Yeah, I know ... "It can't happen here," because history is soooo, like yesterday and everything. Fiat money is cool. "It's different this time."
By getting you and your family prepared ... you risk nothing. However, in "believing" it "can't happen" ... you might risk everything.
The choice is yours.
Feeding Your Family Well During Hard -- and Harder -- Times
We can all agree that at the very least hard times are here, for way too many of ourselves, our friends, our family members, our acquaintances. And most of us here agree that harder times are a’coming. And I’ll add another basic human agreement: we all need to nourish our bodies with food, preferably good-tasting and health-sustaining food. I’d like to address and share my thoughts on this basic human requirement. I am not an expert in food nutrition or preparation. I have no college degrees in these areas: my credentials are only a little common sense and 30 years of feeding my family, as well as possible, on the smallest dime possible.
So first I’ll address hard times: feeding your family on as little as possible during normal hard times. I have a few “rules” for thrifty cooking: (1) basics are better; (2) beans, rice and pasta; (3) meat is a flavoring agent, not a main dish; (4) if it’s on sale, buy a bunch; and (5) use your imagination.
1. Basics are better. I’m talking basic cooking ingredients like flour, sugar, salt, oatmeal, baking powder/soda, spices/herbs, oil/shortening, bouillon/broth, dried milk, eggs, vinegars and soy sauce, basic vegetables etc. Learning to cook from scratch using basic ingredients will save you big bucks, is healthier, and can bring you immense satisfaction. Learn to bake bread (I recently discovered the wonderful new “no knead” bread recipes: as easy as it gets, and makes delicious bread). Practice making scratch biscuits, cornbread and pie crusts. Play with serving flavored oatmeal for the kids’ breakfasts, instead of the expensive store-bought cereals. Try creating different soups and stews using the various spice and herb possibilities. Experiment with making a “kitchen sink” casserole or stir-fry, using different combinations of ingredients and flavorings.
The $1 Garden
The dollar garden is simple in concept: buy as many seeds as you can for one dollar and harvest as much food as possible from the plants you grow. You see, sometime last year my mother, Susan, read something somewhere that claimed a tomato cost some incredible amount to grow on your own. Mom—whose plan to build a house out of firewood worked out just fine—made it her mission to grow as much as she could on as small a budget possible.
Mom currently resides on a nice piece of central Pennsylvania acreage which allows her to plant large amounts of just about anything; she remembers all too well, however, the days when she lived in town ("when I got my water from the city and my eggs from the grocery store"). To make her results easily duplicated by anyone with a small to moderate amount of yard space, she limited our growing area to a six by ten foot plot.
Ever the purist, she made sure that the dollar garden utilized none of the compost from her existing pile, none of the straw in the barn, and no sprays, fertilizer, soil additives, or posts that were already in her possession. She did, however, have me go out and buy a few posts and some rabbit fence to "keep the critters out." As this was not a recurring expense, we figured this fencing was as fair an item to use as a shovel. Aside from the fence and the dollar's worth of seeds, every material that was used to create this garden was a by-product of something else and therefore free.
Food Energy is Key to Survival
High Calorie Foods are Needed to Survive
In a survival situation lasting longer than several hours your energy level is very important. When your body is burning more calories than you are eating, your efficiency will quickly begin to wane. Without enough food energy you will be colder when the weather is cold, hotter when the weather is hot, lethargic, depressed, and more vulnerable to making mistakes and incurring injury. As your energy level plummets you may find it very difficult to accomplish the tasks necessary for your survival.
For shorter term survival situations of less than three days, your main food requirement will be in the form of high calorie intake. For several days the nutritional concerns of obtaining protein, vitamins and minerals take a back seat to simply consuming enough calories in order to have the energy to get things done.
Maximizing Food Storage Life
First, when evaluating how to go about restocking food supplies, consult the Excel spreadsheet that you created when you first started to get serious about provisioning (you did create a spreadsheet, didn't you?). If not, be sure to start one with your next major food purchase. The spreadsheet should have the purchase date of the food listed, dates for inspection, and replacement, and other important information (weight, distributor name, how packaged, etc.). This inventory becomes essential in managing large stores of food, particularly when items are purchased over a period of time. By automating your inventory in a spreadsheet, you can, with a click, sort the spreadsheet on the inspection or replacement date columns - now you instantly know what needs to be inspected or replaced. The weight factor comes in handy if your survival plan necessitates moving your stores from one location to another - either as a core strategy or a contingency plan. It is amazing how the weight really adds up. Best to know what you have before you start trying to load 1,800 lbs. of food into your half ton pickup truck!
For those folks that do not live at their retreat, but have to drive there, long term remote food storage offers some special challenges. If you do not have to frequent your retreat, then inspection and maintenance can be a logistic nightmare. Here is a trick for those of you in this situation.
Hope for the best ... Just be prepared for the worst.
