Long Term Food Storage

Make this year's New Year's Resolution to get your food storage together. Our wonderful Prophet's have been advising us for nearly thirty years to get our food storage together, not only to get us through the second coming but to get us through any hard times we encounter. This downturn in our economy would definitely be considered hard times for many of us. Jobs are being lost and there are not as many employers hiring. Families are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet and food, although a priority, is getting more and more difficult to come by.

For those of you already in this situation, can you imagine how much less stressful your struggles could be if you did not have to worry about how you were going to put food on the table? And for those of you with a family, can you imagine the extreme stress of not knowing how you are going to be able to feed your family, let alone pay the rent!

We just did that recently. My husband lost his job and we spent a quite a bit of time trying to live off my income alone. And honestly, I work for play money, my income does not come near being able to pay the bills. I could barely manage the mortgage! Fortunately, we had plenty of close family and friends that were able to carry us through these rough times, to whom I owe my deepest love and appreciation for all the kindness and love they showed my family.

However, it did make me think. What would I have done if I had not had my family to lean on? How would I have fed my family? How would I have paid the bills? The Church was a great help, but they can only do so much and what happens when no one has food and there is no one to help? I need to be able to take care of my own family. I can not always rely on the love and kindness of others.

So I started my long term food storage. I started small, just as soon as we got back on our feet. I purchased a bucket of wheat and an electric wheat grinder. I started by learning how to make bread out of fresh ground wheat. (It was actually much easier than it sounds.) Then I picked up a couple buckets of rice and a bucket of soup mix. I am slowly gathering things as I can and as money permits. I have a list and I keep track of what I have and what I still need. I have tried to make sure that I am only storing things that I can use and I make sure that I am using them so I know that next time I find myself in this situation, I can use what I have stored.

I would hate to find that I need it but have no idea what to do with it. So in my case, I store less shortening and more vegetable oil, because I don't use shortening much at all. And I decided to store almost double the recommended amounts of peanut butter and oatmeal because we eat a lot of both of those. And although it is not in the recommended list, I store Cocoa powder, because I just could not live without chocolate!

When all is said and done, I will most likely have spent in excess of $5000, which is a HUGE amount of money for me to just fork over. However, little bit, by little bit has not been that bad and I am already seeing the benefits. My food storage is growing as well as my peace of mind. I can take care of my own family!