Expanding Past Your Pantry

 Regardless of how much food you store, it will never be enough. If there really IS a catastrophic emergency in your region of the country, such as inter-state commerce shutting down or the power grid going off-line, or even the failure of our economy, you will be doing extraordinarily well to have stored up enough to provide food for your family for a full year. The real goal of Stores is to provide for your loved ones for long enough to establish a food-collection system for the future. What that means for everyone is a little different. But the most important thing is to have given this whole idea some mind space and thought. This isn’t something that should send you to a mental health specialist or a cardiologist! We have held multiple family meetings to discuss these issues. We included my father-in-law, who now lives near us, and our grown children. We opened the floor to any tangents one of the attendees wanted to head off down. My father-in-law was very concerned about the potential lack of vehicle fuel. Interestingly enough, SINCE our family meeting where he brought this up, the gas stations in our area ran out of gas (due to the hacking of the pipeline). We made an agreement at that time, because of Grandpa’s concerns, to try to keep our vehicles at least 3/4 full of gas, and to gas up when they reached the 3/4 level. This may seem to you like an extreme measure but, let me assure you, it comes from his experience.

In a nutshell, we were once visiting him in West Virginia, where he lived prior to moving to our neighborhood. My mother-in-law was already deceased. On the drive, we ran into an extreme storm. We were driving through the mountains and the rain was so dense that I asked my husband to please pull over. He responded that it was unsafe, because he couldn’t really see where the edge of the road was, and we were in danger of falling off the edge of the mountain or being hit by another vehicle that couldn’t see us on the shoulder and being pushed over the edge. He said the safest option was to keep driving, slowly, with our lights and emergency blinkers going. While he did his best to navigate (and, oh, was I so very thankful he was with us and was driving; I don’t think I could have coped), the children and I prayed - silently, but fervently. When we finally arrived at my in-law’s home, an 8-hour drive had stretched into 12. Grandpa met us at the door with a flashlight and informed us that we had no lights, power, air conditioning, and our go-to of ordering pizza upon our arrival wasn’t an option. We had peanut butter sandwiches by candlelight for dinner. The next morning, we awoke to discover our power was back on. Amazingly, though, the rest of the City took weeks to restore. My father-in-law believes that we were the first area in the City because his next door neighbor had just retired, after 40-years of service, as the Dispatcher for the power company. He thought that their protocol was to restore her power first so she could make it to work to begin dispatching work crews and that protocol hadn’t been changed due to her retirement. We, in any case, were blessed. Over the next week, we watched as people began going to Walmart to use the bathrooms and clean up in their sinks. Gas pumps, which were ALL electronic, didn’t work and, thus, no gas was available in the entire city. Our van was on empty from the trip. After nearly a full week, the power was restored to one station near us, and we joined the long line at the pump. Grandpa told us, after we had already been home for 2 full weeks, that some areas of the city still had not had their power restored. It’s paralyzing to not have gas for your vehicle, but also not having any power or the ability to get to a store to purchase ready-made food. This incident made such a huge impact on him that he permanently changed his habits regarding gassing up his car.

Our children, in these family meetings, have all contributed and voiced concerns and suggestions. They have all “bought in” to our plan as a family for how we will live if there IS a catastrophe. Their thoughts, concerns, and ideas have been invaluable to our family. And it has been reassuring to them to realize that we, too, spent time thinking and planning for a potential emergency. It didn’t bring fear, it brought peace, perhaps because WE were peaceful in the midst of these conversations.

Once it becomes necessary for us to break into our Stores, it’s time to begin to put planning into overdrive.  Again, there’s virtually NO way to provide for the rest of your and your children’s natural lives now. But skills that you practice now will significantly help in the long run. For instance, do you know how to make bread from scratch or only using your bread-maker? What about gardens to provide vegetables long-term? Truthfully, almost none of us are in a position to be able to grow wheat to provide bread for their families, but you can research what vegetables you can grow in your area and store up heirloom seeds to be able to provide for your family. I’ve had raised garden beds beside my house for many years. They’ve provided an abundance of summer vegetables for us for many years. I also began growing herbs indoors on a stand in front of a window in my dining room. Inside, they grow year-round. I have parsley, thyme, oregano, and sage. Just outside my kitchen door, on my deck, I have rosemary and basil, and a Meyer’s lemon tree. I chose these herbs because they are the ones I use most often. One of my nephews, who eats salad daily, built a hydroponic garden in his basement. In the protected environment, he had an abundance of lettuce of different types and he or his wife were able to harvest daily without damaging the plants. It also allowed them unlimited growing away from their living space. This year, I added elevated garden beds just off the deck that I’m using now to begin a winter garden.

About 4 years ago, my father-in-law gave me a book on seed collecting. Note that planting heirlooms is essentially if you plan to collect your own seeds. Some varieties of plants have been genetically altered, resulting in inability of their seeds to germinate and reproduce. I gather seeds from my bell peppers, hot peppers, herbs, tomatoes, squash, and anything else I grow. Once dried, I store my seeds in empty medicine bottles with the labels removed. I replace the labels with freezer tape and a sharpie to identify each bottle (a pumpkin seed looks very much like a cantaloupe/butternut squash, etc., seed). For three years, I replanted my basil from my own seeds that I harvested from my plants. Learning to collect and store my own seeds has saved me TONS of money on store-bought seeds or plants over the years.

Gardens are not going to provide ALL your dietary needs, but the sooner you can get a garden up and running in an emergency, the sooner you’ll be able to supplement your Stores and extend the life of what you’ve gathered. My berry bushes, fruit, and pecan trees will extend our stores, also, and will help ward off scurvy. Years ago, we began raising Muscovy ducks in our city-dweller backyard. We have pens (really large dog kennels covered with a water-permeable, stretchy cover to protect them from hawks and owls) where we house them overnight, for their own protection from predators such as fox, opossums, and raccoons, that we KNOW live in our area. During the day, they free-range in our backyard. They are extremely social animals so we had to have 2, and can do very well with just a child’s pool full of water, poultry feed, and shade. They have become our babies, and we love them dearly. The females lay eggs for us throughout the warm months, which gives us a renewable protein source and, if necessary, we can let the females brood and harvest any males for meat when they reach maturity. They take up very little space, are extremely entertaining, and provide for us. Lots of people in our neighborhood have kept chickens on and off. Some of them feel the same about their chickens that we do about our ducks. Years ago, I researched purchasing goats to provide milk for our family. Pygmy goats take up very little space and are amazingly social and cute. But we just don’t have the room in our yard and there are inherent issues with goats. For instance, in order to continue providing milk, they have to be “refreshed” (they have to get pregnant) every year. Goats milk, if kept away from the male, is really very tasty and fatty and can be used to make cheese. The males have a strong odor and that odor gets passed into the milk of females if they mingle with each other. And, then, there’s the issue of your constantly-increasing herd, just so you can milk your females for 6 months. For us, not doable. But, if you have a couple of acres, you may want to look into goats. I’ve heard that there is a reasonable market in our area for offspring that have reached maturity. You might also consider rabbits who reproduce, well, like RABBITS! But only if you are willing to harvest them and know how to skin and butcher.

The key, once again, is planning. Think about your options and get to doing. It takes awhile to establish animal husbandry, gardens, indoor edible plants, or fruit trees. But these are all possible solutions to extending your limited supply of food.