Adding Foods Into The Pantry

When the economy worsened and our weather patterns affected our garden harvests, we made some homestead changes. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen so much financial chaos that we had to face the facts and redefine normalcy. We have seen home values plummet, gas prices rise, insurance costs increase, and the price of store-bought food increase by as much as 50% in a short period of time.  We have seen how the food industry has used short-sizing to keep prices constant while the unit price of food escalated.  Food is costing more to purchase and to make it all even worse, there have been predictions of food shortages on some of our commodities like wheat and corn. There was no doubt about it — a  food crisis was coming.

So we made some changes and we have accepted the fact that the life we had grown accustomed to had changed.  Some call this TEOTWAWKI, or The End Of The World As We Know It, and rather than moan about it or fear it, we are adapting to it. We have approached this by investing more in ourselves and in our homestead.  We have made some changes in how we garden, too.

We grow foods to eat fresh from the garden while it’s in season. We also preserve some of our garden harvest to eat at a later time. We are growing more food now and we are preserving more food now. Because of this, we have changed the way we preserve and store foods.

We also changed the way we stock our pantry.  Just in case. Rather than run low or deplete many of our home-canned foods during the Winter, we decided it would be smarter to never run low or run out of those home-canned foods.

By adding more foods into the pantry, we needed to be more attentive with our stored food. We have also learned how to budget our time so that we could meet our goals on a long-term basis. Instead of preserving foods to hold us over Winter, our goal has been to preserve more foods so that we will have an ample quantity of foods that we can use in the Spring. And even into Summer and Fall, if necessary.

To accomplish this, we increased our garden size and we installed a large rainwater tank for garden watering so that we could grow more food.  Just in case. We also decided that we would add in more foods by home canning more, dehydrating more, and freezing more.  Canning this and canning that, even a few jars at a time, adds up.

At that time, we also began to buy dry foods in bulk.  We are unable to grow our own rice, sugar, and wheat at this time so those are a few of the items that we buy. Now we buy them in bulk quantity. We learned how economical it was to buy certain foods in bulk and in time, we found that by reorganizing and decluttering we had enough space to store dry foods long term.

We also began to buy dry beans in bulk. We grow several varieties of beans to dry each year but we decided that we needed to purchase beans in bulk so that we could store them for the long term. Just in case.

As our economy has continued to disappoint most Americans and food inflation has affected everyone’s food budget, we realized it will only get worse. So we began to buy foods for tomorrow with today’s dollars. In brief, we see that a financial invest in foods has a better return than a financial investment in stocks or even in a money market account.

One year ago, on January 19, 2011, I wrote, “… are any of us getting more concerned? In 2009 and 2010, our household made some changes to our personal food supply.  We began making bulk purchases of dry goods, increasing our own future food supply while it was still “affordable.”  The decision was a good one and we not only saved money, we saved time because our food supply system became our own little grocery store. We purchased dried foods like grains, beans, sugar, and rice in 25 pound and 50 pound bags. As we used them, we bought more. We cycled our bulk foods much as we cycled our canned goods, using the oldest foods first. We grew our food storage system until we met the food storage goal of 1 year’s supply of food for our household.”

We met that goal, and then we increased our food storage for a longer term. Our outlook on the future is much different today than it was a decade ago. All of the exciting retirement plans have vanished. Our investment strategy has changed from having typical retirement plans to personal investment strategies. And given the uncertainty in global finance, the best investment we have found has been food. Well, okay….precious metals, too….

There are weeks when we might purchase a 50-pound bag of white rice or a 25-pound bag of wheat berries. There are also weeks when we may only purchase a 1-pound bag of dry beans. It all adds up and contributes to our food storage. Like money in the bank … but a glass jar of beans is prettier than a bank statement, now isn’t it? 

So we are storing dry foods like rice, wheat berries, and beans.  Beans are an excellent pantry item and they are very easy to store for a long time. We have dry beans in buckets, cans, glass jars, and large plastic containers. Besides, a small cupboard or shelf of colorful dry beans is like food art.

Dry beans are my favorite pantry food.  Packed with protein and inexpensive to purchase, dry beans offer great nutritional value without too much difficulty in storing them. Dry beans can be stored in a pantry for decades. Then they can be reconstituted and cooked or preserved by pressure-canning them.  Dry beans can be safely stored in 5-gallon food buckets if they are sealed in mylar bags. Dry beans can be safely stored in glass jars. Dry beans can also be stored in large plastic jars or vacuum-sealed bags. The estimated length of storage for dry beans that are sealed in mylar bags inside of sealed food-grade buckets is about 30 years. I have learned by experience that dry beans can be stored in well-sealed glass jars for 20+ years. Isn’t that incredible?

Have you got a spare glass jar and lid? Do you have an empty, lidded plastic jar?

Fill it up with a pound of dry beans and add it to your pantry.

There’s no time like the present to add some extra food into your food pantry.

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