S/O apocalypse: How much food do you have?

[luuknam]

I've heard that FEMA recommends having at least a week's supply of food on hand (it used to be 3 days?).

 

ETA: for those having trouble with unknown variables, just guess based on what's in your pantry *right now*, who's sleeping at home this week (sorry kids away at college), and yes, I'll give you enough water to cook your dried beans for the sake of this poll.

[The Girls' Mom]

It varies for us on the time of year.  I've been in a eat down the pantry mode lately, so we don't have as much as usual.  We live rurally and could grow/forage/hunt enough to feed us.  I also have the know how to preserve any surplus grown/foraged/hunted food for the winter.  

[Pawz4me]

There are too many variables for me to say how long our food supply would last.

 

When had I last shopped?

Is oldest DS here or at college?

Do we have electricity or not?

How much water is available (all the dried beans and rice in the world won't help much if you don't have enough water to cook them)?  Having food and being able to prepare it are two different issues.

 

Together with my brother and SIL we own 16 acres of farmland and 6 or 7 more acres that could be cleared, and we're in a good climate, so I reckon we could feed significantly more than our families with that.

 

I don't know that we could hunt much (I think the wild game in most areas would be wiped out so quickly that's a moot point anyway).  We could fish.  There are lots of stocked ponds and lakes around here.  But again--with the currently existing population those would be gone quickly.

[Gentlemommy]

We don't eat much in the way of grains...so our pantry is pretty bare. We have a few cans of beans and condensed milk, some nuts, a box of crackers/pasta for the kids, and some quinoa. 😳

Um, we have a couple of acres and a wonderful garden set up that the previous owners used. I kill plants, so I haven't tried it yet. 😳 We have tons of birds, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, rabbits, and a family of deer that walk through here regularly. I suppose if we got hungry enough, we would kill them. 😟 We have guns, though I have no clue if they'd be good for hunting. We also have my dd's compound bow, but again, I don't trust our skills in using that effectively. Plus we have no knowledge on how to skin or process animals. I do have the Encyclopedia of Country Living, so I could learn lol. There are lots of farms in our area, and lots of untouched wild places. There is a huge huge lake nearby that would provide plenty of fish, though no one in our family eats fish. The weather is mild enough to grow things year round.

[Katy]

FYI you can get a year's worth of 1500 calories of 100% of the RDA for everyone in your home for less than $1k/per person.  I played around in cronometer with ratios of rice, beans, powdered milk, dried spinach, potato flakes, salt, and oil until I covered 100% of the RDA.  Then I checked price per ounce at Sam's club and Aldi's and decided which to buy where.  It wouldn't be fancy or low carb and we'd need to supplement for phytonutrients and variety, but we could survive without groceries for a year and probably be healthier than we are today at the end of it.

 

I did discover that it wasn't such a great idea for short term situations though.  I got more ready to eat food after a bad storm caused a power outage.  Too much rain to boil water outside and we had a power outage for almost a day.  This would be solved if our stove was gas instead of induction, but that's what this house came with.

 

ETA: no, this doesn't include water, but if you're in a rainy enough environment a couple rain barrels would cover that.  Again, I think I'd die in a desert.  I grew up in Florida where we were never at a loss for water - my family had a hunting camp where my dad drove his own hand pump well in a by hand in a few hours one day.

[FaithManor]

Last year I wasn't able to can, freeze, or dehydrate as I had the previous year due to recovering from the car accident.

 

But, normally I can all of the tomatoes, pasta sauce, and salsa that we use in a year in addition to enough green beans, black, navy, pinto, and kidney beans to eat Mexican food once or twice per week or to top our salads (we do that a lot because it's yummy and a cheap source of protein) from harvest to harvest, asparagus (usually just one pint or quart per week though as they don't eat a lot of it), peaches in white grape juice or apple juice instead of sugar, and pickles for a year.

 

We usually dehydrate enough grape tomatoes, red, green, and yellow peppers, carrots, celery, onions, garlic, basil, and leeks to make all of my soups, stews, and stir fries as well, and we freeze two bushels of apples made into unsweetened applesauce, several gallon bags of blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries for fruit smoothies or pancakes. We do have Thompson seedless grapes growing on the property and in a few years will be able to produce about 20 lbs. of those so I'll have to figure out what to do with the ones that we don't eat fresh...I am not a big believer in jam or jelly though they taste yummy because of the huge sugar content. Oh, and I do freeze a few cherries though not a lot. I hate pitting the things!

 

The boys can hunt though with their school work, we've limited it and instead pay a local hunter for a doe each season which I pressure can because it takes the gamey taste out of it and makes it super tender. We could do more than that. Currently, we have a fourth of an organically raised steer in the freezer and half of a pig so meat for more than six months at present. I'm just out of the veggies and fruits because of being unable to do the harvest this year.

 

Between our property (1 acre) and my parents (1 acre tillable for gardening and four acres of woodland) we could manage. We also have three old sugar maples that are dying off which will be coming down this summer as they are starting to lose dangerous size limbs too close to the house/roof, and that will provide more wood than just one heating season which is nice. Last year, again due to the accident and all of the crazy that caused, we purchased wood instead of cutting and splitting ourselves. That was a $1500.00 unbudgeted expense. So, this August we will be busy doing the wood after the tree service takes down those maples. (We aren't doing that ourselves because we don't have the proper equipment to make sure that no one gets hurt and prevent them from falling on the house or breaking out windows.)

 

We don't do it because of being worried about food shortages or the apocalypse or another Great Depression. We do it because most of the agricultural land in our area has slowly been retired as farmers get older, give up the hard labor, and their kids are not interested in continuing. It's getting more wild, and also more healthy due to the lack of pesticide and herbicide use. This makes it really easy to grow organically ourselves, pick wild berries that are healthy, etc. We do it for the higher nutrition content and lack of chemical exposure which we hope will help us all be healthier. Of course the net side effect is that putting up the harvest means that there is a lot of food in the house for many, many months.

 

Dh is also an avid, talented fisherman along with my dad, the original jack of all trades mountain man. They would easily bring home 100-200 lbs. of salmon a season if the situation called for it, plus fresh blue gill, bass, and perch during the spring and summer, walleye from ice fishing in the winter. Additionally, we have tons of local state land with wild blueberries, wintergreen berries, strawberries, black caps and blackberries, fiddle head ferns (cooked, they taste like asparagus), wild asparagus, carrots, and onions, as well as duck, geese, quail, pheasant, partridge, venison, apples, and plums. Even if everyone in town went foraging, it could support the families in this immediate area. Fresh water is close at hand even if one is not on a well. To be honest, despite the hard winters, the Great Lakes Region is an excellent place to be for natural resources for survival.

[Guest]

I have at least a month of food, though it would start getting imbalanced pretty quickly in terms of what we prefer to eat, I have hundreds of pounds of grains and beans, and lots of freeze dried veggies.

 

We can hunt, trap, and fish any animal we want.

 

But we live in a tough, tough climate for farming. Foraging is possible during some months of the year, as is farming and then preserving as much as possible anaerobically, as well as canning. But our land size and location is very limiting for the number of family members we have. If I had to, and planted every square inch of it, I think I could supplement our beans and grains nicely, but I'd need the seeds to do it and the soil isn't suitable for the task as it is right now!

[Arcadia]

I am in a densely populated area. The only wild animals I see is squirrels and some birds so hunting is out.

We keep a small stockpile of canned food and water because of earthquakes. We buy rice by the sack so there is usually much more than a month worth lying around. We'll run out of water in a week if we use that for cooking rice and also drinking. I need to top up water :)

 

ETA:

I don't have a charcoal stove but grew up using a circular clay one at times for herbal soup. I want to get a charcoal stove from the Korean or Japanese supermarket for summer fun.

[Lady Marmalade]

Last year I wasn't able to can, freeze, or dehydrate as I had the previous year due to recovering from the car accident.

 

But, normally I can all of the tomatoes, pasta sauce, and salsa that we use in a year in addition to enough green beans, black, navy, pinto, and kidney beans to eat Mexican food once or twice per week or to top our salads (we do that a lot because it's yummy and a cheap source of protein) from harvest to harvest, asparagus (usually just one pint or quart per week though as they don't eat a lot of it), peaches in white grape juice or apple juice instead of sugar, and pickles for a year.

 

We usually dehydrate enough grape tomatoes, red, green, and yellow peppers, carrots, celery, onions, garlic, basil, and leeks to make all of my soups, stews, and stir fries as well, and we freeze two bushels of apples made into unsweetened applesauce, several gallon bags of blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries for fruit smoothies or pancakes. We do have Thompson seedless grapes growing on the property and in a few years will be able to produce about 20 lbs. of those so I'll have to figure out what to do with the ones that we don't eat fresh...I am not a big believer in jam or jelly though they taste yummy because of the huge sugar content. Oh, and I do freeze a few cherries though not a lot. I hate pitting the things!

 

The boys can hunt though with their school work, we've limited it and instead pay a local hunter for a doe each season which I pressure can because it takes the gamey taste out of it and makes it super tender. We could do more than that. Currently, we have a fourth of an organically raised steer in the freezer and half of a pig so meat for more than six months at present. I'm just out of the veggies and fruits because of being unable to do the harvest this year.

 

Between our property (1 acre) and my parents (1 acre tillable for gardening and four acres of woodland) we could manage. We also have three old sugar maples that are dying off which will be coming down this summer as they are starting to lose dangerous size limbs too close to the house/roof, and that will provide more wood than just one heating season which is nice. Last year, again due to the accident and all of the crazy that caused, we purchased wood instead of cutting and splitting ourselves. That was a $1500.00 unbudgeted expense. So, this August we will be busy doing the wood after the tree service takes down those maples. (We aren't doing that ourselves because we don't have the proper equipment to make sure that no one gets hurt and prevent them from falling on the house or breaking out windows.)

 

We don't do it because of being worried about food shortages or the apocalypse or another Great Depression. We do it because most of the agricultural land in our area has slowly been retired as farmers get older, give up the hard labor, and their kids are not interested in continuing. It's getting more wild, and also more healthy due to the lack of pesticide and herbicide use. This makes it really easy to grow organically ourselves, pick wild berries that are healthy, etc. We do it for the higher nutrition content and lack of chemical exposure which we hope will help us all be healthier. Of course the net side effect is that putting up the harvest means that there is a lot of food in the house for many, many months.

 

Dh is also an avid, talented fisherman along with my dad, the original jack of all trades mountain man. They would easily bring home 100-200 lbs. of salmon a season if the situation called for it, plus fresh blue gill, bass, and perch during the spring and summer, walleye from ice fishing in the winter. Additionally, we have tons of local state land with wild blueberries, wintergreen berries, strawberries, black caps and blackberries, fiddle head ferns (cooked, they taste like asparagus), wild asparagus, carrots, and onions, as well as duck, geese, quail, pheasant, partridge, venison, apples, and plums. Even if everyone in town went foraging, it could support the families in this immediate area. Fresh water is close at hand even if one is not on a well. To be honest, despite the hard winters, the Great Lakes Region is an excellent place to be for natural resources for survival.

 

I want to be your neighbor.  :)  I can a ton of stuff also, and I think it would be so fun to have a partner to do it with!

[Lady Marmalade]

I voted about a month, as to how the pantry/freezer is right now.  We're really lean on vegetables at the moment, and the pig we bought last fall is almost gone- a few packs of chops, ground and one large ham left.    But with the ham and a pile of dried beans we have on hand, I could have ham and bean soup several times over to nourish.  We'd get awfully sick of it, but it would do in an emergency situation. With enough flour/cornmeal on hand to vary up the bread/cornbread/biscuits, and a ton of homemade preserves, we'd manage.

 

Ask this same question at the end of October and I could tell you that we could survive for six months with all the produce I put by.

 

[MomtoCandJ]

A week or two of our normal eating though we should buy a generator even if it's only for the freezer and fridge. We have natural gas stove, dh hunts and fish and can trap between his dad and grandpa there are 120 acres to forage and hunt on

[Guest]

We got our generator when Costco had them on sale last yewr,nfinally, after years of wanting to do it and suffering multiple power outages. We don't used it for anythin small because we don't have it wires in on a dedicated circuit, yet, but it's peace of mind to have it for any larger outages or natural disasters.

[MotherGoose]

I can't hunt but dh can so I counted that.

[SKL]

We always have a lot of canned foods that someone bought thinking they'd eat them someday.  :P  Periodically I make a project out of eating them so we can have some space in the cupboard (though they tend to be stuff I don't like).

 

I'd say we could keep alive for at least 3 weeks on what we have, but that assumes the stuff didn't get blown away in a tornado.

 

I have thought about keeping some canned foods in the basement, but they don't have enough shelf life for that to work in the long term.  I know nobody here would be responsible enough to keep rotating them.  Boxed foods would be eaten by the wee critters who visit from the woods.

[Orthodox6]

I responded, although the absence of "perishables" automatically dictates a non-normal diet. 

[luuknam]

Boxed foods would be eaten by the wee critters who visit from the woods.

 

We finally seem to be done with Indian meal moths. Unwanted pets are not fun. Glass containers should be able to deter most of those though.

[luuknam]

I responded, although the absence of "perishables" automatically dictates a non-normal diet. 

 

I meant 2000-calorie-ish, as opposed to trying to eat as little as you possibly can to make things stretch. I didn't want to say 2000 calories though, because some people need more or less than that.

[Arcadia]

I have thought about keeping some canned foods in the basement, but they don't have enough shelf life for that to work in the long term.

Canned sardines keep well. I bought a few pull tab cans last month for my kids sandwiches and the cans expiry date is in October 2017. My kids favorite Trader Joe's clam chowder in a can has expiry date of Octorber 2017 too.

[Lady Marmalade]

We always have a lot of canned foods that someone bought thinking they'd eat them someday.  :p  Periodically I make a project out of eating them so we can have some space in the cupboard (though they tend to be stuff I don't like).

 

I'd say we could keep alive for at least 3 weeks on what we have, but that assumes the stuff didn't get blown away in a tornado.

 

I have thought about keeping some canned foods in the basement, but they don't have enough shelf life for that to work in the long term.  I know nobody here would be responsible enough to keep rotating them.  Boxed foods would be eaten by the wee critters who visit from the woods.

 

A lot of canned food has an expiration date 2-3 years out.  One suggestion I heard once, if you don't normally consume that kind of food on a regular basis is to rotate half of your stock every six months or so, and donate what you rotate out to a food pantry.  That way you are keeping your food stock fresh, while also donating non-expired foods to a local food pantry.  Kind of a win-win if you can be diligent enough to do the regular rotating. 

[luuknam]

A lot of canned food has an expiration date 2-3 years out.  One suggestion I heard once, if you don't normally consume that kind of food on a regular basis is to rotate half of your stock every six months or so, and donate what you rotate out to a food pantry.  That way you are keeping your food stock fresh, while also donating non-expired foods to a local food pantry.  Kind of a win-win if you can be diligent enough to do the regular rotating. 

 

I also read the suggestion to check your preps when you spring forward/fall backward with the time changes. Which might work if you're the kind of person who checks their smoke alarms then. I deal with my smoke alarms when they wake me up at night because of low batteries.

[SKL]

Right, I know cans usually last around 2 years, but we're not even that responsible.  :P  Just being realistic.

 

Plus, I kind of don't believe in apocalypse planning.  The real possibility here would be a tornado, but tornadoes usually don't take out the whole county.  There would be someone somewhere who could help us eat.

[Guest]

I used to have a lot less income and a lot more mouths to feed, so I'm still in the habit of canning and freezing what's inexpensive and in season. I do not care for the taste of convenience foods, although I do have access to them.

 

I do not personally hunt and fish because I am not a meat fan, but xh has taught my older son, who is perfectly capable of providing for his siblings and as-yet-unconceived children.

 

I don't have a large yard, but if I didn't have to worry about what my landlord did and didn't allow and TEOTWAWKI happened before my sons developed arthritis (comes early in our family) or any other health issues, we'd be fine; it's probably bigger than the garden plot my mom had that provided enough fresh and frozen produce for two teenagers and herself.

 

I have gone up to three months between grocery runs when other matters were more important.

 

We'd be sitting pretty compared to a lot of modern families, as long as everybody who shakes their heads at me and whispers "hoarder" didn't come knocking on my door asking for a handout, lol. I've got way too soft of a heart and not very good "people skills".

[Upward Journey]

I used to have enough to last our family of seven, at least 6-9 months (probably longer), but then the big recession happened and we had to move twice.  So we used a lot of it and gave a bunch away with the moves.  I haven't replenished.  I think we might have enough for 2-4 weeks, and we'd be eating pretty slim.

 

I do have a book called The Forager's Harvest and another called Edible Wild Plants, so there is that  :lol:

 

 

[Entropymama]

I have plenty, but if the electricity went out I'd lose most of it. So even though I said I had food for a month, that would depend on circumstances. If there was no electricity we'd have a giant BBQ for all the neighbors and then hope they'd repay the favor.  :laugh:

[JenneinCA]

I live in a city. No hunting allowed.

I have a very small lot and California is having a major drought so gardening would be difficult at least.

 

We would be in trouble.

[Ravin]

I answered that I can shoot things. What I cannot do is be sure I'll get the butchering right.

 

And in a survival situation, the critical issue here would be water. We generally have around ten gallons bottled sitting around. Also, without electricity we'd lose a lot of food and have difficulty cooking more. All I have on hand for cooking fuel in the camping gear, plus aluminum foil I could cobble into a solar cooker, might last is a week if we plan carefully (and the solar cooker works).

 

But realistically, without a water supply we'd need to evacuate in a hurry, along with millions of others.

[Artichoke]

I meant 2000-calorie-ish, as opposed to trying to eat as little as you possibly can to make things stretch. I didn't want to say 2000 calories though, because some people need more or less than that.

Oops, I misunderstood. We have about 2-4 months worth.

[SKL]

I somehow missed the poll before.

 

I voted that I "can" shoot critters and fish, though I haven't actually ever shot a critter before.  We get a lot of deer and some smaller critters in our yard, and if we were the only people needing to hunt them, we could survive a long time.  But if the whole county needed to hunt them, I don't know how long that would last....  (We'd use a bow/arrows rather than a gun, so don't worry about shooting the neighbors across the way....)

 

Also it says don't assume we'd tighten our belts.  But the reality is, if we were going to hunker down and survive on what was in the cupboards for an indefinite time period, we would naturally limit it to what we actually need.  What we actually eat every day is more than what we need.

 

[madteaparty]

Well I have a quarter of a cow in the basement freezer but hardly anything fresh as we go out of town tomorrow.

[SparklyUnicorn]

Probably 2 weeks worth counting mostly stuff in the chest freezer.  Pantry goods are mostly odds and ends like spices, condiments, bread crumbs, oils, etc. 

 

 

[Carrie12345]

I didn't vote that I *can* shoot animals b/c I've never tried.  But I'm really confident I could if I needed to.  Deer are plentiful and stupid here.  I threaten to shoot them every day and they just stare at me like, "Yeah, whatever, Lady."

 

The real question is could I dress them.  I have books with instructions, but zero experience.

[Heidi]

I voted how our situation was a year ago, when I lived in America, because it was crazy. We had over two years supply of food storage (beans, rice, wheat, sugar, and so on) and two weeks of water storage for my family. The purpose of so much, however, was to share with neighbors should something happen, not to keep us fed for two years. Then we moved over seas and gave most of it away. We probably kept about 6 months worth. I look forward to building it up again when we get back to the states. We gardened, raised animals, and hunted too. LDS are counselled to have a years supply of food and grow a garden if possible; we just got a little over zealous.

[SparklyUnicorn]

I hope I never have to shoot an animal, but truth be told is if I were very hungry I'm sure I could do a lot of things to get food. 

 

 

[Orthodox6]

Some of the pantry food is of scant use without water and a power source.  I don't care much for chewing dry rice.

[KungFuPanda]

My pantry, fridge, and freezer always seem to need a good purge. In the winter we occasionally get snowed in. I the summer, sometimes I just can't cope with the grocery store. During these times I attempt to 'shop' at home and use up the supplies. I just did this last week until the family caved and wanted to eat out. We could probably survive at least another week, if not two, with what's on hand. I don't think everyone would be thrilled with all the bean and rice meals though.

[Wheres Toto]

I put about a week but I didn't even think about the freezer.  I only counted what was actually in our pantries.  Adding the freezer and fridge would give us another week or two.  We have a pretty packed freezer right now.

 

We live in NJ but in a rural area with a large county park right across the river from us.   We have deer and bear in our yard regularly.  Also ducks, geese, a few other birds probably big enough to be worth eating, a million squirrels.  We have a large garden well protected from the deer that we could make bigger if we had to but a limited growing season (although I've read about ways we could extend the growing season by covering the garden and utilizing the outdoor fireplace that sits nearby). The river has fish.

 

Dh knows how to clean most game.  He doesn't hunt much now but he used to with bow and arrow.  I know how to place snares. 

 

Our stove is propane and works in a power outage but our water is well and doesn't.  A long term situation we could convert to a hand pump, set up rain barrels (we get a decent amount of rain), or haul water up from the river.

[Cottonwood]

We all hunt so our 3 freezers are usually holding around a year or more of meat.  So I think we have the hunting/gathering thing taken care of.  We live very close to mountains full...FULL of foraging possibilities and nice, juicy animals.

I have enough space to grow a lot of food.

I garden and provide around 25% of our fresh food.

I have nothing pantry-related stocked up because I don't really believe in apocalypses.

I live in the wheat capital of like...the universe...and I bake bread, so I feel like I we are good on grains/carbs if need be.

 

We are also pretty good with guns, being hunters and all, so I think our defense is mostly in place if, by chance, my lack of belief in apocalypses doesn't work out and people want our supplies.  

[Melissa in Australia]

we live an hour drive from the nearest big shopping center. We only go there once a month ( normally). we buy food  that we do not grow in bulk. (flour, etc)

I preserve  home grown food, as it is autumn atm- the pantry is full as harvest time has just finished. some of that preserved food will last all year. I also have 2 chest freezers, completely full of produce from the garden. DS19 is a hunter and atm there are 2 deer hanging in the cool room.

 

We could increase the size of the garden, but do not need to as the garden is the correct size to provide nearly all the food for our family. What we are having trouble with atm is birds- particularly bowerbirds, that are eating all the vegetables.

[luuknam]

Also it says don't assume we'd tighten our belts.  But the reality is, if we were going to hunker down and survive on what was in the cupboards for an indefinite time period, we would naturally limit it to what we actually need.  What we actually eat every day is more than what we need.

 

I wasn't sure what else to do though. I didn't want some people answering they had 2 weeks worth of eating 500 calories a day because in a temporary emergency they might be able to cut down to that for a couple of weeks, and others answering they had 2 weeks worth of their normal eating patterns. Especially since some people have a year or more of stuff, which means they'd need about the same amount in as out. It's true though that a lot of people could easily eat 500 (or even more) calories less per day than they currently do, for the rest of their lives, without it ever being an issue. Then and again, if TEOTWAWKI were to happen, I think a lot of people would have to become more physically active than they currently are.

 

I don't believe an overnight apocalypse is likely to happen either, fwiw. I think smaller scale disasters can and do happen on a regular basis, with some areas more prone than others, but they can happen anywhere. Hence the FEMA guideline to have a week worth of food (and water) on hand. In run-of-the-mill disasters help will come, but it may take a little while to help everyone if they're Katrina or Sandy-sized.

[Clear Creek]

My husband can hunt, fish, and process wild game, and we currently have over half a deer and half a hog in the freezer. We live in a semi-rural area, but my husband wouldn't have to go far to find open land where he could hunt. I also have some storebought meat in the freezer that we could eat...several hams and whole chickens. We can grow a garden and have enough room to grow what we would need. I have about 22 pounds of veggies that I froze, and about 48 pints of jams and veggies that I canned. We also have a couple large shelves of storebought canned and dry goods. We have a creek, so we have a continual water source (and will find the greedy soul that ever tries to dam it, lol).

 

Apparently the only thing we don't have enough of is coffee. Oops.

 

I guess we might be able to last longer than a month on what we have, lol. I can also stop worrying about being on the brink of starvation...I grew up really poor and have a tendency to stockpile food as a defense against impending starvation but still constantly worry that we are only ever a few days from going hungry.

[applethyme]

There is usually about 3-4 weeks of food between the pantry and freezer.  I also have dehydrated food storage that would probably last us another 4-5 months.  We live in a rural area and have enough land that we could go veggies but do not because we just don't have the time.