The amount of supplies you will want to put away is an individual matter. Obviously, the storage needs for a couple in a city apartment are going to be very different from the needs of a rural family with six small children and a flock of chickens. How vulnerable are you, and to what sorts of emergencies? Are you planning for a power outage, a flu pandemic, or a breakdown of society? Are you comfortable with a four-week stash, or does three months seem reasonable? Do you have a 250-pound lumberjack or a nursing mother to feed? Are you likely to be responsible for just the people in your household, or do you have extended family that would join you in an emergency? Have you decided to purchase everything at once or a packaged survival kit and get it over with, or do you plan to stretch your purchases over time?
I can’t answer these questions for you. This is a conversation to have with your family in the early planning stages. The process will be much easier if you have a common goal and work together for the good of the family.
Most families find it easiest to begin by planning to store enough to meet their most pressing needs for three days. With an appropriate satchel, this can become your evacuation kit. (See page 93 for more on evacuation kits.) Next, move on to a two-week supply. You can then add a week’s worth of supplies at a time until you reach your target goal of, say, two to three months. You’ll probably need to purchase durable goods such as lanterns, radios, and a nonelectric cookstove as well. With good planning and organization it should be possible to accomplish this task with minimal family disruption.
EQUIPMENT
Sit quietly in your kitchen. What do you hear? The low-pitched rumble of your furnace? The whine of the washing machine’s spin cycle? The phone rings. The teapot whistles on the stove, and the microwave beeps to signal that lunch is ready. A toilet flushes in the upstairs bathroom. The refrigerator motor comes on. The sounds go on all day without our really being aware of them. The background noise is only apparent when the power goes out and your home is truly silent.
When you begin a preparedness program, you will learn how to manage all of these home systems without electricity.
Chapter 4
will give you the details of how this can be done. After reviewing that chapter, make note of each of the systems you are currently dependent on for comfort and survival, and whether those systems will operate without power. Decide which home-system alternatives your household needs. For example, if you depend on an electric water pump for your water supply, you must be especially diligent about water storage or purchase a hand pump or generator. Then add the necessary equipment to your preparedness notebook.
SKILLS
Assess skills as well. Baking bread and making yogurt are as much art as science, and the time to learn how to do either is not when you are feeling desperate. The time is now to make a list of skills you want to have and to make a plan for getting them. I had listed learning how to dehydrate in my preparedness notebook, so when I found a dehydrator (for five dollars, still in the box) at a tag sale, I picked it up. I added a book on the subject to my home library and tried it out over the summer. I made a few mistakes but I learned from them, and I can now cross dehydrating off my list. I had the space for the dehydrator, which is quite large, because I had donated an equally large bread machine that I never used to a thrift shop.
During this phase, look at your community resources. Are there like-minded neighbors who could support you in your efforts to prepare? What classes, such as first aid or CPR, can you take advantage of? Can you ask your local librarian to keep books on preparedness available? It may make sense to share the purchase of some expensive items such as pressure canners and grain grinders with a friend or relative and work together to put up food. In this way preparedness can serve what I believe to be its true purpose: not to isolate us from the world but rather to build local community and allow us to recognize our interdependence.
GETTING READY TO STORE FOOD
N
OW THAT YOU
have organized your space and belongings and assessed your needs for emergency food and supplies, it is time to give some thought to the particulars of storing food. This will include identifying the household spaces you plan to devote to storage and acquiring any equipment and containers that will be necessary to store food and keep it fresh. Temperature, moisture, light, oxygen, rodents, insects, and bacteria are the enemies of stored food, and all deserve careful consideration when you are looking for space for your supplies. There is nothing more disheartening than opening a cupboard and finding the telltale signs of bugs or mice that mean throwing out your hard-earned food supply and starting over.
When Bruce and I moved to our first house in the country over thirty years ago, I was thrilled to have a cold storage room in the basement. We had a huge garden that produced well in spite of our inexperience. The fruits and vegetables multiplied like so many loaves and fishes. That first summer I canned on our ancient cookstove every day and gave away mountains of zucchini, stopping only long enough to deliver son number three. And still the vegetables came. We stored bushels of tomatoes, carrots, beets, and potatoes. Unfortunately, I was unaware of what went into storing foods, and most of what we put away ended up feeding the worms. The tomatoes rotted, the potatoes turned green, the carrots shriveled, and the beets developed a mold. The jelly got furry, and we were afraid to eat the spaghetti sauce after reading about the dangers of botulism. The right storage systems could have prevented this.
We have learned a lot about food storage since those early days and, so far, have not lost any of the kids to botulism.
TEMPERATURE
Temperature matters in longterm storage. The best temperature for food is generally between 40°F and 50°F, with the lower temperature being better. Higher temperatures shorten the shelf life of all food, including foods touted as lasting nearly forever. The temperature in many basements is adequate, although it can be considerably warmer near the furnace or hot water heater. If you want to use your basement for food storage, it may be necessary to construct an insulated room to maintain an even temperature. This needn’t be an expensive undertaking and can solve all of your storage space needs.
Temperature swings are actually worse than a sustained higher-than-optimal temperature, which is why attics and unheated garages seldom make good storage spaces for food. The temperature can vary by as much as a hundred degrees in a year here in the Northeast. I once stored a 100-pound container of wheat on an uninsulated porch and lost the whole thing to mold because the uneven temperature made the can sweat. The moisture was pulled into the wheat and it rotted. Although it looked all right on the surface, the wheat developed an alcohol odor, a sure sign that it had spoiled. Spaces that experience temperature swings can still make good storage for dry goods, however.
The closer to your food preparation area you store your food, the more likely you are to use it routinely. A freestanding pantry that fits along a wall in the kitchen or an adjacent room might be an excellent investment, especially if the room you put it in is on the cool side. The north side of the house is often cooler than the south side, as are closets with doors that shut tightly enough to keep out your home’s heat. We emptied out a closet that had held toys, games, and puzzles that our children had outgrown. The space is accessible, dark, and cool. With some added shelving, it became a perfect pantry.
MOISTURE
Any space you choose for food storage must be dry. A clothes dryer in a room is likely to make the space too humid for good storage, even if properly vented. Basements can be tricky, too, because they often have moisture problems. This may make them a good option for the storage of root vegetables that like some humidity, but moisture in the air will rust cans and may ruin foods like flours and cereal.
Airflow is key in reducing the impact of ambient moisture. Cans that will be stored on a concrete or dirt floor must be protected from moisture leaching up through the floor; you can place them on a wooden pallet, for example, to allow for maximum air circulation. When you have the choice, go for round rather than rectangular containers. Round bins take up more floor space, but the improved airflow around them will be better for your food.
KEEPING DRY FOOD DRY
Moisture can be a problem not just in storage spaces but also in storage containers, particularly in warm, humid weather. I sometimes place a tablespoon of white rice wrapped in cheesecloth in containers if I am concerned about moisture. The rice absorbs moisture, allowing the food to remain dry. Dried apples in particular seem to benefit from this trick. Be sure to replace the rice every few weeks.
LIGHT
Many foods are adversely affected by light. If you store food in a cabinet, closet, or room with no windows, this is less of a problem; however, it is still prudent to choose storage containers that block light whenever possible. When I do use glass jars or clear plastic jugs, I often put them in brown paper bags or cardboard boxes for added protection against light.
OXYGEN
The presence of oxygen causes food to spoil. Spoilage due to oxygen is most often thought of as a canning problem. Home-canned food that has been canned properly (see
chapter 17
) will be as free of oxygen as commercially canned food, and it’ll last as long, too.
However, oxygen exposure can be a problem for some dry foods. Oxygen causes rancidity in fats and allows insects, fungi, and aerobic bacteria to persist. This is a problem in dehydrated foods with a relatively high fat content, such as powdered milk and eggs. It’s even a problem for grains with a relatively high fat content (such as brown rice and rolled oats), split peas, and most nuts if they will be stored for more than a year. (It’s not a problem for refined products such as white flour, white rice, and degerminated cornmeal, or for whole wheat, corn berries, or dried beans.)
Food purchased for longterm storage will arrive properly sealed so as to exclude as much oxygen from the containers as possible. But food simply purchased in bulk, such as oatmeal from a natural foods store, will likely come in a plastic bag sealed with a twist tie. Obviously, this will not protect the food from the deleterious effects of oxygen. This is not a problem if you plan to rotate your supplies on a regular basis, but if you do plan to store oxygen-sensitive food such as dried milk for more than a few months, repackaging your supplies with oxygen absorber packets will greatly increase the storage life.
Room air is about 21 percent oxygen, 78 percent nitrogen, and 1 percent other random gases. If you can replace that 21 percent oxygen, you will be left with a nearly pure nitrogen-packed product. Oxygen absorber packets absorb oxygen from the air and chemically bind it into iron oxide. Without oxygen, bugs, molds, and fungi can’t live in the container and fats cannot turn rancid. The problem is that it is difficult for the average person to acquire the appropriate storage containers to make this a viable option. If the container is permeable to the air, as plastic food storage bags and cardboard boxes are, the air moving into the container will quickly overcome the packet’s ability to absorb the oxygen. Canning jars and Mylar bags will provide a good oxygen barrier. The question becomes whether you want to use canning jars and Mylar bags for storage, and whether you intend to store oxygen-sensitive food for great lengths of time. After careful consideration, it made more sense for me to rotate my oxygen-sensitive foods often. For food such as powdered milk with a relatively short shelf life, I purchase sealed containers from a reputable food storage company.
PESTS
Whatever space you decide to dedicate to storage, you might need to tighten it up some to make it less inviting to rodents. These voracious pests can squeeze through the tiniest gaps. Be sure to seal all cracks, holes, and gaps under doors. For example, in preparing a closet for food storage, I vacuumed the walls and floor and then washed the space with an all-purpose cleaner. The cleaning helped me to see the cracks in the walls and identify spots of crumbling plaster. I sealed the spaces between the floorboards and the seam between the plaster and the woodwork with silicon caulk. I patched a few spots in the walls where the plaster had crumbled and added a coat of paint. My husband hung a new door that fit snugly in the frame. The resulting space was as safe from rodents as possible in a nearly 200-year-old house.
Bugs can be a real problem, especially in flours, grains, seeds, and beans. I once brought home a large bag of cornmeal and forgot it in the back of a cabinet until the following spring when I was greeted by a swarm of moths. Silverfish, weevils, ants, roaches, and earwigs are also common infiltrators. These pests can arrive with your food, as larvae or eggs, and quickly ruin your stock. There are several protective measures you can take against such bugs, although none is foolproof and you’ll need to check your stock frequently for signs of infestation.
The first step in protecting food from insects is to repack anything you purchase in plastic bags, paper sacks, or cardboard boxes directly into bug-proof glass or plastic containers. I prefer smaller containers (one gallon or less), because then if I should have a bug problem in a container, I won’t lose my entire supply.
Since there is no way to spot the eggs or larvae, I assume that any food I plan to store has some and I treat it accordingly. There are several ways to do this but I always go for the easiest and cheapest way. Freezing works well. In cold weather, you can set containers of grain, seeds, or beans in an area where the temperature will stay well below 32°F (below 0°F is best) for seven to ten days. This will kill any bug. You can also do this in your freezer, if you have room, with the temperature set for 0°F.