Preparation for Hard Times

As you can see, we have upgraded our stash from last year.



From top to bottom, left to right, we have the following:
Top row: white sugar (huh? Harmony got that for some reason), popcorn, iodized salt, powdered milk.
2nd row: Barley, evaporated molasses, hard red wheat, rye, yellow corn, oat groats.
6 gallon containers of: rolled oats, soft white wheat, hard white wheat, hard red wheat, and honey crystals in the white topped bucket.
On the front row: peanut oil, hand-cranked grain mill, vinegar, canola oil, a 2 lb bag of spelt (because we don't really know how to use it, nor do we know if we'll like it...this sounds like a situation for Ginny to jump in and give us 50 different ways to use spelt, ahem ahem)

Not pictured is our garden and all of our seeds, which are somewhat legion. Cast iron cookware. Coconut oil. Petroleum jelly. Honey.

Harmony wishes for me to disclose the fact that many of these products are ones we use fairly regularly. Except for the iodized salt...that's just sitting in storage waiting for doomsday. For every day use, we use sea salt or kosher salt. We have used up half of both varieties of white wheat.

We do have an electric grain mill, but got the human-powered one in case there's no electricity, or in case electricity gets to be super super expensive.

I've recently bought a high quality hunting knife and a magnesium fire starter, in case we need to cook with real fire. Now all we need in this picture are some guns, and then we'll REALLY be crazy..

There are some big holes in our plan, which I fully acknowledge. Water - how will we get a constant supply? Hopefully we will still have running water, because we don't have any easy way of getting any otherwise. Firewood - any trees on our 0.146 acre lot are quite young. Of course, if things get REALLY bad (like, really really apocalyptically bad), part of our contingency plan is to pack up the car and head on over to Grandma's, whose property is huge and completely paid off. It's also somewhat in the middle of nowhere and there are plenty of trees all around.

All of the items here will keep for a loooong time, and without refrigeration too. With flour, fat, salt, and water (which we'll hopefully still have), we can at least make good tasting bread. (Technically all we need are flour and water). You chuckle, perhaps, saying that I'm being silly and worrying about nothing. But even if doomsday doesn't come, we will not have wasted a cent in being prepared.