First, buy a whole chicken.

I know, I said it was free, but as any physicist can tell you, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Free always has a price, even if it’s sometimes hidden.

Anyway, soup.

So buy a whole chicken. If you buy it from a nearby small farmer, you will be helping your local economy, your local ecology, your health, your taste buds, and your soul.

Oven roast the chicken, and serve it for dinner with your choice of sides. If you don’t have a good recipe, see if your local library has a cookbook called “Best Recipe” or one of its kin. Be amazed at how good a home cooked meal can be.

I know, soup. We’re getting there.

Put away the leftovers. Pick the remnants of good meat off the carcass. Set them aside. You can leave plenty on the bones – fat, gristle, meat that’s tough to remove, etc.

If possible, cut the bones in half, either with kitchen shears or a large knife. It’s not absolutely necessary, but it will release marrow, which will really give some life to your soup.

Put the remnants of the carcass in a big stock pot, and add a bunch of water. At least a gallon, maybe more if your stock pot is big. Add some salt — maybe tablespoon or so, and another tablespoon of vinegar. (Don’t worry if your soup smells like vinegar for a while. It’ll go away. The vinegar is supposed to help draw out some extra nutrients.) You can throw in a bay leaf if you have it. Turn on the heat. You want to keep it just shy of boiling – A few bubbles every now and then, but not a full boil.

Now, get out a stalk of celery, a carrot or two, a couple cloves of garlic, an onion, and a potato. Substitute other veggies as you see fit. In mine, I left our celery because we didn’t have any. I included a little corn, because we had some left from the roasted chicken dinner. Soup is great for using up leftovers.

Peel the papery skin off the onion and put the skin in the pot. (This will give some color to your broth.) Wash and peel the carrot(s) and potato and put their skins in the pot too. Pull off some celery leaves and put them in the pot.

Cut up all the vegetables and mince the garlic. Heat some oil in a large pan. Wait for it to shimmer. Then add the garlic and all the veg to the pan, along with a good healthy sprinkling of thyme and some salt and black pepper. You can add other seasonings if you like.

When everything in the pan starts getting tender, take it off the heat. Put it in a bowl with the meat you set aside earlier. You want your broth to cook for a good hour before you go any further, so you may want to put these veggies and meat in the fridge for a bit, depending on how your timing is going to work out.

Once the stock pot with the bones, peelings, etc. has been heating for an hour or more (more is fine), get out a big bowl and a strainer or colander. Pour the broth through the strainer into the bowl. Skim off the top of the bowl if necessary, to catch any bits that came through the strainer. Discard the bones and scraps.

Put the broth back in the stock pot, along with your sauteed vegetables and meat bits. Simmer for another 30 minutes or so. Toss in a couple handfuls of egg noodles. Then toss in another handful, because it’s hard to have too many noodles in your soup, as far as I’m concerned. Cook until the noodles are appropriately soft. Add salt or seasonings to taste, but taste it first. Depending on how you roasted that chicken back at the beginning of this process, it may be plenty salty. Or it may need a good bit of salt.

Congratulations – you just made some excellent soup. And it didn’t cost you anything. Let’s look at the ingredients: Chicken bones and meat scraps – You were going to throw them out, right? Vegetables – You had them in your kitchen already. You just used the ones that would have gone bad waiting to be used. Herbs and/or spices – That much less going stale in the bottom of the jars. Tap water. Noodles.

So maybe not COMPLETELY free, but pretty effin’ close. For a few pennies worth of ingredients, and stuff that most people would throw away, you have the equivalent of about a dozen cans of some damn fine soup.

Besides, “Free Soup” does sound a lot better than “Chicken Carcass Soup.”

–

Slate has an interesting article about whether you’re better off buying certain items at the store or making them yourself. Their primary focus is cost, though the author does address quality to some extent. They leave out plenty of other factors that might come into play – supporting local growers, sustainable farming practices, or various other ethical considerations. But let’s face it: money is on a lot of people’s minds right now.

The article runs into some accounting problems, like apparently including the cost of canning jars in the cost of making preserves. If you’re doing that, what about the canning kettle? Or the stove for that matter? Canning lids I could see, but canning jars are a buy once, use forever item. The author also talks about buying organic strawberries. Were they in season? Were they shipped in from another time zone? Strawberries can vary a lot in cost and quality based on these factors.

Still, the article’s definitely worth a read. It also ties into our current lead article pretty well, and we thought it could make for an interesting discussion topic in The Barnyard. What do you make from scratch? What did you think would be hard but turned out to be easy? What did you try and give up on? What are you thinking about trying? Let us know!

[ This is a guest post by Peak Oil Hausfrau. ]

Since college, I’ve been more of a wine-drinker than a beer-drinker. I never liked the usual cheap fare – Budweiser, Miller, Coors. Even the micro-brews weren’t as good as a nice Shiraz. That is, until my husband got aboard the Peak Oil train with his new home-brewing hobby.

Homebrew Zen (See the yin-yang?)

My husband got a beer-brewing kit for Christmas, 2007. I think the equipment cost about $100. He saved up Sam Adams bottles for his brew for a few months, then received an awesome gift of some German beer bottles that have built-in, re-usable caps. At that point, he started brewing his first batch. Since then, he has brewed five batches of brew at about 50 beers each. Each time, he tries something new. A porter, a peach wheat beer, a nut brown ale. Each one seems better than the last, but each one is unique and delicious. I still have fond memories of that first porter.

Beer has a long and interesting history, having been brewed for over 9000 years. The Mesopotamians worshipped Ninkasi, the goddess of brewing. The monasteries of Europe brewed (and still brew) beer. Breweries in America originally brewed beer as strong as the beer common in Europe. When Prohibition in America forced most breweries into bankruptcy, bootleggers began watering down beer to increase profits, resulting in the much weaker beers that are popular in America today.

We have been buying beer “kits” from a local brew shop. The kits have everything but the tools and the bottles – including the malt extract, hops, priming sugar, and bottle caps. They cost about $33 – $40 each, to make about 50 beers. Less than a dollar each – I think it’s a reasonable price for top quality beer. We joke about how many kits we need to stock to have enough beer when TSHTF. Maybe we’re not joking.

The local brew shops make it very easy to get started. The proprietors are usually very helpful, sometimes even holding classes for beginners. When first reading a beer making book, the process looks complicated. But if you just take it step by step, following the instructions in a kit, it isn’t hard. The process takes three or four hours one day to brew the beer, then about an hour to transfer the beer on another day, then finally another hour or two to bottle the beer. Four to six weeks later, we have bodacious beer.

Eventually we’d like to start making beer from scratch – using real wheat and home grown hops (which were already planted last fall!). Until then, I think home brewing is an economical and ecological winner, even using the kits. First of all, you re-use the bottles over and over, instead of sending them off to be recycled. Much better to re-use than re-cycle. Secondly, although the kits do have to be shipped in from who knows where, the shipping weight is much less than the equivalent of 50 beers. Third, we CAN store the kits, whereas beer stored for very long would go bad and take up a lot of room. And finally, it’s a distributed and local process, so it builds resilience and self-reliance. Way to go, husband!

I’ll admit I didn’t know what to expect when he first started. I was prepared to be disappointed, as I’ve heard that results can be inconsistent. Now I am a huge fan of his beer. Often, I would rather drink a beer from his latest batch of brew than a glass of wine (although I still drink wine!). I definitely prefer his brew to any beer you can buy in a store – except maybe Chimay. But I can’t afford to buy Chimay all the time, that’s for sure. On second thought, it’s every bit as good as that pricey monk-brewed beer!

Hubby has even gotten several of his friends at work to start the homebrewing hobby, and they recently held a head-to-head competition between their brews and the store-bought beer. Hubby’s beer won! Congratulations to his Nut Brown Ale, the clear winner. I took a few sips of the “comparable” beer that the hosts bought and was really surprised by how much better the homebrew was. Bah, I hope I never have to drink beer from a store again.

Homebrews are nice to have on hand – you never have to run to the liquor store (cuts down on carbon emissions). Just throw a brew in the fridge when you want one. BTW, homebrews make great housewarming gifts or contributions to a potluck. You never have to go to a party empty-handed! Remember, make sure to get back your bottles before you go home. Those suckers are gold.

I’ve gotten a lot of emails about HR 875, recently, asking me to weigh in,  which meant that I actually had to go find the text of HR 875, and read it.  This falls in the category of top 10 things I hate about writing – having to read anything created by committee, but I soldiered through it for y’all.

And I admit, there are some reasons to be a little troubled by this bill (and one not to be – from what I see, its chances of passing are very, very slim) – for example, some state laws about on-farm slaughter may be overridden by this.  The national trackback capacity seems to reinforce the worst excesses of NAIS.  However, it isn’t up there on the “signs of the apocalypse countdown” either.

The rhetoric has been overblown to a destructive degree.  As Tom Philpott points out at Grist:

“I’ve been reading hysterical missives about H.R. 875 for weeks. I could never square them with the text of the bill, which is admittedly vague. For example, the bill seeks to regulate any “food production facility” which it defines as “any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.”

But then again, the USDA already regulates farms. And “24 hours GPS tracking of … animals”? Not in there. “Warrentless government entry” to farms? Can’t find it.

More recently, reading around the web, I found more reasoned takes on H.R. 875. The bill may not be worth supporting — and from what I hear, it has little chance of passing. But it hardly represents the “end of farming,” much less the end of organic farming. The Organic Consumers Association, an energetic food-industry watchdog, recently called the paranoia around H.R. 875 the “Internet rumor of the week.”

The Organic Consumers Association has this to say:

The Organic Consumers Association is not taking a position for or against this bill, but encouraging its members to write to Congress to urge it to enact food safety legislation that addresses the inherent dangers of our industrialized food system without burdening certified organic and farm-to-consumer operations.

Quite sensibly, the OCA wants Congress to avoid “one-size-fits-all legislation.” Regulations that make sense for a 1000-acre spinach farm could push a diversified operation that includes spinach in its crop mix out of business. Sustainable-food advocates should oppose H.R. 875 until it adds scale-appropriate language.

But effective opposition does not mean indulging in fictional rants about it. There’s no evidence that the bill aims to end farming; insisting that it does destroys credibility.”

Tom has this just right.  Overstatement does not help our cause – this is one of the reasons I avoided writing much about the Manna Storehouse raid – because the internet version of this, in which a wild eyed SWAT team attacked innocent coop owners was, ummm…exaggerated.  The best evidence I can find suggest that a Sherriff’s deputy did prevent the family (who had openly engaged in civil disobedience by refusing to conform to existing regulation for food sales – last I checked, when you flout laws you consider unjust, you probably will get a visit from said enforcers) from going anywhere while their facilities were being examined, but the SWAT team waving uzis around was no where to be found.

Now I am not happy about the way our existing laws favor industrial agriculture.  I am not happy about the ways that government regulation has regulated small farmers out of existence.  I don’t like HR 875, and am glad it doesn’t stand much of a chance of passing. I don’t like the assumptions that underlie HR 875, which implies that all agriculture should be regulated uniformly, and that the risk from small farms is equivalent to the risk from massive industrial farms, neither of which are true.

But I think the best way to defeat things like HR 875 are not by exaggerating their danger, but by addressing their limitations in a balanced way.  So much of the job of small farming advocates is undermining the lies told by industrial agriculture – and they tell a lot of lies.  We can’t afford to tell lies – they’ve got the money and resources to magnify any mistake, any falsehood, any mis-statement.  We can’t afford, even honestly, to not make our case on the right grounds.

Sharon

I originally posted this item on my personal blog, but thought perhaps others would want to see what I was doing in my city, and maybe use the ideas in their city.  It has actually been easier than I thought to find people who want to do this and get them together to talk about what we can accomplish.

I imagine many people think “I could never run a CSA” because they are imagining a project on a very large scale.  I’d invite gardeners and small farmers to consider the fact that the CSA model is truly remarkable and deeply scalable, and can work even for home gardeners able to produce more than they can eat.

I started Gleanings Farm CSA in the summer of 2003 simply because I was producing more of many crops than I needed, but not sufficiently more to feel that I had enough to bring to farmer’s market.  I wanted to make a little money from all the work I was doing in the garden, mostly enough to keep buying more fruit trees and perennial plants.  My goal was to break even on my garden expenses, or maybe make a little money.  We started with five subscribers, but could have done so with two or even one. Indeed, I know may people who use a very small model – one neighbor pays for seeds and soil amendments, the other does the work. I even know someone who loves to cook and can, but hates to garden who teamed up with a gardening neighbor – the neighbor grows the food, she takes everything, turns it into meals and canned food, and returns half of it to her neighbor as dinner.

The thing about the CSA is that it really only represents a sharing of your farm or garden with another person – it could be one person or 500, you may use cash as a medium of exchange or barter.  Over the years we ran the CSA (which eventually expanded its membership into the low 20s, before I gave it up to write), we traded with people for use of a car, included our local food pantry as a “member” and bartered shares for babysitting. Other CSAs trade baskets for help working on the farm.  The advantage of being a very small CSA was that we had this flexibility built-in.

There are some realities of running a CSA.  You need to commit to a season, and be sure you can keep the food coming.  You need a contract, a sense of what you will offer and when, and a serious commitment to keeping your customers fed and happy.  While the loss of one crop or another is no crisis, you have to be able to fill the baskets every week.  We added flowers, home baked bread and eggs from our chickens to our CSA baskets to help balance things – and we found that the customers were more enthusiastic about these than anything else.  I’ve heard of FSA’s – flower-only CSAs, where one person keeps a home or small business (I know of two people who have this relationship with small restaurants, keeping the table bouquets fresh) in flowers all season long.  Had we ever experienced catastrophic crop loss, we would have either bought food from another organic farmer at our cost, or refunded a portion of the money to our clients, depending on their preference.

And one does have to be somewhat aware of other people’s needs and preferences – many people love the idea of the CSA, but they aren’t accustomed to meal planning on short notice, and they don’t now eat a lot of kale or fava beans.  Familiar foods are usually the most popular – and recipes and help in making use of new ingredients are appreciated.  Chatty, friendly newsletters that keep your neighbors up with the news of the farm are always welcome.  People really have a hard time understanding how to use what you are giving them, so be patient, helpful and full of advice.  It helps if you cook as well as garden, because the biggest difficulty is likely to be people figuring out how to use these foods and enjoy them.

What’s the downside?  The obvious farm things – picking in the heat, dealing with crop losses.  There’s the fact that odds are, if a crop experiences damage you may not get much of it, or you may only get the tomatoes that have split or have bird pecks.  Perhaps the biggest pleasure of all from stopping running the CSA was the eating of the best of the produce.  But those are small prices, and ones that can be overcome.

What’s a fair price?  For organically grown (if you make less than 5,000 dollars in farm earnings you don’t need to be certified to call yourself organic, otherwise, just tell people that you are “chemical free” assuming, of course, that you are) produce for 20 weeks, we charged $500 – a shorter CSA or a different market might get a different price – New York City CSAs are more expensive, rural areas with a lot of them or inner cities may be cheaper.  If your goal is just to collaborate with one or two neighbors, you might discuss barter arrangements.

We used plastic laundry baskets (the round kind) that could be reused each week (2 for each customer so they can be exchanged, plus a couple of extra in case people forget to return them) and reused containers for eggs and produce.  In June, early on, the basket would be filled with strawberries, a lettuce salad with edible flowers, various greens, some rhubarb, peas if they were in yet.  By late fall we’d be back to greens, squash, cabbage.  I think in retrospect I would have done better to do a shorter season – I went until the week before Halloween and was ready (at least psychologically) to be done by mid-October.  But that would vary depending on your area and growing season.

There are infinite possible variations on the CSA model. Could you supply herbs to local restaurants?  Flowers?  Do a winter share, growing greens under protection and delivering roots and squash you store?  Some places do a canning share, a one or two time delivery of a large quantity of something – perhaps you could start the first all Canning CSA – concentrating on cucumbers, tomatoes, hot peppers and green beans and other things people like to preserve.  The sky is the limit.

And there’s really no limit to how small you can be.  In Japanese, the term for “CSA” means “farming with a face” – that is, building a tie between local producers and those who eat.  The customer for your small CSA may be the face next to yours, or down the block, the elderly lady who can’t garden any more or the young man who has no time.  Or perhaps you and a gardening neighbor can combine your yards, and each produce half a CSA’s worth.  There are endless possibilities.

We are pleased to announce that over the next year, the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (www.cefs.ncsu.edu) has been funded to reach out across the state and together with our partners ask: What will it take to build a sustainable local food economy in North Carolina?

Join us for the 2009 North Carolina Farm to Fork Summit.  We’ll be working on the Statewide Action Plan for Building a Local Food Economy.  See you there.

This is a guest post by a little mouse who’d like to remain anonymous.
We think she’s written a superb piece for such a small creature, and that this
might help someone who feels unable financially or personally to begin with
food storage to take a step.  The piece is long, but valuable we think.

The Curious Tail (er…Tale) of How This Piece Came to be:

I was surprised … no, shocked…when I heard Ms. Anon E. Mouse squeaking
at me yesterday afternoon.  Ms. Mouse and I have frequent chats, but always
before they have been in the dead of night, when EvilKitty is safely shut
into the laundry room, dreaming of catching a…….well, never mind that.
The dogs are also sound asleep, and only the twitch of a paw or a soft
puppy-bark reveals that rabbits are romping through their dreams.

‘Ms. Mouse,’ I said, ‘What are you doing out of Mousel in broad daylight?’
(Ms. Mouse does have her little harmless affectations and naming her Mouse
Hole after a village in Cornwall is one of them.  She spells it the way it
is pronounced.)

‘Urgent, urgent, urgent,’ squeaked Ms. Mouse in reply.  ’It has come to my
attention that some Feckless and Foolish Humans have no food storage
whatsoever!’

‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s true,’ I replied.

‘Everymouse knows that food storage is important.  Everymouse has bread
crumbs, cheese and peanut butter set aside for an emergency!’ squeaked my
small friend.

‘I have even heard,’ continued the furry creature twitching her ears, ‘that
some humans think they don’t have enough money for a basic food storage.’

‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s true also,’ said I.

‘Foolish humans!  I always knew that mice are more intelligent!’ said Ms.
Mouse in reply, hastily adding ‘Present company excepted, of course,’ so as
not to hurt my feelings.

‘I’ve written a Very Cheap Food Storage Plan for foolish humans,’ continued
the benevolent rodent, ‘and I want you to send it to Hen & Harvest.’

‘But Ms. Mouse,’ I protested ‘the readers of Hen & Harvest are sophisticates,’
I continued ‘They already know about food storage.’

‘Cats?  Cats?  Where are the cats?’ exclaimed my furry pal in alarm, glancing
nervously over her shoulder.

‘No, no, Ms. Mouse,’ I reassured her, ‘Not that kind of cat.’

‘Oh,’ she said, mollified.

‘But even if Hen & Harvest readers are … sophisti…no, I cannot say that
word.  Even if they are knowledgeable, how do you know that they don’t have
friends or neighbors who don’t already know these things?’ demanded Ms.
Mouse.

I was forced to admit that I don’t know.

‘So,’ instructed Ms. Mouse, ‘Send it to Hen & Harvest! But don’t reveal
my identity,’ she instructed.

‘But Ms. Mouse, don’t you want to be credited with the Plan?’

‘No, no, no, positively no.  No time to answer questions, no time at all,’
she replied.

‘OK, OK, Ms. Mouse,’ said I, ‘Would you care for a thimbleful of mint tea?’

‘No, no, must rush, must rush, work to do, work to do,’ exclaimed the
rodent.

‘What are you doing now, Ms. Mouse?’ I inquired.

‘Must rearrange food storage, must move bread crumbs behind cheese to make
more room for winter food,’ squeaked Ms. Mouse.  ’Must go, must go, must
go:  too much work to do!’

And with scarcely a twitch of her ears, Ms. Mouse scampered back into
Mousel, and dragged out a very long piece of paper.

‘Here’s the Plan,’ she exclaimed, ‘Send it!’ and off
she disappeared into Mousel.

I.
The ANYWAY, Very Cheap, System of Food Storage for Emergencies
and/or Inflation for People Who Think They Cannot Afford Food Storage

While people in other countries MAY think that their government will come
to their assistance quickly in a natural disaster, and Americans *used to*
think this, we know from bitter experience in New Orleans that this is no
longer true,  More recently, three entire years after Katrina, we know that
many, many people in Houston received very inadequate help after Hurricane
Ike.

We have a very large country, very prone to natural disasters of one
kind or another. Hurricanes, forest fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, ice
storms, mud slides:  fortunately, the bad effects of at least some of these
disasters can be mitigated by sensible preparations.

Americans have also seen TERRIBLE inflation in food costs for the past
year.  Foods costs across the USA vary a lot by area, but my husband and I
estimate that – in our area – the prices for foods have risen from 30% to
40% *IN THE LAST YEAR*.

These figures are, of course, not reflected in the official
government-issued statistics on inflation; the government removed both food
and energy costs from the inflation statistics a while ago.  But we are
experiencing this terrible inflation in food costs, and we know darned well
what we are experiencing.  We aren’t stupid.

OK, moving right along – what can we do?

Can you scrape together $5 extra each week for about three months (at MOST,
and maybe you will need the extra $5/week for less time than this)?  If you
can, I can suggest a food storage plan for you.  If you cannot, then I
cannot help you with storing food.

I believe that most people can manage $5 extra per week for about three
months (at most – and it should be less time than this, as you will see in
Part Two). This can be in food stamps instead of in actual money;
food stamps will work for this.  If you can get food from a food pantry or
food bank, that will also help.

If you can get more money together, you can accomplish this plan faster.
But if you can only get that little bit extra money together – and not
permanently, only for a while – you can do this plan; you cannot do it
*instantly*, but you can do it.

In what follows, I’m assuming that you live alone. If you live with other
people, you’ll need to increase quantities.

1.  First step:  Set a goal, make a plan, write it down.  Write down what
you need to do each week to accomplish your goal.
The initial goal I suggest is this:

=============================
Initial Goal

To have on hand, at all times, enough water to keep you alive for one
month.

To have on hand, at all times, enough natural and nutritious food -
no junk food – to keep you alive and functioning for one month *without
needing to cook anything*.

This food must not require refrigeration, and it must keep for a fairly
long time.

================================

This – to me – seems like a very reasonable *initial* goal.  When you have
accomplished this initial goal, then you can stop and re-assess the
situation.

You may want to stop there.  You may want to increase the variety of food
that you store.  You may want to get some means of cooking in a power
failure (assuming that your kitchen stove is electric, which is the worst
case).

You will probably cook some of the foods that I suggest *in normal times*.
But you can safely eat these foods without any cooking at all, if
necessary.

If you need to evacuate the area, if you have a car, or a friend or
relative with a car, you can take some of this water and all of this food
with you.

If you need to evacuate the area and you must do it by public
transport, then you can only take what you can carry.  Some things cannot
be helped.  So there’s no point in worrying about them.  I try hard to be
prepared for what I can be prepared for, and to let the rest go without
fretting about it.  I pretty much succeed at this now.

OK, so how are you going to accomplish this initial goal?

First, you must learn and follow the Basic Rule of Food Storage:  Use what
you store, and store what you use.

This means that you must ONLY store what you will actually eat.  You will
*regularly eat all the items you store*.

People with more money can afford to buy other foods for storage.

But people with very little money – like you and like me too – cannot
afford that.  We must USE WHAT WE STORE AND STORE WHAT WE USE.

I am assuming also that you can only get to a regular, normal supermarket.
So I’m going to suggest a plan that can be accomplished completely, totally
at a normal supermarket (as they exist in the USA, the UK, Canada, probably
Australia and all of Europe and so on).

If you have an Aldi’s you can get to, or a Wal-Mart Supercenter, these will
probably have the same foods cheaper, so that would help.  If you can get
to a store that sells bulk foods, you can probably get one particular item
cheaper, so that will help.  But if you cannot – OK, you can do this at a
normal supermarket.

Don’t forget – you are going to set your own goal (which may be the goal I
suggest or may not).  And you are going to write down a plan to accomplish
this goal; week by week.

Then you will start on your Plan.

Here’s what I would suggest for Phase One of your Plan.  Phase One may take
you a week; it shouldn’t take more.

1.  A hand-operated can opener.  I think there are people who only have
electric can openers (I myself have never had an electric can opener). If
you only have an electric can opener, then please buy a hand-operated can
opener the first week.  It can be a cheap one.  You can buy these in normal
supermarkets, although perhaps a Dollar Store will have one cheaper.

2.  If you have a gas stove, make sure that you have matches.  We have a
gas stove; it has electric ignition.  But when the power is off, we can
light the top burners (only) with a match.  We cannot light the oven with a
match, because the burners are sealed in and inaccessible. But we can light
the top. So far as I know, you can light the top burners of ALL gas stoves
with a match.  So buy a box of matches if you don’t already have them.

4.  Do you have a bottle of multi-vitamins on hand?  If not, please buy a
bottle of multi-vitamins.  They don’t need to be expensive ones, the
cheapest ones available will do.  If you can only afford a small bottle,
buy a small bottle now and get a larger bottle later.  We try to keep one
year’s supply of multi-vitamins on hand.  But please get enough for at
least 30 days, that’s important.

3.  Store enough water for a month.  Water should definitely come before
food: people can go without food an awful lot longer than they can without
water.

So far as I know, everyone who has running water in the USA and Canada can
safely drink the water that comes out of their taps.  You cannot afford to
buy water.  So you will store the water right as it comes from the tap. You
are going to store enough water to keep you alive for a month.

This is a minimum of one gallon per day.  You’re not going to drink a whole
gallon of water any day, but you are going to wash your hands at least once
per day and you can splash some water on your face (then catch it in a
dishpan or pot and use it to wash your hands).

So you’ll need 30 gallons for one person, for one month.  What can you keep
it in?

You may already have this much water: if you have a hot water heater in
your home or apartment, see if you can figure out to drain it.  You might
need to slide a dishpan under the drain place, but you can probably do
this.

I don’t want you to do it now; I just want you to know that is a
possible source of water if you need it.  I want you to know how to do it
if you need to.  If you cannot figure it out, ask someone who knows how if
you possibly can.

Large, empty clean soda bottles, with tops, are great for storing water.
Ask everyone you know if they can please give you the empty bottles if they
drink any soda at all.

Empty clean apple juice bottles are equally good – or any fruit juice
bottles.  Ask everyone you know to give you fruit juice bottles.  I drink
V-8 juice occasionally, and it comes in very nice reusable bottles too.

Empty clean whisky or wine bottles are also fine – again, ask everyone you
know.  (Some cheap wine comes in gallon or half-gallon glass jugs – these
are perfect.)

If anyone you know buys bottled water, those bottles are fine too.

If you cannot find ANYTHING else, then you can keep water in clean plastic
milk jugs.  They are not the best container, but they are better than not
keeping any water at all.  Milk jugs will become brittle and break
eventually, but they should be OK for a month. (Meanwhile you can work on
getting better containers.)  Wash milk jugs very carefully and rinse,
rinse, rinse – then fill with water and keep them out of the sun.

If you have any empty 5-gallon buckets, they will be fine too.

I do not recommend drinking water from a bucket UNLESS THAT BUCKET IS
FOOD SAFE; some are, but some aren’t.  Would I drink water from a bucket
that is not food safe IF IT’S THE ONLY WATER AVAILABLE IN AN EMERGENCY?
You bet I would; it would be an awful lot better than no water at all.

You might be able to get large buckets by asking at a doughnut shop – the
icing for doughnuts comes in buckets.  They are food safe.  You might be
able to get some from a supermarket bakery and again they will be food safe
- also perhaps from a sandwich shop.

If you have a cat, you may have empty cat litter buckets.  I do NOT
recommend drinking water stored in a cat litter bucket – although they are
not dirty: the actual cat has been nowhere near them.  They are not
food-safe plastic.  But if you have no other possible way to store water,
it would be better than having no water at all.  Maybe you have a friend
with a cat who will give you some of these.

You don’t need to treat water in any way if you replace one-third of it
every month.  Just count how many bottles of water you have stored, and
dump out, rinse, and refill one-third of them each month on the first of
the month.  Then none of the water will be more than three months old.

Where to put the water?  Let’s just say this:  if you really want to do
this, you’ll find a place to put the water.

I will also make one more suggestion about water:  for some natural
disasters, people have considerable warning.  Hurricanes do not sneak up on
people; ice storms or blizzards generally don’t either.  We have warning.

I have always seen advice to fill your bathtub with water if you think the
power may go off.  It seems to me that this is terribly bad advice:  I have
always tested the bathtub in every one of the many, many places where I
have lived and every single one of them has a slow leak through the drain.
No bathtub that I ever lived with will store water overnight – in the
morning, it’s all gone.

But what you can do is to put any kind of large container(s) in your
bathtub and then fill the container(s) with water.  I’m thinking here
specifically of the very common 18-gallon Rubbermaid or similar totes used
to store various items. Many people have these around.  But ANY large
container will do for this purpose.

That way, if the container should spring a leak, OK, it’s in the tub
anyhow, no problem.  If the container does not spring a leak, you’ll have
more water.

You can flush the toilet with this water or drink it (in an emergency only)
or wash with it, whatever.  If you have warning, you can also fill any
large pots and pans you have with water, and any 5-gallon or cat-litter
buckets you have too.  Fill any containers you have with water if you have
warning of a hurricane or ice storm.

You should be able to accomplish the initial water storage goal (and the
can opener, matches, and multivitamins, if necessary) within one week.

Next you sit down and think about water.  You might decide to store more
water, or you might decide that this is enough water.  You can work on
getting better containers for the water too, especially if you had to use
milk jugs – they will become brittle and fall apart eventually.

Congratulations on a job well done!  You’ve accomplished Part One now.  Now
we’ll move right along to Part Two.

II.

By the way, I’m calling this the ANYWAY, Very Cheap System of Food Storage,
because you are going to eat these foods *anyway*.  You’re going to eat
them as part of your regular diet.

People with more money can store foods that are different from their
regular diet.  People with very little money cannot do this.  They must
store foods they’ll eat anyway…. problems or (hopefully) no problems!

In Part One, you took care of water storage for a month. You also
determined that you already have – or you bought – a manual can opener, and
matches if you have a gas stove, and at least a month’s supply of
multi-vitamins.

Now we need to think about food.  The initial food goal I suggest is this:

============
To have on hand, at all times, enough natural and nutritious food -
not junk food – to keep you alive for one month *without needing to cook
anything*.

This food must not require refrigeration – and it must keep a long time.

===========

This seems to me a very reasonable *initial* goal; after you have
accomplished this, then you can reassess the situation and decide where you
want to go from there.  You may want to stop there.  You may want to get
more varied foods.  You may want to get some way to cook in an emergency.
You may want to continue to with more of the same foods.

OK, how to accomplish this initial goal, and to spend the minimum necessary
amount?

This is what I suggest; but I caution you:  you are going to be eating
these foods *regularly* and *anyway*.  If you are allergic to any of the
foods I suggest or cannot eat them for some other reason, or you just
cannot stand them, then you need to find a substitute.

The quantities given are for one month for one person.  If you have more
than one person in your household, you will need to increase the
quantities.

The first food that I suggest you buy is rolled oats:  you can buy – in
every supermarket that I have ever seen in the USA or Canada – regular
rolled oats or quick-cooking rolled oats.  (I hope you can eat oats; it is
difficult to find a substitute for them because you can eat them uncooked,
and that is not true of most grains.  I know of two possible substitutes,
but they cost considerably more.  More on that later.)

Please don’t buy instant oats which are generally jammed full of sugar and
artificial flavor and are a rip-off. But regular or quick-cooking rolled
oats are a very valuable food.

You may call these ‘oatmeal’ or (as in the UK) ‘porridge’ or ‘porridge
oats’.  They’re the same thing.

The usual brand I see in supermarkets is Quaker Oats.  Store brands would
be fine, and might well be cheaper.  If you can get to a store that sells
foods in bulk, they might well be cheaper there.

Yesterday, we bought regular rolled oats – in two large plastic bags – at a
little general store here that has a few bulk foods.  We paid $0.71 per
pound – we bought approximately 15 lbs of rolled oats.

I eat these regularly.  My husband also eats ‘porridge’ for his breakfast
regularly – he prefers the quick-cooking oats and he has enough on hand at
present; so we didn’t need to buy any for him yesterday.

We’ll come back to the price per pound in a little bit…..

You can eat these oats in one of three ways – and two of them do not
require any cooking because oats are actually partially cooked before we
buy them, as part of their processing.  This is why we can eat them
uncooked.  I do eat them uncooked, regularly, in homemade muesli.

1.  Cooked, in normal times.  Then you have hot oatmeal for some of your
breakfasts.  This is a very valuable and nutritious food.  Add raisins, or
other fruit, and if you wish, serve with milk.  My father didn’t put milk
on hot cereal (including oatmeal), he dotted it with butter or margarine,
then sprinkled a little cinnamon and brown sugar on it.  Hot cereal is nice
that way too.  You can cook oatmeal either on the stove top or in the
microwave.  Just follow the directions on the box.  If you cook it in the
microwave, it wants to puff up and get all over the place.  Use a VERY
oversized glass cup or casserole dish:  that will prevent this.

2.  Uncooked, and mixed with fruit and yogurt – this is called muesli.  I
eat it for breakfast most days.  Just the uncooked oats, fruit, plus
yogurt. Add raisins and sunflower seeds if you wish, during normal times.
You can soften the oats by mixing them with yogurt (or fruit juice) ahead
of time, or you can do it, and then eat them right away.

3.  As a cold cereal:  in this case (and I eat this too), you put the oats
in a bowl, add raisins if you have them, perhaps a sliced banana if you
have bananas.  Then you pour milk over them and eat them as a cold cereal.
If you have no milk, you could use fruit juice.  If you have no fruit
juice, you could use water.

The nutritional value of rolled oats (with no additions) is as follows:

Rolled oats, dry – 4 oz   Calories – 434
Grams of protein – 18

You could eat – IF YOU HAD VERY LITTLE OTHER FOOD AVAILABLE BECAUSE
OF SOME EMERGENCY – 8 oz of oats daily.  That would give you 868 calories
and 36 grams of protein.  This is a *very* substantial part of a woman’s calorie
and protein requirements; it’s even a substantial part of a man’s calorie
and protein requirements, for that matter.

So I’m going to recommend that you wind up with 15 lbs of rolled oats *per
person* for storage for emergencies – figuring on eating 8 oz of them per
day.  I do *not* recommend that you eat this many ounces of oats except in
case of dire emergency.

I do recommend that you eat oats for breakfast two or three times per week
*in normal times*.  I do this, I eat about 4 oz of oats for breakfast
(about 1/2 cup), along with fruit and yogurt.  Or if I want a hot
breakfast, then I cook the rolled oats with raisins, then slice a banana on
top, and add milk.  It’s a very substantial and good-tasting breakfast.

How much will this 15 lbs of rolled oats cost?  Well, let’s assume that you
must pay more than the $0.71 we just paid per pound.  Let’s assume you pay
as much as $1.00 per pound.  The 15 lbs of oats will have cost you about
$15.

Once you have managed to save the 15 lbs, then you just keep replacing it;
never let it go much lower than this.  Or you can decide to buy more and
keep 20 pounds on hand, if you prefer.  Or 30 lbs or even 50 lbs.  I
wouldn’t keep much more oats per person on hand than that.  But they do
keep a long time.

Note that you are now buying the oats *as part of your normal breakfast
regime*.  So you don’t need to set aside separate ‘food storage money’ for
oats anymore; you can use your normal food budget for this.  This gives you
more money for other food storage.

If you cannot eat oats for some reason, the only two substitutes that I can
think of *that don’t require cooking, do not require refrigeration, and
keep a long time and are very nutritious* are sunflower seeds or
Scandinavian-style crisp bread, such as Kavli and Wasa Brod.  The crisp
breads are available in normal supermarkets.  The crisp breads are mainly
whole grains; they are nutritious.  I don’t know if sunflower seeds are
available in normal supermarkets or not.  If they are, you want to buy
uncooked, unsalted, sunflower seeds if at all possible.  They won’t keep as
long as oats or crispbread, however.  (Sunflower seeds would be a really
valuable addition to your oats, if you can afford to buy them.  In normal
times, they should be kept refrigerated or frozen.)

Now what other foods do I recommend you start buying for the *bare bones
minimal, cheapest possible, useful food storage*?

I recommend that you buy canned beans too.  Not baked beans, just plain
canned beans.  There are many kinds, they all have approximately the same
food values, and they all cost about the same as far as I know.  If you
live alone I suggest you buy the small cans of beans – approximately 16 oz
per can.  There are black beans, kidney beans, white beans, pinto beans,
many, many varieties.

In normal times, you can base many, many dinners on beans – tacos, chili,
soups, frijoles refritos, salads, beans and rice, etc.

In normal times, you’ll probably want to cook most of the beans (but they
are used in salads and cold plates too).  You don’t *need* to cook them.
You can buy one kind of beans only, or two or three, etc.

I base our dinners on beans *at the very least* two nights per week.  I
recommend that canned beans be rinsed very well with cold water before
eating (in normal, non-emergency times) if you are concerned about sodium.
Even if you aren’t concerned about sodium, I think they taste better if you
rinse them first.

You can find hundreds, probably even thousands, of bean recipes on the Web.
RecipeSource.com is one of my favorite recipe sites; just put ‘beans’ in
the search box and you will be presented with 2008 recipes using beans!
That’s a lot of bean recipes.

Beans are *good food*, and they are a very versatile food.  They are also
good for your health.

I’m looking at a can of black beans; they are probably my favorite kind of
beans.  The can of beans has (the whole can, in total) 315 calories, and
24.5 grams of protein.  If you ate the whole can of beans, which I only
recommend in case of emergency, plus 8 oz of oatmeal, this would give you:
1183 calories, which – together with two other foods I will recommend in a
minute – would be enough for a woman to keep going for quite a while in an
emergency, indefinitely, in fact – unless you are already emaciated BEFORE
the emergency.  You also probably have at least some other food in your
house, which you could add to your diet.

It would also give you 42 grams of protein.  This is not the RDA for a
woman’s protein, but it would certainly keep you going for quite a while,
well more than a month.  You wouldn’t develop malnourishment in a month’s
time if you were eating this much protein each day together with the
calories you would have.  Many women throughout the world live *their
entire lives* with lower daily protein figures.

Other beans have very similar food values.

What does a can of beans cost?  We can get them (or we could get them
anyway, until very recently for about $0.50/can ON SALE ONLY).  But let’s
even say that you need to pay $1.00 a can.  I don’t think you will, but I
don’t know what food costs in other places, after all.

If you plan to store 30 cans of beans (per person), then you would need to
spend $30.  BUT you can also start eating these beans regularly, as part of
your normal food.  And I would recommend that.  Then if you know that you
have eaten two cans of beans in a week, and you are still increasing your
supply of beans, you buy four or six cans.  Simple.

When you get up to 30 cans of beans, then reassess the situation.  You can
maintain that inventory, or buy more beans.  Up to you.

Let’s assume that you want to accumulate the 15 lbs of oats and the 30 cans
of beans before you start eating them…. You have now spent $45.  If you
can only spend $5 per week for food storage, this will have taken you nine
weeks.  If you can spend more, you can do it faster.

But it’s really not fair to consider these costs all as food storage costs;
you are going to put these foods into your regular diet, after all.  Some
of this money can come out of your regular food budget.

Now what other food do I recommend you buy as part of your basic,
bare-bones food storage?

I recommend that you buy cans of tomatoes too; they are very useful when
cooking beans (in non-emergency times as well as in emergencies).  You can
buy stewed tomatoes, or diced tomatoes, or whole tomatoes – they are
equally useful.  Perhaps the diced tomatoes are a little more useful.  You
can eat them without cooking them.  They are perfectly safe to eat
uncooked.

These will provide you some vitamins and some more calories (but not many).
They will also make the beans much more palatable.

So for a month’s storage for one person, I suggest you buy – as quickly as
your money will allow – 30 (small – 16-oz) cans of tomatoes. I recommend
that you use them as part of your regular diet also.

When you have 30 cans of tomatoes, you can either maintain that level, or
increase it.  Treat the tomatoes just as you are treating the beans: always
replenish or increase your supply of them.  Rotate them – eat the oldest
ones first.

The last recommendation for a basic, bare bones emergency food storage
supply:  I’d get cans or jars of fruit.  Applesauce is very useful and
nutritious, and most people like it.  If you live alone, get the smaller
jars.  It will make the rolled oats more palatable.  Many people normally
eat applesauce; it can fit into your normal food regime nicely.

I also recommend that you get some other fruit in cans – both my husband
and I like canned pineapple packed in its own juice, so we keep a supply of
that on hand.  If you prefer peaches, then get peaches, or some of each, or
some other fruit altogether.

I’d recommend building up to 30 cans or jars of fruit, just as you did with
the beans and tomatoes.  Treat the fruit just as you treat the rolled oats,
beans, and tomatoes – replenish whatever you use.

At the end of this plan, you’ll have the following on hand, and your supply
of these will not diminish:  you will always replenish them.

15 lbs of rolled oats
30 cans of beans
30 cans of tomatoes
30 cans or jars of fruit

All of these are now being eaten as part of your normal food regime, so all
the money to replace them should now come out of your normal food budget.

NONE OF THESE FOODS IS EXPENSIVE.  And you would have enough to live on for
ONE ENTIRE MONTH.

Don’t forget to take one vitamin pill per day.

Now that you have one entire month’s food supply safely on hand,
congratulate yourself on a job well done!  Then think about what you want
to do next.

The foods I personally would add next would probably be raisins and dry
skim milk. Both would add interest to the rolled oats.  And you can use
both of them in your normal food regime. After that, pumpkin and peanut
butter would be good additions, as would cooking oil. And CHOCOLATE, of
course.

The next thing I would probably want to buy is a guaranteed method of
cooking food:  Sterno would do (don’t forget that you need matches to light
it).  You can probably buy it in a normal supermarket or hardware store – I
have often seen it in regular, normal supermarkets.  You can build a little
holder for it from bricks.  Then you put your pot on the bricks, and the
Sterno under the pot.

After that, I would probably want a few herbs and spices – maybe oregano,
cumin, and chili powder for the beans, and cinnamon for the oats.  Some
brown sugar would be nice on the oats as well.  Maybe you already have
these in your kitchen.

I cannot think of any food storage plan that would be cheaper, and yet have
the following features:

1.  The food must all be nutritious.
2.  It must all keep a long time without refrigeration.
3.  You must be able to eat it uncooked if necessary.
4.  It must all fit into a normal diet.

If you do this, I absolutely guarantee that you’ll be glad, and that it
will give you a very good feeling of security.

I hope you will never have an emergency, but even if you don’t, you will
always feel a more secure with (at least) one month’s food on hand. This is
definitely worth the little bit of work and expense it requires.

You may want to continue and gradually build up to a three-month’s supply
or to vary the foods.  You may want to think about non-food items too:
garbage bags, a basic first-aid kit, whatever you would really need in an
emergency.

But always keep that bedrock, bare-bones one month’s supply – always
replenish what you use.

I thought it might be kind of fun to share photos of the food we’ve put up for the winter.  Or, at least a portion of it.  If you and your family have done a good job putting up food for this winter take a quick snap shot and send it to me at mattamayer at gmail dot com and I’ll get a slideshow put up in our Hen and Harvest photo.  Please use the subject line “Hen and Harvest picture” so gmail will compile them for me.

The picture below is what I could fit into our cabinet upstairs in my kitchen.  I left most of the jams, jellies and pickles downstairs, as well as the potatoes, sweet potatoes, squashes and pumpkins.  Unfortunately it’s too dark in the basement to provide much of a picture or I would snap one down there.

I didn’t think it was that big of a deal until this weekend when a friend came over, spent some time studying the cabinet and then declared that she was embarrassed by her level of canning.  She then spent Sunday canning what she could. 

So, send me your pictures and we’ll get a neat collage of what people have saved from all across the country.

As we head into deep into fall, and the desire to store apples, potatoes, garlic, onions and the like through the winter is at a peak, those of us without a root cellar get despondent. Okay, maybe not completely despondent, but we wish we had a way of storing these foods for long periods of time.

You see, living in an area where we rarely get snow, let alone cold enough temperatures to keep things in a garage or shed makes it difficult to store these foods without some sort of cellar or shelter. So, what’s a desperate food storage obsessed person to do?

Some might suggest building in a root cellar. For many of us that is not only impractical, but impossible. What’s another option? Well, if you have any bit of yard you can easily make your own mini root cellar. Even if you rent – because this is an impermanent solution and it doesn’t take up much space.

Have I got your interest yet? Okay here goes. Dig a hole in the ground to accommodate a fairly large sized plastic container like an old cooler, a garbage can or a large storage bin with a lid. Place your receptacle of choice in said hole, making sure you leave a few inches sticking out of the ground to prevent rainwater or runoff from entering your “cellar”. You can dig a little drainage ditch around the cellar and cover with insulating straw and plastic as well to further protect your storage container.

If you want a lot more storage space and don’t mind digging a bigger hole, consider burying a 55 gallon drum or something larger. In spite of the space limitations, I would imagine that a long storage bin or insulated cooler would be ideal since you could place smaller bins or racks inside to keep some semblance of order and make it easier to find what you are looking for. But if you are looking to store a lot of large items, like 15 pumpkins, you’ll need to find a larger container.

Once you’ve got your cellar loaded, pack it with newspaper or straw or whatever you have on hand to help keep things insulated and then snap on the lid securely. You want to make sure that the only one getting into your food supply is you and not the neighborhood bugs and critters. You’ll also want to make sure you check your stock occasionally to remove any items that aren’t looking too good.

If this type of cellar works out for you, you can be looking at these kinds of storage times for your bounty:

Apples: ~ 2 – 6 months
Radishes: ~ 3 months
Beets: ~ 4 months
Carrots: ~ 5 months
Pumpkins: ~ 5 months
Squash: ~ 5 months
Turnips: ~ 5 months
Potatoes: ~ 5 months

Now, this solution isn’t perfect or ideal because of the limited space, but it’s an easy option to give a try. Just don’t store your potatoes with your apples!

For more info and ideas check out Sharon’s blog and search for root cellar.
Source blog