Keeping the Essential Foods going

[MaryN]

I've decided to give myself a bit of a challenge. After reading a few articles recommending that preppers keep so much food stocks in hand to cover the period post SHTF, I started thinking. What happens when those food essentials run out? Now that might seem an obvious question with a simple answer - just get some more in, but what happens if there are no more supplies immediately available? The hungry hoardes have raided the supermarkets and your stocks of basic foods are down to the crumbline. Could you replace them from your own survival experience; sideways thinking or versatility?

I decided to look closely at a number of what I call basic food necessities. These were flour, sugar, salt & seasonings and dairy. I figured obtaining fruit and vegetables would probably be slightly easier, and meat, again, could be provided by basic smallholder tactics (poultry, rabbits, etc). Game would be available for a while, but what happens when you run out of bullets? Anyone got a spare ferret?

So, let's assume that nice sack of grain you had set aside has come to an end. What next? No flour means no bread, pastry, thickenings, no carbs in fact. Now, I know that some of the Forum members are quite able to plan and execute a grain harvest, but let's push this a bit further. You need grain to sow it to get grain. Did anyone keep a supply of grain back for seed? It's February and the wheat is already in the ground for autumn harvest - could you organise that; find somewhere to grow it; till, harrow and sow (assuming you had seed to start with), and then protect your crop from others? Harvesting, say wheat, without machinery would be very hard and much labour would be needed to get it in - at the right time of year -, thresh it, store it, grind it..... In all honesty, I think this would be more than most people could actually manage alone - you would need community help. Oh and by the way, you need to watch the weather. On my own, could I replace my stocks? Probably not - that's flour off the menu.

Now, sugar, that sweet hit. I suppose you could use honey for a lot of things, but obviously you do need bees. I'll leave the logistics with you. I plan to get a hive or two and will be picking T-Oddity's brains in due course. But, back to sugar. In this country much of the sugar we use comes from cane, and this does not grow in this country (to my knowledge anyway). In East Anglia where I live one of the large crops is sugar beet. You see piles of the beet at harvest time and it is carted off for processing. All well and good. Again, this is going to require land to sow the stuff (assuming you can get seed), and the usual follow up to harvest. I have no idea how to process sugar beet, and even if I could get enough quantity to make sugar, I have no experience of dealing with it. Note to me: filch a couple of the beets next time I see a convenient pile and see what I can do with it. Sugar, may or may not be on the menu - jury's out on that one.

O.k., salt next. I've seen salt made in the salt pans in France. It looks suspiciously easy. It is, after all, basically just a process of evaporation. Do we have salt mines in this country? I'm not sure I could live without salt; it's so important in cooking. I may try to collect a bit of seawater and see if I can produce even a haze of salt. Seasonings next. I guess most spices would be off the menu as they are imported anyway. I would hate to be without pepper, cinnamon, ginger etc., but I would at least have reliable herbs in the garden. Not too bad on this - I could make do.

Dairy..... well, living without milk, cheese and butter would be a hardship. I could obtain a cow or a goat to provide the necessary, but there is a bit of a problem there.... you need the services of a bull or billy to keep your cow/goat producing decent quality milk. I am always surprised that people do not understand how milk is actually produced. They seem to think that the poor old cow just keeps going, and of course she needs to be regularly put into calf to keep the milk flowing. Same goes for the nannygoat. If you are just going to keep one cow for your dairy needs, you might find it difficult to track down a bull. Even if the idiots hadn't killed off everything in sight, it could still be problematic. There is no way I would recommend anyone without experience in cattle to try keeping a bull. They can be very dangerous indeed, and you do need to know what you are doing. Perhaps sticking to goats would be easier. Smaller, grazing needs met by scrubland to a certain extent and you can contain them. So, dairy has possibilities.

So, reading back through that lot, I can see that, without community aid, my diet would be reduced to a very basic one. It would be very weather-dependent as far as the fruit/veg goes, and I would need to be able to maintain some form of pasture for livestock.

To be honest, it would be easy to fail, and I think that many people without any experience is providing the basics for themselves, and without a supermarket to trawl through, would sink without trace.