Yup, it is September! I’m really not sure how we got here already. It seems like just last week we were talking about getting our kids ready for the end of the school year and planning summer fun. Now the kids are back in school and we are getting ready for fall fun. There are so many fun things that happen in September – I love football, changing leaves, so many things about September rank among my favorites. There is also something about September that strikes a chord with me; it is something I am really pretty passionate about. September is National Preparedness Month. I love to talk/think/do things about preparedness. I am not one of those nutty people who is preparing for the end of the world or the zombie apocalypse. I am someone who knows that being prepared is important so I really like National Preparedness Month. There is so much to talk about because there are so many ways to be prepared. Being prepared means different things to different people. I think some of these differences are what makes it fun to talk about. National Preparedness Month brings up topics like food storage, 72 hour kits, and having some emergency cash. I think it is so important to talk about having food storage.

One thing I do to be prepared is pretty important to me. I think it goes hand in hand with National Preparedness Month. I believe strongly in the importance of having food storage – both the usable short term food storage we talked about yesterday and the more long term, years supply food storage. Lots of times when people hear about having long term food storage, they get turned off easily. It sounds hard to do, time consuming and expensive. It really isn’t hard, time consuming or expensive.

For long term food storage gradually build a supply of food that will last a long time and that you can use to keep you and your family alive in a long term crisis. These are items such as wheat, white rice, and beans. (A portion of these items may be rotated in your usable short term food storage but we’ll talk about that later.) These items do not need to be bought all at once. Once you know how much your family needs you can pick up a can of something here and a can of something there.

Water is also part of long term food storage. You need to store enough water for your family and enough product to purify water for your family. Again, it doesn’t have to be hard, time consuming or expensive.

Need a good place to start? Go try the long term food storage calculator HERE. It will give you a great idea on where your end goal needs to be as far as kinds of foods and amounts. Then come back tomorrow and we’ll talk about it and where to start.