empty shelves – Welcome to my backyard city homestead

We’ve all seen things this year, we thought we’d never see. We can no longer say “it’s never gonna happen”. It already has. It still is. It will again. And again! Stores running out of necessities. Supply chain issues that backlog commodities for weeks or even months, or in some cases – remove them completely. Panic buying which leads to even more shortages, and finally rationing. Not that long before, we couldn’t even imagine it. Now most of us have seen it with our own two eyes. The year 2020. Never to be forgotten. A year full of uncertainty and constant upheaval, where nobody had 20/20 vision.

During much of 2020, empty shelves became common place all over the world.

All of us were affected. All of us were at least inconvenienced, by not being able to get the things we wanted or needed in a reasonable time – if at all. Some of us lost income. Some lost jobs. Some lost businesses. Some lost lots more. The businesses who survived, had to figure out how to reinvent themselves. Some did it really well. Some thrived. Some were so well suited to the new way consumers had to buy, that they had a stellar year. Every one of them adjusted in some way. If they didn’t, they probably didn’t survive. Most will never be the same again.

The question is: “if 2020 didn’t wake us up, what’s it gonna take?” What’s it gonna take to convince us that being prepared could make a repeat of that whole experience so much easier? Look at it as the best dress rehearsal ever! The whole world joined in. It revealed to us our weak spots – things we can improve on. I hope we learned some valuable lessons.

As we strive to care for ourselves and our families, one of our greatest challenges is to find peace in the midst of an uncertain future. Never has our future been as uncertain as it is now. Though we may have the basic necessities of life today, what about tomorrow? Psychologists explain hoarding and panic buying as expressions of the need for “taking back control in a world where one feels out of control”. It leads to “me-before-you” thinking, and disregards the basic needs of everyone else. Experts say that when people are stressed, their ability to reason is often hampered, and they look at what others are doing for guidance. They will likely follow the crowd – engaging in the same behaviour. The great toilet paper shortage in 2020 is the perfect example of this, and has become the “icon” of mass panic buying.

The sad truth is, that none of it was necessary. And it still isn’t. Not because I don’t believe shortages will happen again, but because with a little bit of foresight and planning, we can all be prepared. With preparation comes peace of mind, and there is no price on “peace of mind”.

For over a century the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has counselled its members to be prepared in all things. “If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear” is a basic tenet in the religion. Preparation in all things, not just food. In 1977, then leader of the Church – Spencer W. Kimball said “We have placed considerable emphasis on personal and family preparedness. I hope that each member of the Church is responding appropriately to this direction. . . . This implies the [prudent managing] of our resources, the wise planning of financial matters, full provision for personal health, and adequate preparation for education and career development, giving appropriate attention to home [food] production and storage as well as the development of emotional resiliency.” These were strong words to the members of the Church at the time, and many took them very seriously. The wise counsel was considered “Direction”, and it certainly shaped the direction I took as a young adult, influencing many choices I made then, and in my future: primarily my choice to establish a serious FOOD STORAGE. I guess you could say some of us were “preppers” long before prepping was cool. LOL.

We don’t have to wear a long pony tail and live in a mountain cabin to be prepared. The term “prepper” may be a fairly current term, but there is nothing new about the concept of preparedness. So how does an urbanite prepare themselves and their family for the inevitable empty shelves and high prices of the future? I’ll tell you how. They begin by storing a modest supply of food. And they go from there.

HOW do you start a serious Food Storage?

It is actually really simple. Embarrassingly simple, however, don’t confuse the word “Simple” with easy, it’s about DOING. But with a clear mind and a good plan, we can move forward, beginning right here, where we are today. Below is counsel the Church’s governing body gave to its members worldwide in 2007.

Note that there is no incitement of panic in this loving counsel. It is reminiscent of the counsel a kind and wise parent might give to a child. And therein lies the simplicity of it. While worldwide circumstances and laws may alter drastically, the direction is still clear: to “store as much as circumstances allow“. What members do with that direction of course, is up to them – but if society as a whole followed it, we would never again have to live through the panic buying of 2020.

WHAT TO STORE?

Advice from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, – long recognized as experts in the area of preparation says: “It is important to remember that you should not go to extremes when establishing your food storage. For example, it is not wise to go into debt to establish your food storage all at once. Develop it gradually so that it will not become a financial burden.”

hymn: Come Ye Thankful People
by Henry Alford

There are three main components of food storage: *short term, *long term, and *water. Taking on the project of establishing a full year’s supply of food and necessities is huge, and for many – price prohibitive. But breaking it up into bite size, manageable pieces, removes the overwhelming immensity of it, making it feel less daunting, and more realistic; making it Do-able.

Start by setting a goal to store a THREE month supply, and divide that into months, beginning with ONE week: seven days of breakfast, lunch and supper. You know what is normal for your household. Start there. It is very important that you “STORE WHAT YOU EAT, AND EAT WHAT YOU STORE“.

Think of seven family favourite recipes for main dish meals. Write them down, with a list of ingredients for each. Begin your journey by buying what you need for those seven meals.
Now think of seven breakfast meals that are not dependent on fresh ingredients. Write them down, with a list of ingredients for each.
Fill the week’s menu in, with a list of seven lunch ideas, and write them down with a list of ingredients.

This exercise becomes a little more elaborate as you go through it, and it requires serious contemplation to make sure your choices are manageable for YOUR particular circumstances, especially if you have children in the home. Remember, it MUST be liveable. People say to me all the time “if I’m starving, I’ll eat anything“. Okay, I get that, and I might not even disagree with it in theory, but framing it with such extreme adjectives as “starving” is what panic thrives on. Calm down, and try to reframe your preparation in terms of “normal”. In times of stress, you want as much to remain comfortable and normal as possible. THIS is a huge step in the “peace-of-mind” department. An adequate food storage is not simply for some future ‘zombie apocalypse’, it is for those times when life throws you curveballs and you cannot get out to shop; it is for times of illness, disruption in employment, or – as we all saw in 2020, when the stores themselves cannot supply the general public. An adequate food storage removes the feeling of losing control over one’s own environment.

Once you have your week’s menu written down, go out and begin purchasing the ingredients for it – as you can. Make it a priority, pushing less important things to the side for now. Then, when you have those supplies firmly in-hand, repeat it. Or better yet, create another week’s menu.

Think of seven MORE family favourite meals.
Repeat all the steps above.
And then repeat again. And repeat again.

Now comes a new way of thinking, that is key to making this whole thing work. Avoid the scarcity mentality that “food storage” is food storage and “groceries” are groceries and never the twain shall meet. Don’t buy into that idea of “protecting” your food storage from yourself. That is where the scarcity mentality comes in and starts to mess with you. I have friends who absolutely will NOT touch their food storage. They’ve developed such a mental block against using it because of their belief that it is for emergencies only. But what constitutes an emergency? And when is it big enough? Some of them tell me they’ve got freeze dried food in their storage, and knowing that it has a shelf life of 25 years, they can just forget about it, knowing they’ve done due diligence.

The problem with this thinking is multifaceted. Firstly, they never learn how to use it, so the learning curve never goes away – making using the food seem more intimidating than it ought to be. And nothing ever gets resolved. Secondly, time slips by – and pretty soon 25 years has come and gone. Some of my friends admitted they’ve had their food storage well in the excess of 30 years! The natural question should be “So, WHEN were you gonna get around to using it?” They spent thousands of dollars, on this food insurance – only to have it now, decades past the expiry date. What a waste of a LOTTA money!

I am not speaking against long shelf-life foods. I am speaking against wasting them.
Spencer W. Kimball emphasized – and I can hear his gravely voice even still say “We encourage families to have on hand this year’s supply; and we say it over and over and over and repeat over and over the scripture of the Lord where He says, “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” [Luke 6:46.]”

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USE the food you’re acquiring, and replenish continuously.
This prevents food getting stale and outdated, and saves you money.
The key to making the whole FOOD STORAGE thing work, is to normalize it. This is food that you EAT, remember? So eat it. These are your family’s favourite meals right? They’re comfort foods. You’re used to buying these groceries. So keep buying for them.

Put USING it, into your plan. As you work toward your goal of acquiring ingredients for a week’s meals, . . . . simply add more. You should be in a constant state of replenishment: replenishing more than what you’re consuming. As you can afford it! Never, ever, ever go into debt to buy food storage. That is flawed thinking, and completely polar to the whole principle of self sufficiency behind it. Perhaps you’re replenishing with a little bit more than what you’re eating, perhaps with a lot more. Follow the good advice to “store what your circumstances allow”. In the example of my friends with the expired food: they could have saved a whole lotta money if they had been regularly using and regularly replenishing their food storage. You don’t have to worry about buying two sets of groceries every month: one for the kitchen pantry, and the other for your “food storage”.

SHOP THE SALES
We all look for bargains when we go into grocery stores. When something we like is on sale, we try to pick up extra. With the food storage mentality, pick up a little MORE than extra. Gradually your week’s supply will expand to a month’s supply, and eventually to three months. This is where you start enjoying the sense of peace that comes with preparation.

NORMALIZE
It is critical that the meals you are planning, are as ‘normal’ as possible, because it is also critical that you rotate them: first in, first out. Doing so keeps your food items current, avoiding spoilage. When my family was young, I had an added motivation to ‘normalizing’ our food storage. I didn’t want my kids to ever feel ‘hard-done-by’, if and when we ever relied on our food storage (which we did for short spurts from time to time). No matter how difficult things might be for us, I wanted life to be as ‘normal’ as possible for our kids. That meant that we couldn’t be eating completely one way in the good times, and completely another way when things got hard. That simply meant we stored what we ate, and we ate what we stored.

*hint: You should also have a short-term supply of medications, hygiene items, and any other necessities of your family.

There are lots of resources about storing food, and quite simply – there isn’t ONE way to do it. We all have circumstances unique to us that make our stories a little different. But there is lots we can learn from our own experience and the experiences of others. I intend to create future posts answering questions I have heard, that may hopefully give you some suggestions for how you can work things out in your own home.

Watch for future posts on:
what to store, including personal recommendations
*where to store it – including to freeze or not to freeze
*home canning and other skills for food storage
*how to use
*water storage
*seed storage
– and more . . . .

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your comments about what works for you.

Warmly,

Cindy Suelzle

footnotes:
read President Kimball’s April 1976 talk here – https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/teachings-spencer-w-kimball/chapter-11?lang=eng

read Vaughn J. Featherstone’s talk about Food Storage from the same General Conference, April 1976 – https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1976/05/food-storage?lang=eng

I don’t pretend to be an economist, or an expert in any area other than the way I choose to live. But like you, I have to purchase food, and like you, I’ve witnessed many changes in the way this is done over the years. Never more, than the changes we all witnessed in 2020.

So what is “buying food” gonna look like this year?

As with everything else in our world, grocery buying trends in 2020 were drastically affected by the Covid pandemic. Within weeks the whole landscape, worldwide – changed. As the year wore on, food shortages that modern generations have never before seen, became less of a shock and more of the ‘norm’. Images of empty shelves became common place. Panic buying in the early months, turned to strategic buying, and the term “Food Security” took on new meaning.

There is little doubt that our collective experience in 2020 altered the way we as a society look at food shopping, but have you noticed any changes in your personal experiences? Has your buying behaviour been altered over the last twelve or so months? If so, in what ways?

The pandemic uncovered gaps in the way our food was distributed – as the unthinkable became reality. Our former collective sense of invincibility became a little more vulnerable, and all those freaky people who practiced Food Storage, suddenly seemed a little less strange. Consumers stopped buying just for today, and started buying with tomorrow in mind. Food companies responded by setting aside the development of fun, new products, to make way for the bigger challenge – that of keeping the shelves stocked with staples. And that, was no small challenge!

The pandemic uncovered gaps in the way our food was produced too. We had gotten away from locally produced food, as it had become more cost effective to import from distant producers. This always made me nervous. Market gardens and farms that depended on seasonal migrant workers found that their once dependable labour supply was no longer able to cross borders. Adjustments had to be made. Social distancing requirements made it necessary to close meat plants, and other assembly line productions. More adjustments had to be made. Home gardening skyrocketed in popularity as food supplementation became important to more and more North Americans. Many seed companies began selling out. More adjustments had to be made.

Restriction in movement, and general hesitance to gather in public, with health and safety protocol implemented on every level, created a whole new reality for buying groceries. Newly introduced delivery options were embraced quicker than before, so that consumers rarely had to walk the aisles in person unless they chose to. And all this time, healthy eating remained a priority – even gaining renewed attention. Afterall, our best defense against disease is good nutrition.

So here we are, standing in a new year, not seeing the changes we all hoped we would by now. 2021 looks suspiciously like 2020. After months of lifestyle adjustments, experts believe that the evolution of consumer behavior will continue in it’s current trend, as more and more of us have experienced first hand, the convenience of groceries delivered right to our doors. Online subscription purchasing continues to rise in popularity, providing flexibility, consistency, and food security. Buying ahead requires food stability, so alternatives to perishable foods are critical, and people are looking at the quality of freeze dried food with renewed interest.

Our once ‘outgoing’ society, has given way to a ‘homebody’ society, and for the foreseeable future, that implies a ‘homebody economy’ – of home cooking, home baking, home renovations, home gardening, and DIY projects. Online recipe searches have increased dramatically, and online shopping of food and other essentials, seems to be here to stay.

2020 was a fascinating year, of change that none of us could have imagined at the beginning of it, but we humans are an adaptable lot, and we’ve learned ways of being successful with our new reality. While Covid fatigue is a real thing, and we yearn to get back to our former lives, there is little expectation that we will ever return to many of our pre-covid behaviours. There will be loss in that – of course. But change also implies growth. We’ll figure this out. And in the process, hopefully we’ll hold on to those things we loved about our pre 2020 lives, while we embrace new, innovative ways of going forward.

The challenge of course, is to open our eyes, and to not only ‘see’ for ourselves what those new, innovative ways of improving our Food Security are, but to be willing to incorporate them. Freeze dried food is the most nutritious food on the planet – second only to what we can grow in our own backyard, organic gardens. It is shelf stable, making long term food storage easy. There is zero waste so it is more economical when compared to the 40% food waste in the average North American home. And it is light weight, making it easy to ship thousands of miles. It is the answer to the high cost of food in the north, and food shortages in many countries.

For the average North American home, it is the answer to nutritious, delicious meals prepared in half the time they used to take. For people focused on healthy eating, it is the best way to eat vine ripened, “fresher-than-fresh” nutrition. For people to whom food security is a priority, the 25 year shelf life is a huge benefit.

I’d love to hear your ideas and suggestions for food security going into 2021.

Warmly,

Cindy Suelzle