As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, I grew up in a home where the prophet’s counsel to have a
year’s supply of food storage was taken seriously. Every modern prophet since
Brigham Young has warned members to prepare for hard times. Hard times can
include natural disasters, famine, civil unrest, and pandemic. Having been
through several hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, and now living in an
earthquake zone, the first one was easy to understand, but it took 9-11 and the
Coronavirus pandemic for me to really appreciate the wisdom in being prepared.
I remember helping my mother bottle produce when we
lived in Provo, Utah. My dad was attending Brigham Young University on the GI
bill. We were far from family in Maryland, and thankfully far from a
grandmother who had nothing but scorn for storing food. Many people thought
like she did, that as long as there are grocery stores nearby, you’d be fine. How
many people know that grocery stores have a mere two-days’ worth of stock, or
that community water towers can only provide enough drinking water for a single
day? The assumption is that if something “really bad” were to happen, the
government would take care of us. When my son Davis did a research paper on
FEMA’s response to Katrina, I discovered how very wrong that assumption was. FEMA
couldn’t take care of one city, New Orleans. I don’t want to imagine that level
of incompetence on a national scale.
I remember sitting at the kitchen table for hours (or
what seemed like hours to a four-year old), pitting cherries one at a time for
Mom to bottle. I recall picking apricots at someone’s farm. I also remember
falling in the creek, getting fished out and spanked by my dad (because he told
me not to go near the creek), and spending the afternoon dripping wet, wrapped
in a blanket, while my parents and older brother Adam finished picking
apricots.
My parents had wheat, powdered milk, sugar, oats, and
other staples, which they purchased from the bishop’s storehouse (now called Home
Storage Centers) when we lived in Utah. I remember them hauling the cases of
#10 cans from house to house with each move, and also Mom’s struggle to figure
out where to store them. I discovered black widow spiders on boxes when she
stored them in a shed, and felt her frustration with my dad when he pulled out
the floorboards and stored the cases under a staircase, where she had no way to
get to them. When I was about seven-years old, my parents agreed to be Perma
Pak representatives in exchange for a good deal on a year’s supply of a new
invention: freeze-dried foods.
Except for the cans of bacon bits that my brothers and
I snacked on, we never ate the Perma Pak. I think for my parents, it was
disaster insurance -- long-term storage. It was shifted from house to house
with each move (and we moved a lot). My mom tried to give me a few rusty cans of
Perma Pak shortly after I got married, but I said, “No thanks.” When I was a
child, she would occasionally make bread from the wheat storage and something
she called scones from bread dough, although I now know it was Navajo fry
bread. I vividly remember the chalky taste of powdered milk, even if it was
mixed half and half with regular milk.
The bottled produce, however, was always delicious,
and my mom canned every summer, although it was an incredible amount of work.
She would put up dozens of quarts of pickles, slaving away in a kitchen with no
air conditioning. I remember skinning peaches as they were transferred from the
boiling water to the ice water. Although I helped her more than I wanted to,
Mom never taught me the process of bottling produce, and I remain in ignorance
to this day. I still love bottled peaches, and I miss my mom’s pickles, even if
they did stink up the house.
My own venture into food storage has been quite
different from my parents’ struggles. My husband Glen and I had nothing extra
on hand until we moved into our first house and a friend gave us a few buckets
of wheat from her parents’ downsizing efforts. We borrowed a grain mill and
attempted to make bread with some of it. It was good, but the learning curve
was steep, even though I’d helped my mother bake bread many times. Like bottled
produce, she never really taught me the process of turning wheat into edible
bread.
As a twenty-something, I still thought ‘food storage’
meant wheat, so we bought 400 pounds of it when our ward (local LDS
congregation) had an emergency preparedness coordinator to help with such
things. When Hurricane Fran knocked out our power for several days in 1996, I
had a wake-up call and realized we needed to have much more stored to feed our
four small boys. After being snowed in for two weeks in 2000, I started to get
serious about preparedness.
When we moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, in 2001, we discovered
two resources: Costco and a Home Storage Center in nearby Upper Marlboro. We
started buying food in bulk from Costco, filling our new basement (hooray) with
canned goods. Back then members were still allowed to work at the church
canneries, and our ward would organize groups to drive to the Upper Marlboro
facility. We canned turkey chunks, beef chunks, spaghetti sauce, and berry jam.
It was a lot of work, but many hands made the task manageable, and we took home
cases of food we helped can. Glen and I were able to put the 400 pounds of
wheat into #10 cans, and began adding many more things to our storage,
including the dreaded powdered milk.
When we moved back to North Carolina in 2005, where few
houses have basements, we searched for a house with a room suitable to store
our fledgling supply. We found a place with two master walk-in closets, and
used the smaller one for food storage. We put in a large garden, but being
rookies at bottling produce, the tomatoes got the better of us. We put up a
dozen jars, but the rest went bad before we could get to them. This was before
we knew it was okay to freeze tomatoes. The learning curve is still steep,
especially when you don’t have older relatives around to help.
The house after that had no extra closets, so we got
creative. There was a large niche wall in the bonus room. We put in a long
curtain rod across the front of the niche, invested in shelving units to line
the wall behind the curtains, and filled the shelves with food. We took another
stab at bottling with a bushel of peaches from the farmers market. Even with
all five kids helping, it was a sticky mess that took all day. I honestly don’t
know how my mother did it. Glen grew different types of peppers the next summer
and bottled dozens of pints of pepper relish by himself. I realize now that I
don’t have the patience for bottling.
The next house in 2010 had a basement with a wine
cellar that was the perfect space for storing food -- since we didn’t need it
for wine. By this point the church leaders were pleading with members, who
ignored the counsel to have a year’s supply, to store at least a three months’
supply of food. Short-term storage became popular. I filled the wine cellar
with things I could buy in cases from Costco: tomato sauce, green beans, corn,
peaches (not as good as bottled), soups, etc. For the first time I felt
confident that our family could survive whatever crisis hit next.
When I was called to be the ward’s emergency
preparedness coordinator, the church had stopped allowing members to work in
the canneries, due to new FDA guidelines. Now all we had to do was call in an
order and go pick up the already-canned foods. The closest Home Storage Center
was in Greensboro -- 1.5 hours away -- so gathering an order for ward members was
hard work. Fortunately we owned a Suburban, so it was manageable. I took
advantage of my new calling and our ample basement to stock up.
At the same time, I began to wonder what we would eat
after consuming our short-term, three months’ supply of ‘normal’ canned goods
-- vegetables, fruits, tuna, and things from the grocery store and Costco --
and had to use our long-term supplies in the #10 cans. Oatmeal, homemade bread,
powdered milk, and beans and rice didn’t sound like something I’d want to eat
every day, although it would keep the family alive. Since Glen and I hadn’t
made another serious attempt to bottle any produce, it seemed as though our
diets would suffer during a long-term crisis. Although we had blueberry bushes
and an apple tree, our gardening attempts have never been stellar because we
plant things but hate to weed.
A friend from a different ward introduced me to
another resource: freeze-dried foods from a company called Emergency
Essentials. EE had group specials every month, which were foods you could get a
great deal on if you ordered more than twelve cans. They had me at ‘free
shipping.’ I began coordinating orders for my ward. For two years, I probably
spent $100 or more on EE every month, stockpiling #10 cans of freeze-dried
fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, peanut powder, and baking ingredients like
powdered eggs and butter, but when Augason Farms bought them out a few years
ago and the prices went way up, I was glad I invested when I did. I also filled
five gallon jugs for water storage and stocked up on paper goods and first aid
supplies. We turned the shed into a chicken coop and enjoyed fresh eggs every
day. We had a wood stove in the house and plenty of firewood. I felt truly
prepared for any emergency for the first time in my life.
When my son’s family moved into an apartment, just
before we moved away from North Carolina in 2017, I set aside some of everything from our
food storage for them. It was a good feeling to leave them prepared. Now that
the church’s Home Storage Center has online ordering, I can send them things
anytime, at least until they’re done with college and can afford to buy their
own.
My food storage experience has come full circle as my
family returned to the place my parents started prepping in 1970 -- Utah. We
live less than two miles from a Home Storage Center. There are entire rooms in
the basements of most homes set aside just for food storage. We have a potato
bin and can buy fifty-pound bags of monster-size spuds for $11, since we live so
close to Idaho. It’s normal here for people to have gardens, mature fruit
trees, and to regularly bottle produce and fill their freezers with fresh corn
on the cob. Even living in a ‘prepper friendly’ area, I was shocked to discover
that many people don’t use their storage. Like my parents, they invest in a
year’s supply, but rarely touch it. In twenty years, they throw it out and
start over. Such a waste, in my opinion. In a crisis, your family will become
ill if they have to live off what you’ve stored. Whole wheat doesn’t agree with
digestive systems accustomed to store-bought bread, for example. Children won’t
touch powdered milk -- although it tastes much better than what the church used
to manufacture.
“Store what you eat, eat what you store,” is my mantra.
I use what we store and replace it regularly. When the Coronavirus crisis hit
in March, 2020, and people panicked to buy what they needed to be quarantined
for weeks, I was at peace. And no, the preppers didn’t create the great TP
shortage, it’s the unprepared that cleared out the stores. My family was
prepared to be quarantined at home for weeks or even months. I hope people will
not become complacent again after Coronavirus is a distant memory, but who
knows. Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt. No, the government isn’t going to
take care of you, neither is your crazy prepper (and well-armed) neighbor. It’s a Grasshopper
and the Ants analogy -- plan ahead and prepare for hard times. It’s that
simple. I've been working at it for over thirty years.
One thing I hope people realize after Coronavirus is that having advanced notice to buy what you need is a luxury. Electricity,
running water, internet, and trucks to restock grocery shelves are great
blessings. The next crisis might give us zero time to prepare. Could you live
on what you have in your house for more than a few days? Something to think
about. And may I say this would be a great year to put in a garden?
“If ye are
prepared, ye shall not fear.” ~Doctrine and Covenants 38:30
