SENSIBLE STOCKING & STORING

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How to live from a pantry, our three-month plan.

By Jay P. Curry

This is the age of supermarkets, 24-hour convenience stores, and 30-second solutions for just about every problem. What a contrast to the days, really not so long ago, when pioneers settled into homesteads a day's travel (or more) by horse from the nearest trading posts. A well-stocked pantry was a matter of survival then. Of course, the pantry's heritage goes back even further to the days before stores. as we know them even existed. The Egyptians, for instance, were masters at stocking a pantry with enough preserved food from the summer months to get them through the winter months. It might not be a bad piece of advice to emulate the lifestyles of the longest-lived empire in history.

The pantry is one of a few ideas we need to borrow from the past. No matter what you call it—pantry, Spence, storeroom, stillroom, larder, or as I knew it as a child, winter storage—storing food is a concept whose time has come again for my family. As a contractor, my income is neither steady nor predictable. Some months are fat, some lean. With our pantry we always know we can eat, and we have been able to cut out the quick (but economically deadly) trips to the convenience store. We save the cost of fuel and wear and tear on the car as well. Our pantry provides for our daily needs, and it is also a storage system capable of sustaining us for an extended period of time. Recently, for 11 months we lived using our pantry food storage system without outside assistance or supplies. During this period we found some minor miscalculations, none serious. In many ways as a family, we had a ball. We all worked and pulled together to meet our needs.

You may have your own reasons for stocking a pantry. Perhaps you choose to live in a remote area and you can't be running off to the store everyday, or even every week. Perhaps you just want to savor the flavors of your garden and have the liberty to prepare or purchase items as season, financial ability, or time allows. Whatever your reasons for starting your own storage system, here is a route to help you reach the goal of self-sufficiency. As you start the planning process, pretend you are living in a frontier or pioneer setting. How do you provide for your family's needs? You must get back to the basics of food storage, while gratefully accepting some help from today's technology.

First, you decide where your storage system stands now, if you have one. How long will your currently stored resources provide for your family's needs? What period of time do you what to prepare for? One month, three months, or one year? The Chinese have a saying: "A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step." Where, how far, and how fast you journey is up to you. For the purposes of our discussion, our goal will be to prepare for three months. Three months is 13 weeks. You can make it shorter or longer; the method discussed here will still apply.