Food
386 Words
Normally I would go into a long explanation of what you need to survive in this aspect, but this is the one area that there are just too many options to supply what you need. Now there are some basic skills you can master that will provide year round food for you and your family.
Gardening, and Water Bathing or Pressure Canning can preserve your fruits and vegetables for year round use. These are the most basic methods, and have survived the test of time. Dehydrating, freeze drying, smoking, salting, pickling, and many other methods can be used to preserve foods for use.
Other methods of gathering food are also available like foraging, hunting, fishing, and even raising and butchering your own choice of flock or herd such as pigs, cows, rabbits or chickens.
As I said, this area is so full of choices and different areas to master that I am not going to cover them. What I will do is tell you the minimum amounts of food that you need to survive for a year.
Grains- wheat, corn, rice and oats 390 pounds.
Legumes- dry beans, split peas, lentils, etc. 70 pounds
Dry Dairy- 90 pounds
Cooking Oil- 10 quarts
Sugar or Honey- 60 pounds
Salt- 8 pounds
Water- 365 gallons
Dried Meat- 25 pounds
Dried/Canned Fruits/Vegetables- 90 ponds/90 quarts
A lot of places include things such as dry pasta, and other various items that can easily be prepared fresh when they are needed. I do not advocate the use of items that are easily prepared when they are needed. It reduces the amount of items you need to worry about having a stockpile of, and the wheat you grind into flour lasts far longer than the ground flour does.
Rasising chickens for meat and eggs is always recommended, and storing the eggs produced in the summer and fall by water glassing means you can have eggs all winter long.
However you supply your food, and store it is up to you. I am by no means a true expert on amy of them, even though I can hold my own in most of the areas, I will not be covering them. There are far better experts in these areas, and you should definitely do your own research into these subjects.
- Writer
