How long could you eat on the food that is in the house right now, I would be good for along time.

Growing up with Grandparents who raised a family in the 1930's left a mark on me.

I also grow a garden, so I am good to go.

A bit of canned food,but it wouldn't last long.

My Grandfather made me learn how to smoke meat.

I am so glad they did, important stuff to know.

but there would be some very strange meals. I would also have problems if we are dealing with lack of power though, but I would still eat for a long time too.

My parents were depression kids, and you are so right----you cannot get away from what they taught you.

I could also go six months on the toilet paper here. Gads, saying this out loud makes me feel like a freak.

It is good sense to keep stuff like toilet paper on hand.

We buy it on sale in the big packages.

I could live on the rice and beans I have for months.

I was always a saver of money because of my Grandparents, the depression again.

I'm big on shopping with coupons and taking advantage of sales. I can sometimes get such items for next to nothing. If I can get a 12 roll package of TP for a buck or two, I'll buy it, even if I already have two other packages at home. It gets used eventually, and when one's income is sporadic, like mine is, you gotta do what you gotta do.

I also have a ton of squashes leftover from the CSA shares. :rofl: That's a good question, it might be interesting to see how long we could cook meals without having to go to the store, other than for bread and milk.


I also tend to buy more canned goods and pasta in the winter. Again, must be that "depression-era parents" thing. My mom always teased my dad about being ready for the next disaster/ famine/ apocalypse, etc.

We have two large freezers, well-stocked. Not a lot of canned goods though.

probably would not do.
But I'm so close to the supermarket, I can get anything in minutes, and I do go several times a week to keep fresh edibles in.
But, if I ran out of cookies, then, supermarket, or starvation, you know.
dc

I have two freezers , and I live alone. The freezers are small, but still---

The pantry with canned and boxed stuff could be stretched to another couple of months. My parents grew up during the Depression and Mom always kept her pantry very well stocked.

If the power went out, I would have to trade the frozen food with friends for future help. If it came to it, I would have no problem with making deals like tht

After that I would have to let my friends to hunt and to start a garden. The first deer or two would be easy - there were six of them outside the house this evening. They would figure out what was happening pretty quickly so any more would be harder to get.

We've got plenty of space for a garden, so if it came down to it, I would start one as soon as possible. It's in the plans for this year any way since I've had two people ask about the possibility. They don't have space for one and I do so I could get all the produce I want by letting either one manage the garden on my farm. I can't physically do the work myself so trading out is the best bet. I have the knowledge about canning so could trade that for help putting food up.

I keep canning jars, lids and other supplies on hand.

I do can stuff from my garden to keep in practice.

I would love to have chickens in the yard, fresh eggs.

I still have all the canning equipment I used years ago, maybe even a pressure cooker somewhere.

The biggest problem would be that our current house is all electric since I don't like flames. But if came down to it, we would figure out how to put in a wood stove for heat and for cooking. I'd also insist on an outside cooking area for summer - in Florida you do not want to be canning inside during the peak season!

The next problem is that I cannot physically do most of the work myself. I'd have to be the old lady telling all the young uns what to do!

Unless we can kill off the coyotes who have moved in, we can't have chickens unless we build a really, really solid pen for them so no yard chickens yet. But since the coyotes are living on the deer, if we reduce the deer and keep any other source of food unavailable, the coyotes should leave.

At night they are singing, even the puppies.

It is good to have a supply of lids and jars.

You could teach a lot of people how to can.

People during the 1930's did just this, grew their own food.

Where I live people could fish from the bayou, hunt in the woods, and raise cows, pigs and chickens.

We are now considered inner city.

Until we bought this farm, the family before us raised their own pigs, corn, sugar cane and a large kitchen garden. They had thirteen children between the two parents (some were hers, some were theirs). So it is entirely possible to support a number of people here. After all, there are sixty acres, even if half is wooded. The wooded part has a pond with good size fish and it gives a place of refuge to the deer and wild turkeys - and the coyotes AND a black bear. The farm is away from town proper but close enough to use a horse for a one day trip into town.

With good management, this place would be very sustainable and I know who I would invite to come and give me help if need be to run it as a farm to support us. It's a really nice family with two kids who now have their horses here. The father grew up growing a garden and raising guinea hens, so he knows about poultry. He knows hunting and butchering. We've got enough horses for transportation and for working the farm. The mother on the other hand doesn't even know how to cook, btu if it came down to it, we could all work together to make a go of things.

A great place to get jars are Goodwill/Salvation Army and yard sales. They tend to be a lot less expensive. I just started canning this past fall and love it.

I live in a townhouse with no real private outside space so growing my own is a little hard. I happen to be very lucky that my parents only live 45 minutes from us and have a very large garden. From their pumpkins I made pumpkin butter, roasted the seeds and made numerous pies. I have more pumpkin in the freezer. From the hot peppers I made jelly that is good on roasts or just with cream cheese and crackers.

This year I am going to try several more things. Looking for jars now.

For instance, is a pet food? Is a leather shoe food? Is spam food?

For me, counting in houseplants, lacking both pets and spam, and refusing to eat tanned leather, I could eat for at close to two months, though veggies would get pretty shy after the first week or two. Nor would I go thirsty in that time frame were water to become scarce. If I feed my wife, cut that in about half.

Living super low carb makes stocking more than that a challenge. Before we started this diet, I would have said between 4-6 months. Dried noodles and dehydrated potatoes and all sorts of canned foods are much easier to stock in bulk than steak or broccoli.

and tends to feel less obligated to live by arbitrary self challenge criteria, so I dunno.

Still, it was better than by first thought, which was to question whether other members of the household could be considered food.

that's pretty funny. I have a teenager, so I suspect stored food would not last long around here. :D

Another 2 months, maybe, on what is in the freezer.

It pretty much depends on the situation. If I'm strictly in survival mode trying to ride out a major disaster as long as possible, I probably could stretch out the food longer as my calorie intake would be the bare minimum.

Two if we really needed to stretch thin. We have two large, well-stocked pantries. We might get bored with tuna, pasta, and ice, but we'd live.

Redstone

I have only condiments in the fridge and ice cubes in the freezer. I have a box of instant rice and another of instant mashed potatoes in the cupboard plus spices and flour and that kind of stuff. Three pkgs of Top Raman, two cans of green beans and one of diced tomatoes. That's it.

a pound of butter in the fridge and some stuff in the freezer.

buy only what I need for the short term.

i too used to fall for the marketing crap of buy a year to three year's worth of food and have a garden

in a real disaster, you're not putting $300 worth of groceries in your car and fleeing, you're fleeing with the humans, animals, and $40K worth of jewelry that is of value to you

stocking up is a waste of good food and space, it won't go with you if something "bad" comes down

growing a garden is a hobby, vegetables have negligible calories

That you are stuck where you are at and have to make do with what you have.

It would take a big ass huricane for me to leave.

Houston is not right on the gulf and the old house was over built for hurricanes.

We are in a high area of Houston and the house is built off the ground.

If I was to leave it would be to the farm near Austin, not to far.

We made it after Ike with no power except for a few generators after Ike for two weeks.

We would have made it without the generators if necessary.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I'm gonna have to follow your postings more now, just for the comedic value of them. Between this and the claim that there are no more family farmers left in the US anymore, you've been pure comedy gold this past week!

...could eat for about 6 weeks. The cats could eat for about 7 weeks. Then we would have to eat the cats.

I guess everyone assumed I was joking. But seriously, I would feed my cat to my kid. (I pray to all the unseen forces of the universe that I'm never tested on that.)

History is full of lessons.

There's flour, salt, sugar, yeast, eggs, frozen lamb, bacon, butter, dried fruit, nuts, 2 pounds of frozen duck fat, stock, frozen (homemade) pizza dough, tinned tomatoes, dried pasta, fresh frozen pasta, various oils, chocolate, corn meal and a whole lot of other ingredients.

Weeks if not months. I have a lot of dried goods and miso paste.

:kick:

we have a whole extra freezer as well as our fridge...I like to be ready.

mark

I am more worried about getting meds than about stockpiling food. Without my diabetes meds I would have fewer acceptable food choices -- carbs in bread and staples would kill me.

...says you can get insulin from the pancreas of a dog or pig by tying a string around the pancreatic duct. Just FYI.

With power at least a month. Without I'd be cutting up some good meat to make jerky, but it would probably last a month too.

jerkey? Its something I have been wanting to do, but the dehydrator machines all seem questionable.

That seems like a long time, and I am curious if you have the food budgeted out, if if you are just making an off the cuff assessment?

We keep dried beans, peas, and grains in mason jars. We've also got boxes (the kind you store files in) full of pasta, primarily for variety rather than for quantity, but that still means there's a shitload of it. With just the dry goods alone we could live for a year. But we've also got a substantial stash of canned goods, again for variety. We rotate the stock to use the oldest cans first and replace them appropriately. That's mostly because I hate discovering that I don't have something I need while I'm in the middle of making a meal. We have two dehydrators, one with 12 trays and a more powerful one with 20 trays, and we take advantage of produce while it is in season (as in "at a low price") to prepare dried foods of our own.

Nothing will ever be bland in our house. Our herb garden is a 16'x4' raised box bed and we dry most of the herbs. The main garden bed is about 25'x4' and produces a wealth of food during the summer. We try to can or dry the surplus. The potatoes from this past season are still in abundance and should last well into April.

So yes, I can say with confidence that I can feed my family for at least a year without buying another thing - with one caveat: I need water and some sort of stove.

As for dehydrating foods, dried apples are the most wonderful thing imaginable. If you get into dehydrating, get an American Harvest - they're made in the USA. The first we got takes a long time for fruits and vegetables but does herbs quite well. The second one is much more powerful and does fruits overnight but it blows herbs all over the place. The right tool for the right job. Over 20 years ago, we bought a tool for the apples. It clamps to the table and has a screw mechanism. You skewer the apple on the end of the screw shaft, position a small peeler on a spring arm, and turn the handle. As it passes through the end, it is peeled, sliced in a spiral cut, and the core comes out through the center. You can chew through apples in no time. They're all the same thickness so they dry at a uniform rate. If you make apple pie, this tool is a must.

I appreciate the tip on the American Harvest.

I mainly asked because about 5 years back, before I was married, I told someone I had an easy 6 months of food stocked. I was challenged on it, by someone not believing a bachelor in an apartment could be thinking ahead like that. When I went and actually counted, I found out that in all reality I was closer to 4 months at a moderate pace of consumption, probably closer to 3 as I normally actually ate. I now find it interesting to occasionally look through my stocks of food and calculate what I realistically have available.

What kind of stuff do you grow? We are redoing our "yard" such as it is right now, and considering what to try to grow when it comes time to be able to this year. Last year, we had about 10x4 feet of outdoor space, and that was completely shaded under a tree, behind a fence, on the opposite side of the building from our doorway, completely paved, and shared with everyone's trash cans. Not ideal. So now, with 20x30 of relatively open, if heavily graded ground at our disposal, we are almost giddy with the possibilities. I am wondering if we can grow Broccoli or Cauliflower here in Oregon. I know nothing about gardening, so I hope I am not too inept to start with. After flattening the ground out a bit, the next step is to find some way to get water out there.

Take a bag of split peas for example. Cost varies but hovers around $1 or so. One dry measure cup of peas will make a good amount of soup, especially if you prefer it more on the watery side. We dehydrate our own mushrooms (live near Lancaster, PA so they are fairly inexpensive) and they make a great addition to such a soup. We keep a lot of vegetable bullion cubes around and they make a great stock for dried vegetable soup. Throw in some barley or bulghur wheat and you've got a hearty meal.

The dehydrator is an incredible tool. Damn near any fruit or vegetable that you have in abundance can be dried, sealed in zip bags, and stored in dark plastic tubs for almost forever. Those extra tomatoes? Slice 'em and dry 'em. You can toss them into soup or rehydrate them for a stir fry.

As for the garden, the main bed is 25'x4' and we always put in six or seven tomato plants on the east end. One of those is always a Sweet 100 or similar (cherry style that produces fruits on grape-like stems). Then there's a spot for four pepper plants (NEVER grow your hots near your sweets - they cross-pollinate). I grow the hot peppers in pots in the front yard. The rest of the bed is sort of up for whatever whims I have that year. This year it was yellow squash and brussels sprouts, but we also squeezed in peas and onions.

Parallel to the vegetable garden is a 25'x10' perennial bed and perpendicular to both on the east end are two 18'x4' beds. The first is half asparagus (coming up on the 6th season - we get a LOT of it now) and half onions. We just used the last of our garden onions about two weeks ago. The second of those beds is all potatoes. I grow blue potatoes every year but sometimes toss in a few other kinds just for fun - last season it was Yukon Gold.

Then there's the herb bed. I made the box with three cross beams so it divides it into 4 4'x4' sections. One is all basil. Another is mostly thyme, rosemary, and oregano. Parsley, parcel, and a bunch of medicinal and tea herbs take the remaining space. We had cilantro in a pot several years ago in the rose bed on the other side of the house. It seeded and comes up EVERYWHERE now. Not only do we have fresh salsa made ENTIRELY with our own ingredients, but enough of it goes to seed to keep us stocked in coriander and to reseed the bed for the next season.

I like to stock up on stuff that's on sale. Some of the meals wouldn't be all that healthy--like pasta with butter. But we've got a lot of food in the house.

But the beer would run out far sooner than that, and that situation would be cause for panic.


What would be the point of life without beer?

That may last me a month and could always add stuff to it.

But not really because we'd end up sharing with people who were hungry.

I don't have enough water to last that long.

EDIT: I must qualify this by saying I stored it with the idea that I would have to share it, so I would divide three years of food by the number of people in my extended family, plus neighbors who probably have not planned for disasters.

I don't know exactly but we have several turkeys in the freezer, $53 of brie tucked in there, loads of pasta and tomatoes and cereal that we might have to eat with powdered milk, and a bunch of other pantry items and home canned goods. We'd be okay for a long while. We have a gas stove and as long as one car battery works we can grind beans for coffee.

Pickings are getting slim at this point :scared:

:hi:

Pretty much all fresh stuff.

Although I do have a bunch of flour, so I guess I could keep me in pasta for a while. But if the country has gone to hell to the point that I can't heat water, that doesn't help me at all.

if so, probably months

A mountain of food is pretty much worthless when someone comes knocking on your door with a shotgun in his hands and "asks" you to share it with him, and the best you've got is a baseball bat.