How much to store?

Discussion in 'Back to Basics' started by Tango3, Mar 22, 2008.


  1. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    Just got back from the Sam's,topping off (adding to) the "pantry", I get a secure feeling, ( Ilike what I see) but, how much(long) am I looking at? Here's an article with a common sense way to figure out what you will actually use:

    http://preparedness.families.com/bl...your-familys-unique-food-storage-requirements

    The only holes I find are: today we supplement the kitchen with eating out, and I eat stuff my wife and kids turn their noses up at, ( i.e. dried beans and rice "dishes") Circumstances will be different if there's not much left on the grocery store shelves except $50.00 cans of okra. As such I am big on grabbing a $2.00 bag of dried beans/peas or lentils anytime I go in for anything,just to toss in the pantry..
     
  2. sheen_estevez

    sheen_estevez Monkey+++

    I have one book in my collection which isn't a bad read Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook by Peggy Layton. One thing she gets into in the book is not stocking up on things you don't normally eat, although beans are important, easy to store, easy to make into things as you stated not everyone will eat them at will, more important is to track the items your family eats everyday, track this info for a short period and then calculate out to the number of weeks or months you want to have stock. Then start your storage plan and rotate from your store. I think the biggest problem is once you have the store going you must continue to do your normal shopping and rotating otherwise one day you will be back on shopping on demand and not have anything stored up.

    Right now I'm low on bread flour, and with prices going up in my area at least I need to make a run down to Sam's and pick up a few 5 gallon buckets of it, that way I can just relay on using my bread machine to make my bread.
     
  3. ozarkgoatman

    ozarkgoatman Resident goat herder

    How much to store?

    Thats easy. Store untill you think you got to much and then store some more. ;)

    OGM
     
  4. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    Usually, you can't have too much of anything that won't spoil before you can get around to using it up. I'll make an exception to that rule for okra. None is needed.
     
  5. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    Okra is a good thickener for spaghetti sauce, but not a staple item. I buy it occasionally, but don't store it in my preps.
    I've finished putting away my first year's worth of food - gotta work on the second year now! It's easier for me, as I live alone.
     
  6. franks71vw

    franks71vw Monkey+++

    well i am trying to get in on a big exporter of food items (grain, oils, you name it everything but meat, eggs and cheese) and will be buying alot of the staples at way cheaper prices then costco and other large warehouse chain. my biggest issue is getting the supplies to store the stuff in
     
  7. monkeyman

    monkeyman Monkey+++ Moderator Emeritus Founding Member

    I would say that one of the first things you would have to consider to anwser that would be your situation and your plans. If you live in an appartment and plan to stay there then you need to store enouph for the shroter of the two, how long you want to live past a SHTF or how long you figure the worst case senario would last. If you plan to BO to points unknown (or will not be able to keep the stores at your BO location ahead of time) then its however much you can haul. Now if you have enouph dirt (land) that you will be able to feed your family from a garden and livestock then my thoughts are that with worst timeing say SHTF in the early fall and you havent been gardening or raising animals, so now it will be spring before you can plant anything and midsummer before you start geting any significant harvest and figure at least a year before you will have livestock to a level that they will feed you and sustain the heard size, so theres 9 months to a year. Now toss Mr Murphy into the mix and assume that your first years garden will be hit by flood then drought, the remainder attacked by insects and whats left devoured by critters (all in the same yearnot that far fetched)and the animals have still births, losses to predators, thieves, illness and accidents, so now you have another year to go at least before you are adding to the food stores. Soooo, that said I figure that if at all possible you should shoot for at least 2 1/2-3 years of food stores.

    As far as what to store, I figure that the idea of 'stock what you eat and eat what you stock' is far the best way to go. That said its also going to be hard to store up Happy Meals and delivery pizza, so at least a part (for stores and totaly if the stores run out) I would have to agree with one of John McPhearsons favorite lines, 'theres no such thing as a food adversion in a survival situation', and short of toxic stuff of food alergies he MEANS it to the point of mice, rats, bugs, road kill skunks or whatever else is available. When the kids get hungry they WILL eat whats in front of them same as the adults. Theres no reason not to TRY to stock stuff everyone will eat just like now but dont knock out stuff thats easier/cheaper to store just because it isnt everyones favorite.

    In addition to the idea on how long of a time frame to store for also take into consideration that when you go out and hike all day or do heavy work you tend to eat more than if you sat around all day. In a post SHTF life you will be most likely walking or bikeing anyplace you go, hand sawing and splitting firewood, tilling a garden most likely with a shovel after the gas runs out or the gas powered one dies and in general doing more physical labor every day than most of us do now by a LONG shot, so everyone is likely going to be eating more than now, so figure that into the quantities needed for the above time frames.
     
  8. groovy mike

    groovy mike Immortal

    How much? As much as you can.
     
  9. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    We're on the "bug-in plan"( good area,lots of water, outside a smaller "city" 34K, hoursby car from any major city,....
    good dry basement, well in the patio, woods at the end of the block...)

    No offense guys, but"As much as you will need" isn't really helpful( i gotta up date my.22(toa 10/22),still may buy a "communist"7.62, could use a few small solar panels for battery charging.and a hand pump for the well.)...

    Found out last night 5cups of flour for a loaf of bread/ 4 cups to the pound..( I need lessons from my mother in law she makes bread every week and passes them to the local family.
    1 loaf a week; just to start figuring, = 260cups; 260/4cups/lb=65 pounds year minimum....At least I can visualize 3( 25lb) sacks, (what our Sam's has on the floor).
     
  10. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    The trouble with "how much" is that it is a variable that depends entirely on what your goal for prepping looks like. If planning to eat the stores over a real nuclear winter or three until the garden gets going, it's a whole different ball game than short term things like a week's power outage or even a day without clean water. It's all in the personal evaluation of the probability of an "event" that will cause an upset in life. The key is dispassionate planning for reality, not panicked storage of any and every commodity that could possibly be needed in the event you are the only living soul on earth with zombies all around.

    Planning also HAS to include a skill and material inventory useful for barter, even for short term scenarios. A couple cases of TP might get you some split and stacked firewood, or vice versa.

    Zombies are fun folks, one might plan to join them, eh? No worries there. [boozingbuddies]
     
  11. ozarkgoatman

    ozarkgoatman Resident goat herder

    Yes I understand that but it's like asking what is the best survival gun. Thats easy, IT DEPENDS. [beer] I think that anyone who is concered about surviving a long term event needs a min. 3 year supply of food, if your not growing your food now. That would be the least because people that are relying on becoming instant homesteaders are in for a rude awaking post SHTF. WG and I have been homesteading for 10+ years and still learn better ways of making things work. Our ground continues to get better and we can demand more of it. We cull our livestock ruthlessly and they continue to be more hardy as get rid of the weaker ones. So to answer your question it depends on your situation and the number of people your going to be feeding.

    OGM
     
  12. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    Sorry that came across as rude.
    Asked a question like that to a program director at the local tech college trying to choose a program(program/ new career path): I asked " How much can a tech expect to make in this field?"??
    His answer: "As much as you can get..."
     
  13. ozarkgoatman

    ozarkgoatman Resident goat herder

    No worries. [beer] First responce was just giving you crap. :lol:Secound post was more on the lines of what I believe. [beer]

    OGM
     
  14. sheen_estevez

    sheen_estevez Monkey+++

    It is wise to look at all aspects of the question. By looking close at it now you will realize things like how much flour it takes to make bread, or how much milk my family really drinks, so I will need this much powder, etc. And don't forget about snacks, you may not think much of them now but when the stores are empty a nice bowl of popcorn may sound real nice but you may not have though to store any.
     
  15. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    Nailed that one I have plenty of peas, no snacks..
     
  16. monkeyman

    monkeyman Monkey+++ Moderator Emeritus Founding Member

    Sweets or the means to make them will also be a HUGE comfort thing. Even if you dont consider yourself big on sweets, being able to have a cookie/doghnut/piece of cake or a piece of candy every so often can be reaal nice and unless you cook itfrom scratch or stored it you wont have it and if you didnt plan for it when storeing you wont be able to make it most likely.
     
  17. jash

    jash Monkey+++

    I agree with OGM. We buy and buy and buy beyond what we think because our extended family does not do this and I know where they will end up when SHTF. JW Rawles suggest getting extra as charity but I figure I got 12 relatives that are going to show up on our door-there is our charity! My other half thought I was nuts until we watched Jericho-that straightened things out in a hurry. Now is a lot more supportive when I buy 80 pounds of flour and sugar and rice at a time.
     
  18. groovy mike

    groovy mike Immortal

    When you have so much that it will spoil before you use it, that is too much.

    If you figure your family uses 2 cans per day and a can will last five years then you do not have TOO MUCH until you have (2 cans x365 days x5 years = 3,650 cans).

    Until you reach "too much" - you don't have enough. Use what you store, store what you use.
     
  19. SLugomist

    SLugomist Monkey++

    Found out last night 5cups of flour for a loaf of bread/ 4 cups to the pound..( I need lessons from my mother in law she makes bread every week and passes them to the local family.
    1 loaf a week; just to start figuring, = 260cups; 260/4cups/lb=65 pounds year minimum....At least I can visualize 3( 25lb) sacks, (what our Sam's has on the floor).[/quote]

    Great way to put it, tango. w/ 75 lbs of flour you can have 1 loaf of bread a week for a year. In a SHTF TEOTWAWKI that is more than sufficient, maybe double for family of 4 or more. Need to know the bulk density of flour, e.g. how many #'s will fit in a 5 gallon pail (the mylar nitrogen storage system)

    Hmm What other staple foods are there like bread?
    Need to get the recipes, then calculate the amounts needed of all ingredients, for 1yr. Sounds like a possible thread topic.

    MM good point about if event occurs early fall, you'll need enough until the next season's harvest at a minimum, hadn't thought of it that way.

    Although I am currently not growing, I have A seed bank and live close to a few very large lakes and many orange groves, not much wildlife here except birds, escaped household pets (chinese food), and maybe gators.
     
  20. Quigley_Sharps

    Quigley_Sharps The Badministrator Administrator Founding Member

    I buy 2 for the house and 2 for storage. been doing it for a long time, and I rotate every month.
     
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