried fruit.
Why these two? Well they are important for a couple of reasons. Vitamins A and C tend to be deficient in most food storage diets. Both most orange veggies and dried fruit are sweet, and many lend themselves to lots of familiar recipes. Also, if you have to transition rapidly to a diet primarily of grains and beans, you may find that this leads to tummy trouble - a little dried fruit to keep things moving along is not a bad idea.
What kind of orange vegetables? What kind of fruit? Well, it depends on you and your family - on what you like to eat, and on what you have the ability to store. If you live in a place where your home is routinely in the 50s or low 60s during the winter - or if you can shut off a room and keep it quite cool, you have the optimal conditions for storing winter squash, pumpkins or sweet potatoes in their natural state. Now these take up a considerable bit of space, so storing large quantities of these can be difficult - but if you can allot the space, the tastiest, freshest and most nutritious option would be to have grown or if it is too late for that, to buy in bulk from a farmer large quantities of sweet potatoes, squash or cooking pumpkins (jack o lantern pumpkins make good animal feed, but not good pies particularly). Many small pie pumpkins may be available at a minimal price the day or two after Halloween, if you talk to local pumpkin dealers.
If you don’t have moderate temperature storage, but do have a root cellar or cold storage space, another option would be to buy carrots in bulk and store them in the basement (or other suitable place) in buckets of damp playground sand. Carrots have the advantage of being delicious raw, either straight or grated into salads. Carrots are generally quite inexpensive as well.
But what if you live in an apartment and can’t store large quantities of orange vegetables. Well, you can either purchase or can yourself canned pumpkin, squash and sweet potatoes - these are especially cheap around Halloween and Thanksgiving in most localities, and it isn’t a bad time to buy a large quantity. These vegetables can be served more or less as is, baked or pureed with cinnamon, they can be added to biscuits and breads, make a delicious soup (I particularly like pumpkin-tomato) are good mixed into bean purees like hummus, used to flavor rice pilafs, and of course, pies. A small amount of orange vegetable will ensure that you and your family have adequate natural sources of vitamin A.
What about the dried fruit? Well, what kind of dried fruit does your family like? Raisins? Dried Cranberries? Dried apple schnitzen? Prunes? And perhaps more importantly, since dried fruit isn’t cheap, is there any fruit you have abundantly that could be dried? Right now, in my area, apples are abundant and often sold inexpensively by the bushel - and most northeastern households can dry them simply by peeling and coring and cutting the apples into rings, which are hung up and dried on strings in the house.
Buying dried fruit in bulk is definitely cheaper than buying it in most packaged bags - and Sams Club type places sometimes have good deals. If you can’t afford to buy local, or can’t find a local source, remember, you don’t need as much dried fruit as you do, say, dried beans - even a little helps flavor your oatmeal, provides a tasty, calorie dense snack for a child and helps with that little internal issue.
There is one kind of fruit that I think is well worth making some effort to stock up on - dried elderberries. In some regions of the country, wild or cultivated elderberries are still on the plant and can be harvested for free. In other places, these will have to be ordered. But it is truly worth having some, so that you can make vitamin C rich elderberry sauces, syrups or other supplements. As mentioned above, Vitamin C is the other nutrient that food storage is often short of. Even dried, elderberries are incredibly dense in vitamin C. Homemade elderberry syrup is not difficult to make (boil dried berries with a sweetener and a bit of water) and is a good treatment for various winter illnesses - but even more important, elderberries are a good regular source of C. If not elderberries, dried rose hips are also excellent for this purpose.
Dried fruits make great pies (elderberries too!), great pancake sauces, good additions to rice pudding, oatmeal and other porridges, flavorings for cake and breads, and terrific snacks by themselves. They open up wide the range of foods available to you if you have to rely primarily on your storage. If you have kids, or adults with kid-like tastes for the sweet, dried fruits can be helpful in getting people adapted to their new diet.
Ok, what about non-food items? This week, let’s check out our flashlight situation. If you are like a lot of people, they live in a kitchen drawer with a lot of other junk in it. Can you find them in the dark? Do you have a flashlight at your bed? Do the kids or other household residents have a light that can prevent an accident and make them feel secure?
What’s the battery situation, for flashlights without cranks? Do you have rechargeable batteries and a solar/crank battery charger? When was the last time you checked the batteries on your flashlight?
Now is the time to go over your flashlight situation. Generally speaking, I think most households need a few of these - a big one with a big light for dealing with a crisis in pitch dark - you don’t want to manage a broken bone or help a lamb birth, try and fix the water pump or check for a burglar with a teeny little light. Plus, as one of my other readers pointed out, big maglight flashlights make excellent blunt objects just in case.
Then there are smaller LED flashlights that last a long time - try and have at least one headlamp, if you can - having your hands free to do other things makes a huge difference if you have to do chores in the dark.
I also like the hand crank flashlights, especially for children. They have the advantage of working even if you do let the batteries lapse. Even though they aren’t environmentally sound, for the youngest kids, who may be scared of the dark, I find lightsticks to be a good alternative, and store a few. That way toddlers and preschoolers, or children without the ability to manage a flashlight without breaking it can still have a sense of power and security and some light. They don’t last all that long, and are a disposable item, so this isn’t a long term solution, but it does offer a short term way of handling a crisis. Battery powered LED nightlights aren’t a terrible idea either.
Whatever you choose, have the lights, have the batteries and a way to replace/recharge them (honestly, recharge makes so much more sense that I can’t understand why anyone would choose the other alternative), and make sure you can find them easily and in the dark. Because when you need them, you really need them. Inexpensive flashlights are often available at Sams Club type warehouse stores and oddlots stores, and a quick trip through ebay suggests lots are available there.
If you’ve got the lights and batteries and things, now is a good time to make sure they are charged up, that everything is clean (ie, removing rust, etc…) and that things are accessible and that everyone in the household who might need to know can find them if they need to.
Sharon
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Food Storage Quickie - A New Feature
Sharon September 12th, 2008
I got a great idea from one of my food storage students, by way of her LDS church. She told me that each month or week at her church, they hand out cards that encourages people to focus on one area of food storage, and one or two other issues - including suggestions for where to get things at reasonable prices. One month might focus on protein sources and flashlights, another on sweeteners and blankets.
Now being a person who steals all her good ideas from somewhere or other, I’ve decided to borrow this wonderful idea, and start running a weekly “Food Storage Quickie” that gets people focusing on one segment of their food storage, and one non-food item. I’d encourage everyone who can to do little more in your preps this week in that area, even if it only means buying an extra bag or couple of cans of something. All that stuff does add up pretty quickly - so even if you can only do a little, just doing it makes a difference. And for those getting started, this is a good way to get things moving, without being too overwhelmed. I’m going to try to have one of these up every Friday (we’ll see whether I can pull it off) as an adjunct to the Independence Days Challenge Reports.
Ok - this week, we’re going to focus on three things - pasta, popcorn and matches. Why pasta? Because it is a starch that almost everyone can eat in some form - even those with wheat intolerances can usually eat rice or soy pastas. Whole wheat pasta stores for more than a year, while white noodles (not as nutritious) stores even longer. Those of you hot to make things yourself can make egg-free noodles and dry them, or egg noodles and freeze them. With the price of wheat still extremely high and the harvests coming in unevenly, my guess is that the price of pasta will go up in the coming year. And since this is one of those things that you can pretty much feed to everyone - even your weird uncle or picky grandkid, it makes sense to have some on hand.
The cheapest way to get pasta would probably be to buy it in bulk from a coop or buying club in 10 or 20lb boxes. But if you can’t afford this, remember pasta is a frequent supermarket loss leader, and even unusual pastas, made of other grains show up at odd lots stores, drug stores and dollar stores. So add a few more packages of pasta to your supermarket cart if you can.
If your budget stretches that far, now would be a good time to pick up a bushel of tomatoes and make and can some tomato sauce. Or keep an eye out for canned tomatoes or bottled sauce cheaply. Or if you’ve got basil, consider making some pesto, and freezing it in ice-cube trays for springtime. Butter or olive oil and garlic makes a great sauce as well, and cheap, particularly if you can throw in some chopped up herbs you keep on your windowsill, or some greens.
Now, to popcorn, which has many of the same virtues as pasta and some extra ones - nearly everyone will eat it, and unlike many pastas, it is a whole grain that can be digested by most people and extremely nutritious, and it is associated with fun, comfort and snacks - something you want in tough times. Popped popcorn with a light sweetener on it isn’t a bad substitue for sugar cereals, if your family still hasn’t been weaned off of them, and it is great and filling. If your family doesn’t buy into the idea of storing food generally, or won’t eat most storage staples, popcorn is one way to get around this - tell them you aren’t “storing food for a crisis” but planning for winter evenings by the fire.
By “popcorn” I don’t mean “microwave” - the power is likely to be off. I mean the real McCoy, without artificial butter-flavored grease (you can add actual butter or other oils and it tastes much, much better). You can pop popcorn in any pan with a lid, but it will be easier if you have a popcorn popper - or if you will be cooking over an open fire, a long handled implement especially designed for popcorn. It is one of those things that is so easy that I’ve never quite understood the proliferation of microwave popcorn.
Where to get it? The best options are probably a local farm that grows their own, or the abovementioned coop or buying club. But if you can’t do that, try a couple of extra bags at the grocery store, or keep an eye out for sales and other cheap sources. Kept reasonably cool and dry, popcorn keeps just about forever.
Also, does your reserve include an ample supply of matches or other ways of lighting a fire? You’d be surprised how often you need them in an uncertain energy situation - for lighting stoves and candles, kerosene lamps or relighting a pilot. If you heat with wood, the long handled matches are really nice to have, but even cheapie little ones are valuable. You could also consider lighters (and extra butane - but store very carefully!) or magnesium firestarters. Make sure your bug out bags have good, waterproof, strike-anywhere matches if at all possible. But add more to your “in place storage” as you go - these are also a good dollar store find, where I’ve often seen five large boxes for a buck.
Ok, I hope this helps a few people get organized just a little! I’m off to check if the popcorn is dry enough to harvest yet ;-).
Sharon
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Preserving Food When You Have No Money
Sharon July 29th, 2008
Several people have expressed frustration recently that there are so many things to buy when you are preserving food. They are experiencing what many of us probably will experience sooner or later - no money. So while some people are using what they have while they have it to get good equipment, others are already priced out of these options, and it is hard for them.
So let’s go over the lowest cost ways to store food, and the best strategies for getting ahold of equipment cheaply.
- Ok, the cheapest technique is definitely root cellaring. That will be the subject of Thursday’s posts, so I won’t be emphasizing it here, but the cooler you keep your house (a characteristic of low income folks) the more you can keep things.
First, squash and pumpkins like cool house temperatures, and garlic and onions do pretty well at those temps too. Most other storable crops, including roots and apples require colder temps - but if you have natural cold and can close off a room, throw a cooler outside, or bury an old fridge in your yard (or a barrel) you are golden, and get all the potatoes, onions, beets, carrots, etc… preserved in their natural state. You can also use the “dig a hole” (or use an existing hole like a basement) method for refrigeration, saving you money, and extending the life if your kimchi and sauerkraut.
How do you get root cellarable vegetables if you are struggling? Well, pumpkins are pretty easy - I’d be willing to bet you can get as many as you want the day or two after halloween if you go to a farmstand or any venue that sells them - better yet, make the arrangement first. I’ve gotten 100 for $5 - and they make good people food, not to mention chicken, goat, sheep, etc…
Many places have gleaning programs - I’ve mentioned them before, but if your area doesn’t have one, you might talk to a farmer about whether you and a friend could glean their fields after they harvest.
Talk to farmers - they may be selling the potatoes for $2 a lb, but they probably aren’t using that price if you can buy 50lbs at a time - last year our local farm sold potatoes at $12 for 50lbs and “horse” carrots for $6 for 25lbs. You don’t have to tell anyone you don’t have a horse. If you are willing to take whatever they have leftover at the end of the day, or to buy their weird surplus of beets, it might be even cheaper.
It isn’t too late in many places to plant some root crops - winter radishes, daikon, turnips, some rutabagas, beets and some carrots will still mature.
Lots of people don’t harvest their fruit - ask if you can collect apple drops. Or visit a farm and ask if you can have them - the damaged ones can be sauced or dried.
- Ok, next cheapest method - lactofermentation. All you need is salt and water and vegetables. This is a great way to use wild greens that you harvest from your yard or a public park (just make sure they don’t spray) - dandelion, plantain, lambs quarters - all can be fermented and flavored with a few pennies worth of hot pepper or caraway or other spices. If you want to keep it a long time, don’t have a cold cellar or a fridge, bury it in the ground. Cabbage is generally inexpensive, and again, it isn’t at all too late to plant some greens for fall that can be fermented when it gets cooler.
[Interesting search...granny]
- Season extension probably comes in next in terms of cheapness. Depending on where you live it might need a fair bit of stuff, or you might be able to just scrape up some leaves from the ground (or grab a bag someone leaves out on their lawn, and mulch stuff deeply.
I’m going to do a whole post on this tomorrow, but generally speaking, south of the mason dixon line or in the pacific northwest, you can probably overwinter with just mulch and the right crops, north of there you might need to scavenge some old windows to put on top of a few bales of hay or straw (for this you can get the ones that were rained on in the field, or ones that have started to rot, or last year’s dusty ones - you might be able to get them free - or try after harvest festivals and halloween asking about the decorative ones) over your crops. Plastic sheeting will work too.
Root crops can often be heavily mulched and survive - parsnips especially, but other crops might manage if you are in a moderately mild climate.
And again, in my lattitude, a lot of season extended crops are being planted right now - it isn’t too late!
- Next is dehydration. If you live in a dry climate, you can lay things out on a hot day in the sun, or hang apple rings and green beans under the eaves of your attic. If you live in a humid one, and have a car or can get your hands on a junker, try doing it in the car. If you heat with wood, hanging things behind or near the woodstove will work. With a pilot light oven you should be able to dry in that. And dehydrators are commonly for sale cheap - but it might take a while to find one at your price. Consider posting a request on Craigslist.
- Preservation in salt requires just an awful lot of salt. This is not yet expensive, but can’t usually be scavenged and does require an initial purchase.
- Preservation in alcohol is kind of pricey, unless you can make your own wine and preserve fruit or cheese in it. Most of the equipment for winemaking can be scavenged, however.
- Canning can be cheap or expensive. If you can find free or very cheap canning jars (and they are common where I am), already have a big pot and something to put on the bottom of it (cake rack, canning jar rings laid flat, anything that makes a rack that will elevate the jars), the only cost is the heating energy and the jar lid. Still, it isn’t totally cheap.
Pressure canning can be cheap, again if you have a source for jars, and can find a cheap used pressure canner, but again, it is probably the hardest method.
- Freezing is the most expensive method, and one we haven’t talked about much here, because I think for most of us, the rising price of electricity will make it inefficient. On the other hand, this gets me into one thing that I do want to talk about - sharing. While I think that for many people, a large home freezer may not be financially doable, there are a lot of such freezers out there, and people could reasonable rent/barter space in them, and share them.
Which brings me to the other point - what’s the best strategy if you can’t afford a piece of equipment? Find someone to share - maybe get to know a local home canner, and ask if you can borrow their pressure canner in exchange for cutting some wood or watching their daughter. Talk to the guy with the dehydrator about whether you could trade something for a few hours of dehydration a year. Now this is tough stuff in our culture - we don’t do this. But it is time, and past time to start - if we don’t share if we don’t learn to share, we’re not going to get very far in a lower energy future.
I’ve written before that I don’t think there should be any conflict between the people who are prepping like mad and can buy stuff and those who can’t. Those of us who can are getting ready for the same world those who can’t are - and the odds are good that we’re going to need each other - even if it is just someone willing to help cut five zillion strawberry hulls out in exchange for a chance to use the dehydrator next. The person who owns enough food preservation equipment to feed India is going to have a labor shortage in many cases - the person who has no money often has some time they can share.
Some one on a list I was on once referred to it as “building the village before the villagers are ready” - the truth is that if you’ve got money, spending it on useful tools is a good thing. If you haven’t, get knowledge, a little practice, and share what you can - because you are bringing something to village too - something absolutely essential - time, energy and ability.
Sharon
* Classes , Food Storage
* Comments(18)
Minimizing Waste With Preserved and Stored Food
Sharon July 24th, 2008
Ok, you’ve gone through all the work of growing the stuff, canning or drying it, or buying it and hauling it home - how do you keep from losing it to pests, age, lack of planning, etc…?
Chile has a terrific post on managing food waste in general here - http://chilechews.blogspot.com/2008/07/avoid-wasting-food.html
we waste at least 1/4 of all our food. Now we probably can’t get that down to 0 - although if you have animals, a worm bin or a compost pile, you can at least ensure that your waste has an upside. But it is still cheaper to feed your worms on banana peels than on chocolate layer cake you let go bad, and it is better for everyone if people food gets used as people food.
So how do you handle and manage your stored and preserved food to minimize waste?
1. To the extent you can, try to minimize gaps between harvest time and preservation - the longer you wait, the fewer nutrients, the more spoilage, the lower quality the food, the more you risk one rotten berry giving an off taste to the whole batch, not to mention the swarms of fruit flies. If you can harvest on the same day, do - it makes a difference.
2. Have a back up plan for edible parts of the food you don’t want to preserve. The peels to those lemons can be dried to make lemon zest, or used to flavor lemon vinegar. The apple peels can be used to make apple vinegar. Watermelon rind pickles, corncob jelly, many things with zucchini - these are the products of excess and thrift.
3. When you are freezing or canning, pack the food in quantities that you can eat quickly. Yes, I know it is faster to can all that blackberry jam in quart jars, not half-pints, but if there are only two of you, you will be throwing out some jam if you can it in containers that are two large. Same with freezing - if you freeze all the chicken stock in one container, you then have to use it - if you can get only what you want, you have less chance of seeing things rot.
4. Expect to have to use some things up quickly - that jar of jam that didn’t seal, or the pressure canned soup that you weren’t quite sure about. The bits of meat that didn’t fit in that last jar and you didn’t bother canning.
5. Don’t get more than you can store. It would be a mistake to buy more food than you can store correctly - if you don’t have jars or buckets, don’t get a ton of oatmeal until you do.
6. Less air, less heat, less humidity are always better. Life isn’t perfect, but it is worth making some effort on these fronts if you can.
7. Check everything regularly - open lids, examine sealed jars, take a sniff of the sauekraut. Do it regularly - and schedule it.
8. In an emergency, get out the canner and dehydrator, and get to work. Sudden early frost meant you had to pull in all the berries? Power was out three days and now you have half a cow half-defrosted? Bad storm took down the cherry tree, and the cherries with it? Cold snap came too early to ripen the tomatoes? Well, it is time to get out there with alternate methods - throw the frozen corn in the dehydrator, get the pressure canner running and can that beef as stew. Food preservation techniques can save you from food losses.
9. Even in a non-emergency, food preservation should be used to extend the life of food that can’t be saved another way. We can the slightly wrinkled apples in the root cellar as applesauce, we make sauerkraut and kimchi when the cabbage is fading, dehydrate the onions and garlic if they show signs of trouble. A combination of strategies can work better than any single one.
10. Once you’ve preserved it, don’t forget to eat it. This sounds obvious, but it isn’t to a lot of people - things get crammed in the back of the fridge. You worked hard for this - so use it up, plan your menus around the leftovers, make sure you scrape out the jam jar (if you add a little water to a jar of jam and shake it up, you can make a popsicle out of it), and use that pickle brine to flavor your tuna sandwich or as part of salad dressing.
Sharon
Thank you for visiting, you are welcome anytime.
I hope Jews heed the call this fellow sounds, but there are so many ominous allusions in the article. Will they be allowed to continue to be free? I have the same fears. <<<
Sharon is a man I think.
How long any of us will be free is a real good question.
Back to the land, that is what should be in everyones mind.
Odd, the Jews and the Mormons have suffered in holding their lands, the Mormons build up the farms and the locals would take them over.
People can sure be evil.
That blog is a treasure site of information, but I have gotten too tired to dig deeper.
http://chilechews.blogspot.com/2007/05/frugal-soup.html
Frugal Soup
I was rearranging the pantry one morning last month and needed space in the legume area. This was easily accomplished by removing the large jar holding only 1/3 cup of lentils. Hm, I thought to myself, I guess I’m making soup today. I put the lentils in some water to boil with a dried red chile pepper. There were salvageable parts from a few aging garlic cloves that also went into the pot. At the same time, I started heating a pan of water for vegetable stock. The garlic skins went into that one.
This soup ended up being one of those use-it-up, clean-it-out soups. For seasoning, I planned to use the 2 packages of vegan instant garlic-vegetable soup that were...cough...slightly expired. I had just cleaned all the mud off the carrots I picked up at the CSA the night before so several of those went in. The carrot ends and peel went into the stock pan. The bundle of baby leeks went in after a good rinsing. (Ends in the stock.) I picked through the previous week’s rainbow chard packs to get all the good crisp leaves out and sliced them finely, stems and all. By the time the lentils were starting to get tender, the veggies were ready to add along with the soup mixes.
Then I started checking the other containers in the fridge and freezer to see what else might be available. Hm, that last couple tablespoons of ketchup was just crowding the shelf. Yep, ketchup went in my soup. As long as tomato is now part of the flavoring, I might as well toss in a frozen tablespoon cube of tomato paste. Oops! Forgot that I wanted to add some of the dried mushrooms. Whew. By this time, the soup had grown considerably and I found I’d added way too much liquid. (The separate vegetable stock had been strained and added to the pot for flavor.)
A quarter of a box of whole wheat spaghetti seemed a good addition after it was broken up into short pieces. However, the soup still seemed...thin. So, I added a can of great northern beans. And then decided to thicken it up with bulgur. That soaked in the hot soup with the heat off for half an hour.
At only 10 in the morning, I had to eat a bowl of this soup because it turned out so tasty! A simple third-cup of lentils yielded enough soup to feed about 8-10 people. Later, I made some croutons with the whole wheat bread that had been languishing in the freezer for a while.
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