| Hi Lynda,
< What do you put away??? Dried foods, mre's, canned? I know you put away
< flour. I had Mormon friends when I lived in California, but I live in
< colorado now and have lost touch so I can't ask them. Do you have a
< place within your church that you buy from???
We store the kinds of foods we eat. The theory is that if you need to eat what
you store and you are not used to it, you probably won't eat it when you
have nothing else. If the kinds of foods you eat do not store well, then
try to incorporate into your diet some of the things that can be stored. My folks
bought a bunch of dehydrated food when I was little and ended up tossing it when
they moved. It was over 20 years old anyway. We have stored flour, rice, beans
pancake mix, wheat and oats in #10 cans. I know some people who store lots of
canned goods and rotate thru them. When they go to the store, they buy two cans
when they need one can and put one in storage. Also, if you rotate your food,
none of it will go bad. If you eat dried food, then that would certainly be a good
thing to have in storage.
The food storage program serves two purposes. If we store food up, then we will
be prepared when a crisis occurs. A crisis could be an internal, family crisis
like someone losing a job. It can also be caused by external forces, like a flood
or something like that. In addition to being prepared, it teaches us to be efficient
and resourceful.
When you set up a food storage program, there are two things that need to be done.
You need to figure out what and how much you need. This is available thru various
pieces of literature. You also need to figure out how to store it. There are
certain things that will not safely store water for example.
There are some places where we can buy things thru the church. There is a
storehouse in the springs, that may allow people to go in and buy things. The
church also operates a cannery in Denver where members go up and participate
in assignments. When people go up to fill these assignments, they can buy some
things from the cannery that way. This could be things like soup or vegetables,
etc. The prices are usually pretty good. Some wards, or congregations have
informal networks setup where the members look for good deals around town and
share the info and possibly get together to buy things in large quantities.
You can also expand a food storage program to include things that are needed to live.
For example, things needed for personal hygiene, clothing and warmth.
Hope this helps.
scott
|
| Store what you (and your family) eats. Is the best advise for a storage
program, but little used or believed in my experiance. I was glad to
read -.1 because it is very good advise as far as I'm concerned. But
I'm not an expert so just keep doing what you have been or want to do.
We just buy food on special at the store when the price is low, and buy
a lot of it at one time. We get a lot of comments when we come up with
five cases of something at the checkout. No problem, I'd rather have
the food than avoid the comments.
rich allen
|
| Actually, the church has been minimizing the use of the expression
"food storage program" in favor of "family preparedness program",
the "storage" component of which should include all a family's
normal consumables - most especially those related to hygene.
Cholera, the great killer of the pioneer period, was the result of
poor sanitation - something the Roman Legions understood two millenia
previous. Thus, soap (laundry, dish, & bath) and chlorine bleach are
important items, not to be stinted on.
Where water is plentiful, one might not miss toilet paper so much.
Where it is not - such as the Mojave Desert, where i live - you'll
very much want a good supply (preferably in rodent resistant storage.)
If you have any chronic medical conditions, such as allergies, you will
do well to accumulate a reserve of appropriate medications.
How do you make your living? Do you have enough tools, supplies, etc.
to see you through a major interruption of the supply chain?
This is starting to be a major project, right? So start by
accumulating a month's supply, across the board. Next, extend the
quantity of critical items to 3 months worth. Then keep adding to
the stock - each pay period - until it will sustain you for the year
(or two) that you have made your overall goal.
|