Plan Your Work: Part 3

Are you overwhelmed yet? I hope not. Usually, taking that first step of seeing what you have and then getting an idea of what you need is the worst. It gets better from there.

Today we're going to talk about equipment and miscellaneous stuff you might need for your food storage plan. Notice how I said "might". What we need to do is look at your plan so far and see if you are going to need anything special to make your plan work. Then you can examine these things and see if they are things you are able and willing to spend your dollars on right now or if you should adjust your plan a little and delay purchasing equipment in favor of buying more food right now.

If you've chosen the Dewitt plan, you need to look at making sure you have can openers, and cooking equipment...like pots and pans. If you have kept your menu's simple, you really don't need a whole lot of specialized equipment for this method. That's the beauty of this plan, you have to spend more time planning, but it is very straightforward to implement. Wendy's method usually calls for some canned meats, which can be purchased but do tend to be a bit pricey. Here's where we come to one of those food storage decisions we all have to make. Do you just suck it up and plop down the bucks on some canned meats, or do you invest some time and money into learning how to can come meats on your own? Maybe a good compromise might be to buy the meats for now, and after you have amassed enough to get you by for at least 6 months, you could buy a pressure canner and start doing some on your own. My only caution is to make sure you don't put off storing these items because you "are going to learn to can" but then get overwhelmed by that process and avoid doing it at all! If you are going to go with Wendy's plan, I would suggest that you put a pressure canner, a dutch oven and maybe a solar oven on your radar...you don't have to rush out and buy these things before you get storing, but you should at least keep them in mind.

Some things about this equipment: you will be looking for a pressure canner not a pressure cooker, the canner will have a gauge and it will not have a rubber or plastic seal. You may find one at a garage sale or on e-bay. If you buy a used canner, you will need to take it to your Agricultural Extension office and have the gauge tested/calibrated. You may also find a used dutch oven somewhere. If you come across one with some rust, you may be able to clean it with a paste of salt and oil if the rust hasn't gone too deep into the metal. You can check out solar ovens here and here, and there are several sites out there that show you plans to build one, like here, here and even a version simple enough for kids here.

Now, if you are on the "Grocery Store in your House" plan, you may need a few more things for your food storage. Like a freezer. I'd die without my freezer. And since my freezer will die without electricity, a generator. A generator moves food storage and self-sufficiency to a whole new level. It opens up options for comfort and normalcy, but it also creates the need to store fuel to run the contraption. Again, another food storage decision. With planning, you can certainly do without a freezer and generator, but if you are willing to lay out the bucks, they can sure make life nice. Keep in mind, a freezer doesn't have to run constantly, so a few hours of running the generator each day can meet your survival needs.

Another piece of equipment you will need to purchase is a grain mill. While you can do food storage without storing raw wheat, wheat is nice because of its incredibly long shelf life, superior nutrition and versatility in a food storage program. A simple blender will grind up enough wheat to make some pancakes or bulger cereal, but if you'd like to make bread, (and who doesn't love a little warm yeast bread in their survival diet?)you need to buy a decent mill. Again, you have to decide on electric or manual or both and in what order you need to make these purchases so that they don't break your bank. As for what type to buy, having recently purchased my own, I'd recommend the Nutra-Mill if you get an electric, and the Country Living Mill if you go manual. I've also had the Kitchen Aid attachment and while slow, it worked well also.

Since I'm under time constraints today and this is a whole lot of information to process, we'll take a break here. You don't have to decide on what you are going to buy this exact moment, but just be thinking about these purchases and how they fit in with the plan you are formulating. All I'm saying is: If you don't have a mill, you may want to store some flour in addition to your wheat. If you don't have a freezer AND a generator, you might hold off on buying a side of beef...got it? Great! See you tomorrow!