Many supermarkets have approximately three days worth of food on their own shelves; and as experience indicates, when a known emergency event is coming, these shelves will be depleted rapidly within a matter of minutes. So, to prepare and safe your family’s survival the food storage plan should be part of your general emergency preparedness planning. Living in an urban area presents unique challenges to preparing for these types of events; one of these is growing your personal food for food storage in the event of a long term emergency.
Growing your own food takes several components to achieve success including using heirloom seed products, having plenty of fertile land, large amounts of clean water, the knowledge and the time to grow the foods. You also have to control pests as well as diseases that can wipe out your own crops, plus your growing period needs to be right in order to possess success. Some advantages to developing your own food include: it is typically healthier, taste much better, fresher, offers a wide variety, excellent source of natural nutrients and can be fun and satisfying. However, the shelf life associated with fresh food is measured within days, unless proper keeping and preservation methods are utilized. Even then the shelf life is comparatively short and requires knowledge, the right materials and time to effectively complete.
A major concern of having a garden in your yard in a long term survival event is that it will make you a target to robbers as it’s hard to hide fresh growing plants, especially in a metropolitan area. This could be similar to putting a sign outside your house stating “we are prepared, come take our stuff”. People, who would rather originate from others, than to prepare for on their own, will look for these types of indicators as easy victims for their personal selfish needs. So what should we do?
Growing your own food can be accomplished on a smaller size by growing plants inside your dwelling in planters and pots. This will not provide enough food in itself, but will provide variety and clean nutrients in your diet. Unfortunately, this will also limit what you can effectively grow; for example corn, whole grains and other sun loving vegetation will not do well inside. But, herbs, lettuces, and other delicates should do nicely.
With this in mind, we recommend a large portion of your food storage supplies come from prepared long term food storage products. The range of prepared foods should included grocery supplies of canned vegetables, fruits, meats, seafood and meals. Dried meals such as noodles, rice, beans, seasonings, spices and dried herbs should be well accounted for and acquired as well. Many of these items can be purchased in small amounts as part of your regular trips for your local grocery store and should be well stored and rotated as part of your regular meal preparations.
Another source of prepared meals is freeze dried and not properly hydrated foods from manufactures specializing in . These manufacturers typically provide a wide variety of meals including breakfast and other entr?e meals that are better tasting than what you would finds years ago and provide well balanced nutrients. I personally prefer the smaller packages of complete meals because they are easy to prepare and reduce the quantity of waste from preparing too big of a quantity when refrigeration is not available. These meals are simple to prepare using hot water, could be ready in minutes, are typically simple to store, are very light and have an extended shelf life of as much as twenty-five years. Plus they are a quick method of getting started as they can be purchased in small quantities and will quickly start to increase your food shops. They do require space to store and should be rotated and used first in, very first out as with other food products to account for their expiration. However, the advantages of prepared food storage far outweigh the negatives and should be a major portion for effective long term urban survival.
Many urban dwelling individuals can help prepare and safe their family by adopting a well-balanced food storage plan of small growing operations, adequate grocery products and by acquiring prepared meals for storage that includes freeze dried and dehydrated meals. All of these items can be purchased in smaller quantities on a regular basis to quickly build your food stores. Another item to start acquiring is water filtration systems and water storage items, but this will have to be another message from another time.
Author: HungRojas924
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