Posted on 12/31/2020 9:11:26 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Dear Sisters, We have car insurance in case we get into a car accident. We have life insurance should something happen to us and our daughter needs to be taken care of. We have house insurance should we have a fire or storm and need to rebuild. We have health insurance should we need to be hospitalized or see a doctor. But another insurance that is a necessity for us is food insurance. We have food insurance in case of sickness, unemployment, or a tough season. Both of my grandmothers always had food insurance living in N.H. with the threat of being snowed in for weeks at a time.
Food insurance is a well stocked pantry.
This verse has motivated me so much in preparing my pantry:
"She is like the merchants' ships; she brings her food from afar." Proverbs 31:14
What an incredible sentence.
Years ago when I began learning how to stock my pantry, I thought a lot about this verse as I shopped. I noticed that the Proverbs woman is likened to more than one ship when it comes to gathering food for her family. Also very large merchant ships at that! She seeks out food even from far away. So I suspected early on that if I was to take a look into her pantry or root cellar, it would be very well stocked. I also suspected that she would be doing the bulk of this gathering in the summer/early fall when the crops were plentiful. Food would have been stored in a multitude of ways. And I bet she took advantage of every opportunity to be ready for the winter months ahead.
So I got serious this past summer in building up my pantry. Instead of stocking my pantry for a few months' time, which I had been doing for many years, I decided to stock my pantry for six to twelve months. First, I made a list of all our most used grains/pastas/dried beans/flours. I looked at my supply on hand, figured out how much we would use in that time frame, and bought what I needed in bulk. I couldn't get everything in bulk, but I tried if I could as it was more cost efficient. I stored these items in large plastic containers in my pantry.
These are my bulk items:
Oats Rice Wheat berries Bread flour White flour Rice Flour Gluten free 1 to 1 flour Gluten free grain flour Gluten free pastas Beans beans Navy beans Red Lentils
I wrote everything I bought in a notebook with prices and location so that I would have a better idea next year what I needed. How did we afford this? Well, that is another letter. 😊 But essentially, I did a "no spend year" in 2019 so that I could build up our savings. It was an amazing year.
Some other dry good items that I stored including nuts, tea, and coffee which I got in larger amounts, but not in bulk were:
Cornmeal Cocoa Brown rice Sugar Corn masa flour Brown sugar Powdered sugar Chocolate chips Pamela's Mix Cornstarch Baking powder Salt Baking soda Yeast Nuts Tea Coffee
My next food items to locate and buy were anything in cans. I can some things from our garden, but these were other items that I wanted to have on hand.
Tuna Salmon Tomato Products Pumpkin Black beans Hominy Green beans Garbanzo beans Pineapple Olives
After I got all the canned goods I thought we would need, I turned my attention to anything in jars. Here are those items:
Applesauce Maple Syrup Honey Artichoke hearts Hot Sauce Olive oil Grapeseed oil Apple Cider Vinegar Braggs Liquid Aminos Peanut Butter Tahini Pasta Sauce Mayonaise Herbs & Spices
It really helped me to go in order and to do it in the summer as I was not homeschooling. I could build my pantry more efficiently as I paid attention to each group of foods that my family eats. In the middle of all this pantry building, my garden and my daughter's garden started to really produce. I had three dehydrators going many days as I dried so many vegetables from the garden. I put my dried foods into glass jars on my pantry shelves. While fruit was on sale in the summer, I dried a lot of fruit as well. This helped to build up the vegetable and fruit part of my pantry, along with canning things from the garden, too. I have many butternut squash and delicata squash stored as well in my pantry.
Meat was a bit more difficult to figure out. So I pulled everything out of my freezer to see what I had on hand, wrote it all down, and then bought from each protein group where I needed. My freezer is in my pantry, so I consider it part of my pantry as well. (I also dried some ground beef and kept that in my fridge.) In my freezer I keep:
Fish Chicken Beef Lamb Pork
Lastly, I turned to toiletries and cleansers. I knew this was the last group of things I was dealing with, so it was kind of fun by this point. I had so much hard work behind me, for building a pantry is a lot of work. Especially as you are preserving things from your garden in the heat of the summer. But there is something so wonderful about watching your pantry grow all summer in time for the winter season. I remember my paternal grandmother having an amazing pantry. As a young girl, it always looked like a little store to me in her small walk-in closet off her kitchen. She never had a garden or canned anything, but she knew how to build a pantry that would take her through the harsh winters on the east coast. My maternal grandmother, who also lived on the east coast, had such a large pantry that when she died it was dispersed among five families as there was so much stored food. She, too, never canned or had a garden, but what an amazing pantry that was stored on those shelves in her cellar.
Here is what I bought for my toiletries and cleansers:
Toilet paper Tissues Soap Shampoo Conditioner Toothpaste Dental Floss
Bar Keepers Friend Clothing detergent Dish detergent Vinegar Glass Cleaner Baking Soda
When I got to September, I was pretty much done. So the whole project took me about 4 months. I've never enjoyed anything more. I love walking into my pantry, which is a walk-in closet off my kitchen. It is my food insurance.
I feel like my grandmothers. I feel ready for winter.
Love, Laine
High proof vodka can be used for cleaning and sanitize your liver!
Just a reminder to all preppers: buy your seeds early, if you’re buying any! Seed companies are still seeing more orders than normal. And a lot of their growers had to deal with storm damage, wildfires, and other problems, so the supplies on some varieties might be thin to start with.
If there’s something that isn’t usually worth it to grow, but you tend to use a lot of it, it may be worth growing a small patch of it just to figure out how. 2020 was my first attempt at growing wheat, and while my physical harvest was small, I reaped a ton in “lessons learned” that I never could have learned by just reading about it. Lots of crops are that way, so it would be wise to learn those lessons *before* your family depends on it.
I’m going to issue the same invitation for 2021 that I did last spring: If you absolutely, positively CANNOT get seeds this spring, let me know and I’ll send you some. I can’t promise exact varieties, but I should be able to find you something.
“Food insurance is a well stocked pantry.”
I learned this, living with my widowed Grandmother for a summer while working in her area.
She raised 4 daughters and 1 son through 2 WW’s, the Korean War, a depression, several recessions and the dust bowl.
She still had a garden and raised enough to have a small roadside shed selling her surplus. She canned veggies/fruits
in late spring, summer and early fall. She traded some of her veggies/fruits with neighbors for what she didn’t raise.
I tried to buy groceries for her/us, and she limited me to only buying some fresh meats and supplies like detergent and cleaning. She and my mother taught me to buy non perishable items if they were really on sale to save money and store them until needed.
My wife grew up in the mid west where they might be snowed in for a week or more or floods kept them in their little town for days.
Her grandmother and mother canned veggies and fruits, and made sure they had months of those foods and at least 2 weeks of grocery store non perishable items.
We live in the land of fires, floods and earthquakes, and my wife has a pantry of rotating foods that are used/replaced and could last a few weeks. She has upped her pantry and new storage area to half of our laundry room. She has increased her inventory of canned/non perishables.
When Costco or Walmart has a great sale on non spoiling items like cleaning supplies, we stock up and save the $’s.
My son’s wife is ragging on him about the amount of meat they have in the freezer we gave them when we moved.
She’s a Southern, city girl who does not seem to understand what a freezer is for, nor why one would even want to keep more than a weeks worth of food around the house.
Huge normalcy bias handicap with her.
He’s taken to hiding some of the stuff he’s bought.
I actually found Ball canning jars in quart and half gallon size in Wal-Mart the other day at a reasonable price no less.
I got two cases of the quarts and one of the half gallon.
I like to store pasta and grains in them as they seal well. Sadly glass can break, but plastic and metal each have their drawbacks, too.
Wise woman.
“We are soon to enter into uncharted waters of civil, domestic, political, and economic disturbance .
The hour of preparation is late,.. but it can be done !
It’s called ‘Personal Responsibility’ as well as prudence.
It is what sustained our forefathers - preparing for the unknown... and we are there now !”
We are there supply wise as noted by my previous reply to this good discussion.
One son has a wife, who believes that non perishables should be in her pantry or garage to last several months. Her grandmother basically raised her, and she survived depressions/wars like my wife’s and my grandmother did. Instead of flowers she plants veggies and freezes them. Of course that will not work if there is no power. She actually has canned some of her veggies and from the prolific farmers markets in her area.
The other son and his wife live an incredible area of food stores/restaurants, and they buy groceries on what looks good for 1 or 2 days at a time.
Presuming you have food for XXX months, do you have the fuel to cook it? Can you get it?
If you plan to have XXX new mouths show up, can you prepare meals for that many people, AND serve it?
As always, add footwear to last for 5 years. Modern footwear is cheap, fall-apart, glued-together Chinese crap.
Could you share with us your wheat growing experience?
What state do you live in?
When did you plant?
What kind?
How did you harvest, etc?
Maybe even make a thread about it.
I have wheat berries which I grind in my grain mill for wonderful bread and the thought of using some to grow my own has certainly occurred to me.
“I used to love my grandmother’s root cellar with all the jars of canned food lined up, bins of veggies, etc. To me, as a small child, it was a wonderful place.”
My Grandma had a wonderful root cellar, too - but it was in the basement of her house in Milwaukee, WI. “You can take the girl out of the country...” I learned so much from her!
“The one thing I do wish I had now was a root cellar.”
I’m on ‘Winter Squash Strike’ until Beau gives me the room in the basement that WAS originally the Root Cellar for This Old House (1900) It’s currently full of ‘Boy Stuff.’ This IS a battle I will WIN - but it’s going to take a while, yet. ;)
“Can’t do much more without more spousal buy-in...”
It always amazes me how may of us have/have had spouses that were not on the same wavelength as we are!
What makes us marry them in the first place? LOL!
I have my Beau now, who is even more of a ‘survivalist’ than I am. He walks the walk, and I am forever grateful for THAT!
LOL!
Yeah. It was me. I was too lazy to re-format it all. I figured the message would get across. ;)
We’re not in a good climate for a root cellar - it would have to be a deep one. The house has no basement, either. Sigh.
I hope your WIN is sooner rather than later LOL!
Flr
“I had the same problem with hubby - until I told him, he could make sure we were prepared with guns and ammo, if I could do the same with food and supplies.”
One of our DIL’s told our son/her hubby the same thing, years ago! This has worked out very well for them/
Their 20 something son, who eats all day is home from college doing the remote education thing. She told him that her pantry was off limits, and now that he is working from home and getting paid. He has to contribute to the pantry and their regular food for the week and no guests. They can eat at their homes.
We are growing our own beef steer this year. Got him a few weeks ago, but ‘Weber’ will be with us for a good 18 months while I fill him out. ;)
Our previous steers, ‘Dinner’ and ‘Supper’ were great investments, since we get them for free from the guy that rents our crop land, when he’s culling his dairy herd.
This one is a Black Angus/Holstein cross - somebody jumped the fence! ;)
I thought I would be more squeamish about this; I mean, you spend a LOT of time with the animal, raising it, but I’m pretty much a ‘Circle of Life’ person and Weber is having a really good life. ;)
You’re right on the price. About $5/pound once all is said and done for all cuts.
As posted in an earlier comment,
make sure that your shoes are "100 mile" comfortable shoes
that have already been broken-in to assure comfort.
Good point !
*** Better watch out, someone will charge you with discrimination and then tell you that if your ‘heart’ is in the right place you would GIVE it away.....***
Actually, this ranch family gives a lot away. They often donate a lb of beef to the food bank, veterans, etc for every pound they sell. Salt of the earth.
I bought some beef for veterans returning from KSA, and from Syria. When they found out what it was for, they wouldn’t take a dime.
Our one good and large nursery was sold out before March was over, a couple of weeks after the Covid hit the fan.
The only thing we replant are tomatoes from the Tomato Lady. She is so successful, you place your orders now for spring delivery in her Lexus SUV.
We have a miniature fig tree that provides great figs from Mid/late July until mid/late Sep.
Raccoons and foxes and ???? eat everything else we plant or try with seeds.
We get a few persimmons from a little tree. Fortunately, our yard guy has customers who don’t like persimmons. So often our back yard had a fresh 5 gallon bucket of persimmons. We just sliced our last one this week for breakfast. Now he gives them to us to avoid the critters in the yards here.
Fortunately, there is this great 3 generation Thai family with several farms in this area. They call us about a week before Easter or a little after to tell us they are open.
At least twice a week, we are at their shed buying fruit and veggies picked that morning. They stay open until early November.
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