Sunday, March 6, 2011

Baby Steps...


I was raised on the teachings of "food storage for a year"

Seriously, I think I heard it from the womb... 
Not a general conference goes by 
that we don't hear something about food storage.

And I have found plenty of excuses in my adult life 
to not exactly heed the calling:
... I was a poor collage student
(besides, didn't BYU have some deep reserve for students stashed away in some mountain vault anyway??  I felt pretty secure there..."
... then we were poor medical students
and planning on moving soon anyway
who wants to move thousands of pounds of wheat every few years??!
... then we were poor residents
and were struggling to eat day to day, let alone plan out a year in advance
(in my defense, I did try to store up some here and there...
even tried to get a big chunk once with some extra income,
to which hubby laid claim to some new dermatology books...
... to which I replied that I wouldn't hesitate to burn as fuel for food in 'the famine')

... then we made it to 'consultant status'
... and student loans started knocking on the doors.

... well, you get the idea - 

But it has always been there
deep in the recesses of my brain
nagging, tugging, warning:
GET THE FOOD STORAGE

As I plugged in our numbers to the 'super duper food storage calculator' 
on our church's web site,
I was a wee bit overwhelmed to see that we would need
2100 pounds of wheat for our family
2100 pounds??!  Isn't that over a TON??!
and that was just in the wheat category.
... there are many more categories.

enter: overwhelmed theme music...


This year, I finally decided I needed to do something...
 so I decided I would go for the blizzard storage...
as in:  when a blizzard is forecast I don't want to have to leave my house for anything
(since our last one was such a fiasco... see earlier blog post...)

So I got all excited,
got couponing,
got a bunch of stuff.
Set up shelves to organize it,
having visions of standing back to a hallelujah chorus of angels...

only to realize how little we really did have.
(cue music: whuaa, whuaa, whuaa)
  

Seriously, folks...
not a whole lot to speak of...



... so in a vast effort to keep the enthusiasm, I told myself, "well, this is a great time for a 'before' picture!"
and I decided to document our climb into the food storage world,
one grain at a time...


And so begins our baby steps to food storage project...
adding in a new shelf...

And watching it grow bit


by bit...


even starting to fill these...

with these...
yes, that middle shelf is holding 50 pounds of black beans.
... I feel a canning party coming on!


baby steps, folks.  baby steps.
I'll get to the 2 TON mark.
one grain at a time :)

2 comments:

Steph & Wade said...

Oh my goodness, I totally know how you feel! I've been pretty discouraged since moving since there is no place to store in my house. Well, we just started an addition to our house and yes, it has a storage room just dedicated to non else, FOOD STORAGE! I don't think it will quite hold a year's supply but maybe 6 months? We'll see! Great post! I miss the days when we made bread together! :)

Walt and Eileen said...

Way to go, Jen!! Yes, step by step...
Love, Mom