The Larder

At a very basic level, food storage translates into independence, but being able to ride out emergencies, shortages, and disasters is an important skill that many in our culture have lost. Most of us have come to expect the immediate and constant availability of aisles and aisles of groceries, convenient serving sizes, and loads of flashy packaging. Except in small pockets of our culture, the well-stocked larder is a thing of the past because, after all, one unspoken promise of the American Dream is the luxury of a well-stocked grocery open 24 hours a day, or at the very least a local quickie convenience store: "we want our Little Debbie snack cakes and we want them now!" (Though perhaps we shouldn't be too quick to denigrate the shelf life of twinkies, which may in fact survive both nuclear holocaust and the apocalypse. I can see the sci-fi feature now: Twinkie vs. Roach: the End of Days.)

This doesn't even delve into weather extremes, market whims or predatory speculators or even political unrest. Whether folks believe there will be outright shortages reaching into the complacent coziness of the American kitchen, the signs of rising prices and wildly fluxuating availability are quite clear around the world. And the emphasis on throwing energy and resources at biofuels means that the relative insulation Americans have enjoyed is likely over. Climbing food prices are making headlines from NPR to the Washington Post to the Boston Globe all the way to the Wall Street Journal, where pundits are talking about food storage as a better investment than banks these days. Americans are no longer as untouchable as we've been lead to believe.

So all this leads to the questions of what food storage might look like and how we can take responsibility for insulating ourselves, our families, and our community. There's loads of information out there about food storage and emergency preparedness from a range of perspectives, and I encourage folks to read through several of the sites for ideas. Different approaches will resonate for different people, but the insurance of a well-stocked larder is worth the investment. Do it right, and there's nothing to lose because it will all get eaten, and as the Wall Street fella points out, buying now will make your rapidly deflating dollar stretch its food value.

Here are some sites to get you started:

• Red Cross
• 7 Mistakes of Food Storage
• Food Storage FAQs
• Sharon Astyk's Food Storage Course
  

Our larder before and after organizing this weekend:













I've been working on trying to fill our larder for the past year, basically. It's been a long time coming together, but it's finally taking shape. We're to the point where we have back up stores of most everything we use on a regular basis, much of which is store bought obviously, but there's home made there as well. There are 3 Virginia-style hams hanging that aren't visible from this angle, and there are several jars of jam, salsa, and chutney still on the shelves. There are also several wire baskets just waiting to be filled with onions and squash, among other goodies.

My plan is to learn to pressure can this year and fill up even more of the shelves with home-canned food, particularly my tomato sauce, paste, and stewed tomatoes, which I admit that I've been freezing because it's easier and less intimidating. I have a pressure canner on semi-permanent loan from a neighbor, though I'd like to pick up my own in the next year or so. I've been doing some research only to find out that I can't pressure can on my glass-top stove, so I'll be purchasing a propane burner that will enable me to do much of it outside. That should be welcome come August!

What the picture doesn't show are the numerous bags sitting down in the potato bin under the shelves. I'm still searching for some good air tight containers for storing my grains and flours. Those will likely go along the open wall to the left of the photo. Ikea has some nice scoopable bins, but they're neither food grade nor air tight, so I'm still looking. Someone online mentioned Panera Bread as a good source for 3 gallon pickle buckets, so I may try giving them a call this week, though I'd rather something larger that didn't smell like pickles.

Obviously, not all that you see in the photo is necessary food storage. Much of it just comes through bulk purchasing the kids' favorites from our local buying co-op, like the Fruity Munch cereal and Annie's cheddar bunnies, for instance. Also, you'll see plenty of white stuff alongside the whole grains because that's what my family prefers. I've tried and tried to get them to switch to whole wheat pasta and bread, to no avail, so I do what I can. What it comes down to, though, is that I store what we eat rather than what I wish we'd eat, and even this kind of stuff is important for keeping up morale and appetite during emergency situations, especially for kids.

Behind the wire baskets are several gallon juice containers that I've been saving, which hold potable water for emergencies. Recommendations run about a gallon per person per day, so it's not much water storage, but it'll get us through a pinch. We also have a pretty good water purifier in our camping gear that offers some back up. We have an electric well pump, so our water supply is sadly dependent on electricity, a problem of which we are keenly aware and working to remedy.

There are, of course, loads of other foods available in our yard and in our freezer that aren't accounted for in the following inventory. I think of it kind of like a checks and balances integrated system with the larder, the freezer, the gardens, and the pastures each working to support the other so that we will always have food and options. Of course there are no guarantees in life, but the more diverse and local the food systems, the more flexibility and possibility are built in, and being able to roll with what's available is part of being prepared.

What's below is by no means an exhaustive list; it's just an inventory of what we have now, giving me insight into where we still need to go and attesting to how far we've come. I'll also admit to being a bit of a history geek, so I'm always mindful of how useful such lists can be for those who seek to learn about our culture and times down the road. Hopefully, too, this list may offer some useful information for folks out there just beginning to think about how their food storage might take shape. Sometimes seeing someone else's details helps us figure out our own. I'd love to hear about others' ideas and systems, so please feel free to leave those in the comments section.

On a practical note, this room is our well-pump room; it's below ground and keeps a fairly constant cool temperature. We're considering further insulating the inside wall this winter against the heat from our wood stove. This room, however, isn't ideal for storing some vegetables, so we'll continue to investigate root cellar possibilities, but the more I learn to grow during the winter, the more I'm convinced that fresh is the way to go whenever possible. The winter garden will never do away with food storage, nor should it, but more of my energy will go towards fresh eating year round and storing produce practically—prepping only the stuff we'll eat and not just because I can. Those green beans never seem to taste very good, to be honest, and I'd rather just eat my fill while they're fresh and bid them a fond farewell until next year.

Larder Inventory:
3 hams

50# wheat berries--hard red spring
20# all purpose flour
50# bread flour
35# whole wheat pastry flour
10# whole wheat flour (in freezer)
50# yellow popcorn
~10# white popcorn
~5# quinoa
25# realsalt
~35# non-iodized curing salt
25# black beans
~20# white jasmine rice
20# rolled oats
~45# yellow grits
~20# dried pasta

35# peanut oil
12 jars coconut oil
2.5 liters olive oil

1# roasted coffee beans
20# chocolate chips
48# baking soda
12# epsom salts
3qts hydrogen peroxide
3qts isopropyl alcohol
4qts apple cider vinegar

22 12oz cans evaporated milk
3 pints green tomato chutney
13 pints pickled green tomatoes
12 pints green tomato salsa
11 half pints strawberry jam
6 half pints grape jam
4 half pints black raspberry jam
8 15oz cans peaches
5 8oz jars chicken bouillon
5 8oz jars beef bouillon
3 27oz cans green chili
2 16oz jars salsa
1 16oz jar green chili
9 4oz cans green chili

1 bulk toilet paper
various and sundry cereals and snacks
~6 gallons Clorox bleach
2 gallons distilled white vinegar

On order:

50# wheat berries--hard winter red
25# arborio rice
25# brown basmati rice