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What will you do when you get that call?

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A few days ago, my best friend got that phone call that everyone dreads.

Your daddy has had a heart attack. The doctors don’t think he’ll make it through the night.

GET. HERE. NOW.

She did what everyone would do. She grabbed enough for a road trip, threw it in the car and took off for a long drive. All she could think about was getting there as fast as possible.

On the way there, she called me to let me know what was going on. Trying to stay calm, she recounted the conversation and what details she knew. She told me later that she didn’t even think about food until she hung up the phone with me, about half-way through her drive. She was headed to a large military town, but it only has one grocery store chain and no health food stores. She has multiple food allergies and doesn’t fare well when exposed to an allergen.

Her daddy did make it through the night. She was having to go to her mom’s house do laundry and had to run by the store to buy basic necessities. She was then faced with the dilemma of having to go to the limited-selection grocery store and find safe food, figure out what to fix without having any of her recipes with her, find safe pots and pans to cook it in at her mom’s house, and keep it safe and segregated in the fridge while a trail of friends and family come through the home. It took time away from being at her daddy’s bedside and provided to be a considerable stress.

Of course, if you have a cast iron stomach and can handle fast food, pot-luck, or hospital cafeteria foods for as long as you need, you’re ok in the food department. But what about clothing? Toiletries? In a rush to get out the door, would you forget something? If you have children, would you have to suffer through their boredom and confusion while you’re going through what can arguably be considered one of the most stressful events in your life?

What would you do? You’re lucky if all of your family lives locally, you can just call a friend and have them swing by your house and drop off whatever you might need and you can run home for food and sleep. But if you have any family out of town, how can you prepare so that you don’t have to worry? Is it possible to just grab-and-go, knowing you have what you need?

You need a bug-out bag.

[Read more…] about What will you do when you get that call?

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Real Food Storage- Deep Pantry Principles for Traditional Foodists

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Our Food Storage 101 article on our website was so popular, we decided to expand it into a blog series! Over the next several weeks, we will walk you through the whys and hows of food storage, whether you wish to have a week or a year of food on hand.

Why Should I Store Food?

There are many reasons why people choose to practice some form of food storage, and none of them are wrong. So many people are concerned right now. Since I began working with food storage in 2007, I have seen many reasons to choose to stock a deep pantry.

  • You wish to be prepared for a hurricane, a snow storm or an extended power outage.
  • While you might currently have a stable job, you know that unemployment is over 10% nationally, topping 15% in some areas. A recent Gallup poll showed that under-employment was at 19%. You aren’t currently dealing with unemployment, but you’re concerned it might be around the corner.
  • You’re looking to wisely invest your tax refund, knowing that currently the rising price of food is outpacing the interest rate, so the purchase of bulk food at a discounted price is a doubly wise investment of your funds.
  • You are a family facing unemployment or struggling through under-employment, or you are facing the end of your unemployment checks.
  • You don’t wish to have to purchase food on a credit card if you’re unemployed.
  • You currently know a family who is forced to choose between food and housing or food and heat due to a limited income.
  • You’re not particularly interested in food storage, but you’ve decided that buying in bulk is the best way to cut your whole-foods based budget.
  • You have food allergies, and you know that you would not be able to sustain your family between the offerings of a food bank and food stamps should something happen to your income.
  • You have food allergies, and you desperately need to bring down the grocery bill.
  • Due to being self-employed, you would not qualify for food stamps in an emergency.
  • You hate shopping and would rather shop less, or you live miles from convenient shopping locations.
  • You wish to leave the food at the food bank for those who are less fortunate than you.
  • You’ve read about the potential looming food shortages from the floods in many countries and droughts this year. Multiple countries have suffered flooding or freak snow and freezing weather in the last few months, and their effects on the price of food has been in the news.
  • You’ve met a family who sustained themselves with their food storage after a job loss or other tragedy. If you are a forum member, you know that last year we sustained ourselves for eleven months on food storage while my husband went through unemployment.
  • You see the need to not be a burden on others should an emergency occur, so that those who are less fortunate or can not prepare can utilize the food banks without you also needing to go there. This creates less of a burden on the safety nets meant to help families through a crisis.
  • You are trying to return to a more sustainable food production cycle in your own family, beginning a homestead or a hobby farm.
  • You are looking to unplug from a modern life-style.
  • You wish to save money by only purchasing fresh and in-season.

In 2009, our family sustained a major hit in the form of income loss when my husband, along with 90% of his co-workers, were laid off. Three months prior, everyone in the company had taken a salary reduction in a move to delay those lay-offs. We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know the day. Thankfully, we had one year of food storage in place when the lay-off happened. [Read more…] about Real Food Storage- Deep Pantry Principles for Traditional Foodists

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Sanity Savers- Batch Cooking

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Let’s face it.  What mom has gobs of free time on her hands?  Since having children, the only free time I’ve ever had was when I was too sick to enjoy the time off.

When people are new to TF, one of the first questions they ask is how to reduce the amount of time they are spending in the kitchen.  Ferments, cooking and baking from scratch, making stock and cooking 2-3 meals a day plus snacks can eat up a lot of time if you let it.  Beginners feel overwhelmed by trying to squeeze more time out of an already busy day.  I normally give the same words of advice to everyone that asks:  [Read more…] about Sanity Savers- Batch Cooking

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Preparing for Winter Storms

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The road in front of our house after the December 2009 snowstorm.

This morning, I was much less than thrilled to hear the local forecasters predicting a major storm.  We often joke in this area that the local chain supermarket pays the weather man on the only Asheville TV station to forecast much more snow than we’ll wind up getting in a bid to sell extra milk, bread, eggs and bottled water.  Historically, they predict worse weather than we wind up getting so many people cook French Toast in their warm homes the morning after the storm, but this year that has not been so.

This could potentially be our second major storm this winter, with the prediction that we might get large amounts of snow beginning on Thursday.  We did see snow Monday and it’s been quite cold this week, so I won’t be surprised if we do wind up with another big storm. We went through an extended storm in December that dumped 15 inches of snow with 2-3 foot drifts with the power out for a few days and three downed trees on our house.  Some people in the immediate area went without power for a week.  Due to icy conditions on our roller-coaster road with no curb and sudden drops off the sides and multiple trees downed across the road, we were stuck in our house for a week.  We have one ‘hill’ at the top of our road that if you drive over at any real speed, you get the sinking feeling in your gut that you’ve just gone over the edge, like cresting the big hill at the beginning of a roller coaster.  We knew that getting out would be difficult at best since none of our vehicles have 4WD.  You might notice in the picture above that we’re living on a 3:1 slope and there are steeper places in our neighborhood.  The snow from that storm took over a month to melt on our little patch of the wooded mountain.  These storms are quite unusual for our area, but we must be prepared for them in case it does get bad.

Here is a list of what I do to prepare for a Winter snow or ice storm that could involve an extended power outage. [Read more…] about Preparing for Winter Storms

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Sheltering In Place

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I was born and raised in Pensacola, FL, where hurricanes and their resultant tornadoes are an expected part of each summer.  We stayed home for them all and prepared for the potential flooding, damage and power outages that come with the territory, no mater their severity, realizing that it was just part of choosing to live in Florida. One of my earliest memories is getting out during the eye of a hurricane with my parents in the short period of time that it was sunny with no rain, to go check on an elderly neighbor since the phones were down.  The eye of the storm came up so quickly from the severe weather we were having that the calm was startling to me.

Currently living in the Appalachian Mountains, we don’t worry about the severe winds and surging tide from a hurricane, but we do worry about flash flooding taking out roads or ice storms and severe winds bringing down power, damaging the house and making our very steep road impassable.  We also have to give consideration to the nearby river in case it floods.  Several years ago, flooding from the remnants of a hurricane that came up through the Gulf of Mexico devastated this area and some roads are still not repaired.   Right before Christmas we had a snowstorm that brought in 15 inches of snow and had three trees fall on the house due to the ice that occurred after the storm.  We went without power for several days in severe (for this area) cold, and it was several days longer before our curvy and steep road was cleared of multiple downed trees and the road was plowed so we could get out.

Sometimes when disaster strikes, you have to stay where you are.  If you are unable to leave your home or you choose to stay during a disaster, it is called sheltering in place.  There are a number of things you can do in order to make sheltering in place a more pleasant experience.  Being prepared ahead of time for a potential loss of power, water and essential services can make life much easier for your entire family while you wait for things to return to normal.

What you should have on hand for sheltering in place depends largely on the type of crisis you could face.  Think about where you live.  Are you located near a river or body of water that could flood?   What roads cross that river and can you get around without them?  Don’t let the 100-year flood plain fool you, that 100 year flood has to happen sometime.  Anyone in weather, geology or urban planning can tell you that two one-hundred year floods can occur back to back.  Are hurricanes or earthquakes a possibility?  Tornadoes or severe weather that could take out power for a week?  What about forest fires, a flood or a train wreck taking out a road you need to reach town?  Maybe you still have power, but you can’t get to a store or easily get to medical treatment. [Read more…] about Sheltering In Place

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What if Haiti Happens Here?

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The world has watched in horror as the crisis in Haiti unfolds, as we did a almost five years ago in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Haiti and Katrina have two things in common, both that we can learn from.  First, if the event is not extremely localized such as a tornado or chemical plant explosion, you can not expect help to come for 72 hours at the earliest.  Depending on where you are located and the severity of the damage, it might take much longer.  Second, the only person you and your kids have to depend on until help arrives is you.  [Read more…] about What if Haiti Happens Here?

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