Food Storage- Building an Ambitious Year’s Supply

September 21, 2009 | Posted by author

The thought of getting a start on your food storage supply shouldn’t create such an overwhelming feeling of anxiety that it paralyzes you in your tracks, causing you to revert back to your childhood or to curl up in the fetal position, never to initiate this very important journey down the road of becoming more self reliant. If it does cause you to feel a bit anxious in the beginning, don’t run to your doctor and ask for anti-anxiety medication or antidepressants. It’s normal; you’ll get over it. Remember the movie “What About Bob?” starring Bill Murray? The key is baby steps. The ancient proverb states: “The longest journey starts with a single step.”

What will give you the courage to build about a full year’s worth of food storage supplies that you can draw upon in the event of a sustained societal upheaval, social unrest, natural disaster or catastrophe, long-term unemployment, extended emergency, as insurance, a real asset (hedge against inflation) that you can eat if food prices become exorbitant, or for some reason trucks carrying the produce and food products to the grocery stores don’t supply them as they normally do?

The aforementioned should give you enough motivation, but if you are still apprehensive, and procrastination is your disease, let’s run through a couple of ideas that can get your potential energy turned into kinetic energy. First, take a chill pill and realize that you don’t have to do it all at once. What if you sat around worrying about all the food you would ever have to eat to fuel your body to keep it alive for the average man or woman’s lifetime (70-some-odd years). Holy horses, that’s a lot of food, but if you listen to the idea that Bobby McFerrin expresses in his jingle—“Don’t Worry, Be Happy!” then you’ll actually eat one meal at a time and actually enjoy it! You’re not a Blue Whale or a Wooly Mammoth, nor do you have to store food like one would for emergencies. You simply store a little bit at a time (like a full-cheeked chipmunk), instead of getting yourself in a tizzy and trying to be omnipotent. Easy does it– the tortoise beat the hare, the tortoise beat the hare, the tortoise beat the hare (repeat over and over again until you have ingrained it sufficiently in your psyche that you believe it). No, I’m not trying to brainwash you, just to help you gently along in a worthwhile pursuit.

One of Newton’s laws of motion says that pushing against an object results in an equal pushback. When you’re pushing toward your goal of a full year’s food storage supply, you may have some stops and starts, and you may not get it done as quickly as you want because of some unexpected financial roadblocks. If you have developed the good habit of accumulating food for storage and other emergency supplies, a temporary setback won’t stop you. It all has to do with your intent. Getting back on track is easier when you see that you have come pretty far already. It’s like you have a pile of money already in your savings account (inertia), and you are motivated to pile more on because you have something to show for your efforts and you don’t have to start back at square one. It’s a lot better than having a virgin 401(k) and your whole career ahead of you.

When you think of your future and are not just putting yourself in the path of instant gratification over and over again, living only for today, doesn’t it give you peace of mind? That’s the key to happiness, my friends. You cannot and never will be happy until you have established peace of mind. I promise that if you prepare yourself adequately for come what may, you will have enriched your life immensely and greatly enhanced your peace of mind. Be one who can sleep during life’s storms by building your food storage slowly but steadily. You may be a tortoise, but at least you’ll be a well-fed tortoise instead of living the life of a starved hare in the fast lane in the event of an emergency.

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Patrick Gunther of Emergency Food Storage Pros is a guest poster here at the Self Reliance Exchange, and he’s passionate about the idea of having an adequate food storage supply in the event of an emergency. To go along with the food storage theme he also gets his groove on when he talks about emergency preparedness. Pat is “wild” about the wild and trying to educate people about how to survive in the great outdoors. Pat also recognizes the need for self reliance, and is constantly engaged in new DIY projects to pass on to his readers and viewers (you’ll have to check out his YouTube videos!).

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