What one years worth of family food storage looks like

http://lds.about.com/library/bl/faq/blcalculator.htm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081226/ap_on_re_us/mormon_welfare

There are two internet addresses I posted here. The first one is a calculator of how much food per person in your family or group you will need to have one years worth of food per person. I have had experience with this kind only on a month to month basis when I lived very remote (10 miles from the nearest small town) in the early 1980s at about 4000 feet on 2 1/2 acres. My nearest neighbor was about a mile away by car at that time and 7 feet of snow could and did fall at one time during the months of December to April. If we got over about 2 to 3 feet on the ground we moved our cars and trucks about 1 to 3 miles away and skied in and out to our acreage because only we and another neighbor were plowing the roads which can get very expensive in gas and truck repairs very fast from plowing snow off of dirt roads.

The other thing we did we always keep one to two months worth of food in our house in case we were snowed in for a week or more.

I think if you are calculating for a year or more this calculator works fine. However, after you buy all this food, you must then learn how to use it and to rotate it in and out so there isn't an incredible amount of waste. This requires discipline both in what you choose to buy and how you choose to use it.

I'm sure you have been on camping trips like I have and all the best stuff everyone likes is gone the first few days and then there is nothing left but rice, potatoes and little packages of macaroni and cheese the next 5 days to two weeks. Buying one month or one years worth of food can be like this too.

Another experience I have had for several years now is putting canned goods and packaged pasta in my motor home and then like this year forgetting it was there and when I finally checked most of it was outdated which meant I just lost 25 dollars to 50 dollars or more of food that I forgot was still stocked in my motor home. But because of the high cost of Gas this last year I didn't use my motor home except for short trips under 20 miles to walk my dogs and the like and only doing this just to give the motorhome's engine some excercise so the engine keeps healthy as well as all the moving parts on board.

So learning to use and rotate your food stores is half the battle with this kind of thing whether just cans in a motor home or 1 years supply for your whole family. It's great in theory but in practice it is a pain just like most things.

Is it worth learning about and doing? Yes. If you want peace of mind so that if one day there is no food available anywhere for one month or more that you can still feed your family. In the end this is what it is all about: peace of mind.

The second internet address above is an article at Yahoo that inspired the writing of this article.