Long-Term Storage Food
Why Having Long-Term Storage Food is So Important to Me
Now all of us would love to live on hundreds of acres of farmable land where we could grow all of our food…. plus have the livestock to be truly self-sufficient.
But the reality is that most of us can’t afford all of that land. Most of us have to live within a reasonable distance of our jobs, and most of us live in regular houses with modest yards.
For me, my personal belief is that a prepper needs to survive the several months of a true grid-down situation… and after several months enough people will not survive. And when a major depopulation occurs, this will open up more land and resources for those remaining survivors to have more land for growing their food, etc.
Now I personally will NOT allow myself to try to solely survive SHTF by trying to grow my own food and/or foraging for wild edibles.
What if the grid goes down in the middle of winter?
What if the wild game gets hunted out like it did in the Great Depression?
And while wild edibles will provide GREAT nutrients and flavor: wild edibles generally do NOT provide enough calories to actually sustain a person.
So here’s what I personally believe a prepper needs to survive after the grid goes down:
A prepper needs to have the ability to grow food (more on that in the next article), plus be able to forage for food, and I think it’s EXTREMELY important for preppers to have food stockpiles before SHTF.
Having actual food stockpiles (such as beans and rice and wheat and pasta and oats, etc.) will actually provide you calories… calories that will keep you alive.
Now, your gardening and your foraging for wild edibles and your food stockpiles should actually COMPLIMENT each other; and help to extend each other.
Simply put: the vegetables that you grow can help to FLAVOR and EXTEND your food stockpiles; and your food stockpiles can make up for what you couldn't grow; and the wild edibles you forage can add extra nutrients to the both of them.
And don't forget: your food stockpiles can help you survive should your gardens fail (a bad harvest, pests take out your garden, etc.).
Now one thing I wished I had known when I first started prepping was about the LDS Family Home Storage. They have quite a decent variety of foods that are already in #10 cans that are ready to store for decades. Basically, these are foods that are vacuum-sealed in metal cans… which is MUCH easier than putting them into mylar bags with oxygen absorbers yourself (those darn mylar bags have a tendency to sometimes to spring an air-leak).
To find out if there is an LDS Family Storage warehouse near you, then click here:
Hint: You do NOT have to be Mormon to go there to buy food. I have personally done it and I am not a Mormon. They did not even ask me about my religious views when I visited them. They were friendly and just simply filled my order.
And if you’d like to see a video that I did about buying food from the LDS Food Warehouse, then click here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrYRxBDXhT0
Now I know a lot of preppers kind of downplay freeze-dried foods due to their cost. But I think, unless a prepper has a HUGE pantry filled of cans and boxes of their favorite foods, that freeze-dried foods can play a very large role in your food stockpiles.
First: when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit… me and my wife wanted ‘comfort foods.’
When the grocery stores were emptying out of meat and bread and foods like that, we did NOT want beans or rice or other plain foods that we have TONS of in our food stockpiles.
We wanted food that was flavorful and would give us comfort, because when that pandemic was first starting to hit… we did not know what to expect or what was around the corner.
Second: until a prepper can start harvesting their gardens… they will get really tired of beans and rice and oats and the other typical foods that many preppers have put back into long-term storage.
So having freeze-dried foods is a great way to have ‘comfort’ food that will add variety to your diet after SHTF.
And a person can really extend their freeze-dried food by doing things such as pouring their (now cooked) freeze-dried Beef Stew over rice, etc.
And another big point for me is: is that freeze-dried foods will also be saved for special occasions after SHTF. Just imagine this: the grid has gone down, and life has become very hard. Every day you toil in the gardens and you eat your rice and beans or oats to sustain yourself. Just think of how delicious some eggs and bacon will taste on your birthday… or how delicious some Lasagna or Homestyle Scramble will taste on Christmas.
If you’d like to check out some freeze-dried food that I have personally tried and I REALLY LIKE, check them out here:
Here's the freakin' best Homestyle Scramble breakfast food I've ever had:
And here's Valley Food Storage's long-term storage food that's clean and nutritious:
But for myself: I want a good VARIETY of food.
In my food stockpiles I like to have:
*a mixture of canned goods,
*the dried long-term storage foods (such as beans and rice and wheat and sugar, etc.),
*the #10 can long-term storage foods from the LDS Family Home Storage (such as pasta, powdered milk, flour, oats, apple slices, dried carrots, dehydrated onions, etc.),
*and freeze-dried foods (such as Pasta Primavera, beef stew, eggs & bacon, lasagna, etc.)
What I want for my food is that it all COMPLIMENTS each other in some way:
If I have a poor harvest in my gardens: then my long-term storage foods will keep me alive.
And if I have a good harvest, then my fruits and vegetables will mostly feed me while my long-term storage food will provide a little extra here-and-there.
Mountain House Freeze Dried Food