I've been involved in emergency preparedness for a long time. I've got a long way to go to get every together that I need for my family to be as prepared as I would like to be. We have some of the camping equipment we need, some food storage, some radio communications, etc.
One area that is very very important is
Food and
Water storage. There is now way you are going to feel antiquity prepared with out sufficient supplies of food storage. Now my philosophy on food storage is that you need to approach it in three ways. 1.) Short term emergency food, 2.) Medium term storage food, and 3.) Long term garden storage.
So let's look at each layer 1.) Short term emergency food: This needs to be in a form that you can grab it and go. Should for any reason you find your self being evacuated (i.e. chemical spill, natural disaster, accident) or unable to buy, cook, and provide regular mills for your family for a period of time you should have a way to provide simple nutritious meals that will sustain you through the emergency. For this purpose a light freeze dried food product is best as it stores for a very long time, keeps it's nutrient value well, is light and easy to transport in large amounts should you have to be on the move. There are two good sources for this kind of food storage
www.FreeFood2Go.com and
Wise Co. products.
2.) Medium term food storage: Food stored in larger quantities for a longer term of need. This might be for times when you might be out of work, or a natural/economic disaster has created a situation where you will not be able to obtain fresh food from local stores for a longer period of time and you might not be able to raise any food such as during the winter. This category of food storage requires you larger stores of wheat, rice, beans, in 6 gallon buckets or 25 pound. bags etc. and staples in larger quantities like #10 cans of salt, sugar, dried fruit, vegetable protein products, or pasta, many of which you can find at such stores as Costco, Wal-mart, and specialty stores like Emergency Preparedness.
3.) Long term garden storage: This is where your in one place long enough, say your home, where you are able to have a garden space maybe some fruit trees, annual and perennial crops where possible. You should have seeds stored for a couple years worth of production as many seed sold to day are hybridized which will not reproduce from seed. If you a good gardener and by heirloom seeds you can save the seeds from this years crop for the next years garden.
There are lots of seed companies out on the internet that can provide you plenty of seeds for a sizable garden. One of my favorite see companies is
Johnny's Seed Co. They can provide for even a good size market garden.
Canning your own crop is a powerful thing as you get your food at the lowest possible price, with the best possible nutrition with only the additives that you put in it canned up or bagged up and dated so you know when it came out of the garden and went to the table. I know my grand parents and parents both used to can every year to make sure they would have food on the shelf for lean times.
So how are you doing on getting your food storage started or finished up? Do you have a months supply, years supply, 2 years supply? Ok I have to confess I don't have all of mine yet ether which is why when I came across
www.FreeFood2Go.com this is an organization that has brought the Co-op concept to food storage.