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17 Lessons Learned the Hard Way About Food Storage

Saturday, March 15, 2014 9:18

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(Before It's News)

This is our fourth year of prepping, and we are planning to make a full-time move to our retreat location by spring. We believe the Lord is compelling us to move now, and we are working diligently to get there as soon as possible. By the way, if you have been paying attention, the world looks really bad. This weekend was a significant eye-opener, as we cleaned and inventoried our pantry for the move. I would like to share the experience. However, before we do so, you need to have a bit of our background for a full understanding, so please have a little patience.

In early 2010, we purchased an old farm for recreational purposes. It would be hard to find a couple with more predisposition to be preppers than my wife and I. Both of us have a healthy concern for the government; we home school our children; we tend to cook for ourselves when we can; we enjoy the outdoors (hunting, fishing and gardening); and I could go on about how it was a very natural fit. However, both of us did not really have a clue, until I stumbled upon JWR’s book Patriots, which opened our eyes and encouraged several positive life changes. I will also add that it is a major plus to have both of us– my wife and I– engaged in this endeavor. We may not always agree, but we continually support and remind each other of our goals and have been making steady progress. Even with all this positive momentum, it is a difficult but rewarding journey.

In late 2010 when we started our food pantry, we took what I would call a “hodge-podge” approach. We read different articles and made lists of what we used and did not use but was recommended by the various publications. There is a tremendous amount of information, and this was a new endeavor for us. So our list would take the following into consideration: rotation of meals; caloric intake/nutritional value; pleasure value (is it something we enjoy i.e. pancakes vs. oatmeal); and last but not least, cost. Before we bought, we went to an Amish bulk store and Costco to look and compare prices versus what was available on the Internet. We have children, and when we started this endeavor we were a fairly typical suburban family. We tended to lean toward home cooked whole food meals. (My wife and I argued this point a bit as “home cooked meals” has come to mean something very different now.) We also favored organic, but we did not turn completely away from fast food and processed boxed meals. We had a small garden to grow vegetables and a small raspberry patch. Still, we also would eat out at restaurants, buy bleached flour, and buy convenience meals, such as frozen pizzas, boxed pasta, and canned sauce. Considering this background, we urgently started on our pantry as priority number one. We just discovered prepping and felt that we were completely unprepared.

We have been diligent about rotating our stock and using what we have, but we have also made some serious errors. As indicated, we are relocating to our retreat full-time, and this weekend we did a complete assessment of our pantry. It was very disappointing. We actually had to throw away food, which I feel is a great sin, and I hope I can prevent some of you from making the same painful mistakes.

The most profound realization that we had is that whatever you are planning for today, especially if you are just starting out, your habits will change. This is probably more so with food, as it is one of our primary concerns. In general, food has become extraordinarily distorted by society and corporations. To give you an idea of how much change occurs, I will share examples from my own family.

In 2010, we assumed we were doing well if we baked a loaf of homemade bread or other baked items. Typically, cookies were baked regularly (maybe once a month), and breads and cakes baked a bit less (once a quarter); all were a treat or dessert. Homemade bread in 2010 consisted of store bought flour (typically bleached) and white sugar. Fast forward to 2014. We now make 70 to 80 percent of our own bread, buns, tortillas, and so forth. Some of it is easy, but others are a true art form. Probably about 50% of the flour we use is our own home-ground from wheat berries or other grains. We continually try to improve, and, if we buy flour, it is stone-ground, whole wheat flour that is as close to wheat berries as possible. All of our grinding has been manual to date. We have been working to substitute honey for sugar, where possible, since honey is readily available. Our reasoning behind this is two-fold– to be better prepared so we do not feel a shock if things change and our belief that it is a much healthier lifestyle. While we have had very little grains go to waste, our understanding of wheat berries had gone from “what the heck are these?” to a household staple. Still, most of my extended family and friends give me a blank look when the term “wheat berries” enters a conversation. In 2010, when we purchased wheat berries, we did so because it was “on the list”, and we had a general understanding that they could be rendered to flour or mush. Now we use them regularly. In hindsight, more wheat berries (easy to move and long-term storage value) would have been a better bet, along with similar grains. However, in 2010, I would never have come to this conclusion.

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