Well, the challenge is over. Unlike the one woman who just kept going, we are ending our challenge at the official two week mark, mostly because I want to be able to add to our food and home stores. Here's what we've learned:
1. We are our own worst enemy. Our habits good and bad, do not have to define us. They are simply habits. We can change them if we want to, or we will change them because we have to. I asked DS16 what he has learned from these past two weeks. He said he's learned that he doesn't have to indulge in weakness, he can chose to forego something X, for something better Y. His example was eggs: at 3pm he would have a craving for eggs. He decided he would rather forego satisfying a 3pm craving for eggs in order to be able to have them every morning after his workout.
Then he said, I realized it's not just physical. It's spiritual too, kind of like putting off the natural man. I can choose to not indulge in weakness or vice X in order to obtain a better Y. I may not make it every time, but I can make the right decision enough times to make a difference. That's my 16 year old, people! Yeah, I'm proud.
We have a gallon and a half of milk left out of the four we started with. Remember: DS and DH blew through two gallons the first three days of the challenge. So we had a family meeting where everyone got on the same page: when it's gone, it's gone and you'll either use a substitute, or you'll do without. I noticed after that DH modified his behavior. Heretofore he would pour 20 ounces of milk and drink maybe 2/3rds of it, and the rest would be wasted. During these past two weeks he'd pour about 8-10 ounces and drink it all. He didn't have to "do without" he simply had to change how much. DH said the same thing: that he chose to modify his behavior, and after a week, when he saw how much was left, the scarcity feelings went away and he was fine.
2. Start now. People look at all those who have been putting food and supplies by for years and think, I'm never going to be that person. I'll never have a stockpile like they do, why even try.
You're right. You may not be like "that person." Guess what? You don't have to be. Cheryl Driggs of Simplyprepared.com, has forgotten more about food and home storage than I'll ever learn in my lifetime. She and I have different views on what kinds of food to store, and that's ok. It's unlikely that I'll ever have the kinds of redundancies that my friend Richard King has (he's like, 4 of every type.) Or have a mini farm like my friend Wendi.
So what? Does that mean I can't start now doing my own thing? Only my attitude can keep me from building up a food storage. And do not tell me lack of money is why one doesn't do it. It's a factor on how much how fast, yes. But it does not keep you from building up a storage....we were fortunate to be on food stamps for 9 months when DH was out of work for a year, and still built up a food storage by purchasing for example, 50# of rice at a time or 40# of chicken when it was on sale for .99/pound. Is that a year's supply? No, but it's at least a month's worth.
BTW, in case you don't follow me regularly: Classico pasta sauce jars with the green banded lids are the same mouth size as regular mouth canning jars. If you're spending $2-3 on pasta sauce anyway, you might want to get some canning jars out of the deal (especially if you're on food stamps and can't buy plain jars.) Would I can with them? Not sure. Would I dehydrate food and store dehydrated foods or rice in them? Yep, and do.
3. Our food storage needs to evolve. We started out like most people do: buying a bunch of wheat. Sat there for at least a decade unused. Then we bought a year's supply of food from Ready Reserve. Sat there for at least a decade also (it was mostly wheat, some rice, sugar, dehydrated corn, peas, carrots.) Then because I had access to an LDS cannery/home storage center, I added a lot of oatmeal in #10 cans. That actually got used. One reason was it was something we already knew how to use. I saved up and bought an electric wheat mill, the kind which actually makes real flour. In hindsight, I should have gotten the drawer model, but at least I have one that I use, and yes, it took me months to save up for it.
I decided I'd rather store a bunch of rice which we actually eat, versus wheat which we don't, so we began buying rice. Learning from my father, I opted to not depend solely on a bowl of rice a day, so I added cans of "cream of's" and cans of vegetables for casseroles. Then I started couponing, and our food storage exploded. Couponing allowed me to add variety and non-food items at or near free.
It has been almost a decade since the LDS church switched gears and published All is Safely Gathered In: A guide to Family Home Storage and All is Safely Gathered In: A guide to Family Finances (Getting out of Debt.) Concurrent with that, I "met" people online who encouraged me to can chicken and were getting out of debt. It made me envision ways to expand my food storage and find ways to build a solid storage of things we normally eat vs "stuff to eat in an emergency."
Then last year my daughter had to go vegetarian for health reasons, and is now vegan. Changing to a food storage which is 100% plant based, non-animal products is a really big shift. Honestly, it's not something I can easily do on my own: I don't have the land to grow, so I am grateful for Thrive freeze dried foods which aids in building a long term plant based storage, and dehydrating (see Day 6: Meals in a Jar.) We've learned to grow Quinoa and Amaranth in containers and incorporated those into our diet.
My point is: we store different things now than we did when I first started. When I first started, I had three kids in diapers. Trust that they eat different things than they did then. If I'd ended with what I stored then figuring "well I'm done," we'd have been in trouble these past two weeks.
4. The best food in life is free. I know I know. You live in an apartment so you can't grow a forest. You live in Texas where the soil sucks. You live in an HOA neighborhood in California that micromanages what angle you park your car, let alone what kinds of things you can grow in your own yard. There's a million reasons why you can't or haven't grown your own food.
But I was at the natural foods store a few weeks ago, and you know what I saw? An indoor mini mushroom 'farm.' Basil and a bunch of other herbs you can grow in a #5 can (soup can size.) Sprouters and lettuce/micro greens containers. Cherry tomatoes can be easily grown indoors or on a balcony. You know what you get when you put microgreens/lettuce and cherry tomatoes together? Dinner. Or lunch. And I hate lettuce, but it's way better than boiled wheat 365 days a year. And it's free. You don't have to be like my grandfather who grew 99% of everything they ate. But you can start to grow something....something that will provide food for your family and something the government can't control. First on our list this week is buying some compost and getting some seeds planted and starting some sprouts.
5. Establish a network. We saw early on that it will be helpful to have a group of barter-ees, and that we would be wise to include people outside our gene pool.
6. Create a plan for "when I run out of X, then what?" DD19 is vegan largely for health, but mostly by choice. My go-to for sugar substitute is honey. Eventually I want to have a hive or two. My question to her is: what is your go-to for sugar if you are not going to modify your anti-honey stance (it's an "animal product" in the vegan world) ? That I know of (and I'm open to learning different) there's no great substitute which you can grow (stevia) in scale or if you can grow it in scale (sugar beets) how do you process it? We don't have an answer for her yet, but it's reflective of the core question: when you run out of X, then what?
7. Store comfort foods. Face it, we live in a junk food society. For us, not having on hand (or the ability to make) things like potato chips made a difference. Not a "we'll die if we don't have it", but being able to make cakes, chocolate chip cookies, no bake oatmeal peanut butter cookies, popcorn, Kraft mac & cheese, noodle ramen, was a big deal. It's the difference between feeling comfort-able and feeling deprived. There's probably a reason the Candy Bomber was such a big hero during WW2.
8. Get Organized!!! Seriously, I cannot emphasize this enough. Not being organized threw a spanner in the works Day 1 and we never really recovered from it. If we were living solely on food storage for real, hunting every day for something would really be a stressor.
9. You can never have enough canning jars, but empty doesn't help you. I was really fortunate to buy a bunch of quart size wide mouth canning jars a few months ago for $5 a case. I am truly grateful I have them (I bought 20 cases.) But I've come to the same epiphany with canning jars that I did with toothpaste. I used to have like a five year supply of toothpaste. One day I looked at all that toothpaste and realized I could be doing something better with the space: something we needed more, like toilet paper, or canned vegetables. I look at canning jars the same way: an empty jar isn't going to feed my family. So I need to start a concerted effort to do more canning. Small whine here: I miss my Turkish farmer's market in Huntington Beach where produce was routinely .33/pound.
10. Find someone who does what you can't. I met someone Saturday who bakes her own bread and sells it. I don't need her for bread. But you know what else she does? She raises her own cows and lambs and sells them once a year for slaughter. Hello! I'm making arrangements to buy half a cow...I may not be able to make it this year, but I can sure start saving up for next. And who knows, maybe someday I'll be able to have my own.
Miley Cyrus made famous a song entitled "The Climb." Really a great song, part of the lyrics are:
"I can almost see it, that dream I'm dreaming, but there's a voice inside my head saying, 'you'll never reach it'....ain't about how fast I get there,
ain't about what's waiting on the other side, it's about the climb."
It is about the climb. The journey of a thousand food storage miles starts with a single step.
Vaya con Dios.
