Ward Goal: July begin 90 day food storage plan

One year of food storage sounds like an awful lot most of the time, and can be overwhelming to think about. Sometimes its so overwhelming that people think about it and then decide to do nothing thinking its too hard. But what I have learned about doing things the hard way is to eat the elephant one bite at a time so to speak.

This is where the church's request that we work on a 90 day supply of foods that our families eat everyday. 90 days is a lot easier to come by and to work on, and when your done, you will have 3 months out of your 1 year supply already finished.

Here is a website www.3steps.org that has an easy to follow storage plan for getting your 90 day supply together along with shelf stable meal ideas. It is important to store things your family will eat for your 90 day supply. If your children won't eat it it won't do them any good and they can end up starving to death in emergency situations if they refuse to eat.

First make a plan. Choose 18 meals, and write out the ingredient list for each meal. Multiply all ingredients listed by 5. If you buy enough for 5 of each meal, you will have 90 days of dinners. Make a budget. Look over your finances and see where you can cut a little to put to food storage, or decide how much money a week/month you want to donate to food storage and then begin to purchase meals. If you can spare it choose one meal a week and purchase all 5 of the meal ingredients you will need. to make those 5 meals. Try and look for cans with dates that are 2-3 years out. Also be mindful of food types that are fatty or have oil (nuts, brown rice, flax etc.) only have a shelf life of 6 months unless vacuum packed. So when planning meals be aware of that fact and either do without those items, vacuum pack them or pull them out to rotate them every 6 months.

After having purchased all 90 meals you should start rotating them out by eating one storage meal a week. Be sure when putting your cans in to write the dates in marker on the top so you can easily see the dates, so you can use up the meals before they expire.Continue to purchase food to replace the stuff your eating, just be sure and use up all the old meals before you start to dig into the new ones.

Creative Food Storage Solutions

One of the biggest problems I hear about when it comes to food storage is where to put a years worth of food, when your crammed into a tiny apartment and feel like there is barely any room as it is already. I am here to tell you there is a plethora of ideas out on the web to creatively store your food, without it having to be "in your face" to visitors and your family. Here are some ideas from me, followed by pictures from around the web to creatively store your food in small spaces.

• Re-think your spaces often there is unused space in our homes that could be utilized for storage.
• Under cribs, or children's beds or bunk beds - if its full of food there won't be room for toys to get shoved under there anymore, which would solve 2 problems at the same time.
• Under your bed - You can purchase risers for it to make it even higher or to get your bed off the floor.
• Have a bar in your kitchen but no bar stools? You can stack buckets underneath it up to 2 high. 
• Have space under a staircase? Use it!
• Pull out your couch a foot or two and stack buckets 2 high behind it, place a board over the top and cover with a table cloth or runner and use the board to put decor like pictures and such. 
• Floor space on closet floors A lot of times we have things hanging but not much on the floor, put boxes of #10 cans or buckets in the closet on the floor. 
• Put hanging organizers on the backs of doors to put in storage items like toothpaste, bucket wrenches, first aid supplies and the like.

 Bag meals - 90 day supply

 How to store bag meals

 Other bag meal ideas

 Looks Pretty Right? Guess what?

 You got it, Food storage!

 A side table...or is it?

 Boxes of food storage, a table cloth, a picture frame.

 Homemade can rotater

 Magazine rack turned can rotater (check DI)

 Drink a lot of soda or know someone who does?

Food Storage inventory list, so you always know what you have

Ward Goal for June: 2 Weeks of Water

This months ward goal is to have 2 weeks of water for each member of the family. Each gallon is not only for drinking but also for cooking and for cleaning/bathing. Here are some water storage tips to help you in fulfilling this goal.

• Use food grade plastic bottles such as juice or pop containers. Do not use thin plastic containers such as milk jugs.
• If you use a juice or soda container be sure to clean it very well with bleach and with soap to get all the sugar out. Otherwise the bacteria can feed off the sugar and begin to grow in your water containers rendering the water undrinkable.
• You can bring water to a boil to purify water
• You can put 1/8 of a teaspoon or 8 drops of  non-perfumed bleach in water to purify it. After adding the bleach, thoroughly mix the water to incorporate the bleach. Wait 30 minutes then smell the water. If it has a slightly chlorine smell to it, it is safe to drink. If it doesn't add two more drops and mix again. You may do this up to 16 drops altogether, without it becoming unsafe to drink
• If you do not have the funds for a portable water filter, you can purchase coffee filters at the dollar store and use it to filter out large particles from your water. You will still need to purify it by boiling or bleach.
• Gain knowledge on how to build filters out of natural materials such as gravel and sediments. 
• Rotate water at least once a year. 

Remember you can live three weeks without food but only 3 days without water!

Emergency planning Kit

There are a lot of things going on all at once with emergency preparedness. Sometimes that makes the things we need to do seem daunting or we don't even know where to begin, or how to "eat the elephant one bite at a time."
 Bekah at the blog - Pinch a little Save a Lot has a free family emergency planning kit that you can download to make organizing things, and knowing what you have versus what you need a little easier to manage. You can visit her blog and download the free printable here: Family Emergency Plan Printable

Herbs in an Emergency

The Scriptures tell us in multiple places that the herbs of the fields and the plants are for our use and benefit. It is important to learn about herbs now, their uses, what they look like, how to plant them and preserve them for use and how to use them, so during times of emergency when medical aid may be unavailable you may have the knowledge handy that may save lives, or at the very least keep people comfortable when colds, allergies, bites and stings occur.

Emergency Herbs

• Plant usable herbs in your yard in case of emergency
• Top 6 useful herbs – all can be used as teas
• Eccenicia – helps increase white blood cell count
• Mint (peppermint) – stimulant good for colds, nausea – use as a cover for bad tasting herbs
• dandelions – good for liver, and the lymph system (eat young dandelions) the root is best
• Yarrow – good for fever – pick in the fall to dry or make tinctures
• Comfrey – Salves and poultices – use 1 part honey, 1 part comfrey, 1 part vitamin E oil to use on burns, comfrey is known for knitting bone and flesh together again
• Red Raspberry leaves (or any berry) – good for colds, keeps the bowels free and open, cleans out mucus, esp. good for pregnancy
• When drying red raspberry leaves be sure and keep each leaf separate, let them loosely dry
• Lung problems – use lecithin – also good for allergies and asthma
• Chapperael – blood purifier
• Nuclear:
• Transformative iodine- good for small children – fills thyroid with good iodine
• Bentoine clay – 1 tsp. In water absorbs radioactive stuff to get it out of your body
• Black Charcoal- can also be used to get rid of radioactive material- put ¾ tsp. In juice to help fight off jaundice in infants
• Boron – Good to use for radioactive fall out, so is wheat grass
• Viro skin salve – helps with growths (prostate and cancer)
• Mullien – great for lungs and respiratory system – hard to grow and can only harvest leaves for the first 2 years – the mullien flowers are good for ear problems, and also good in salves
• Plague buster – garlic and cayenne pepper
• Tinctures
• Cut up herb in blender
• use alcohol such as everclear or vodka – add to blender
• put in mason jar for 2 weeks and shake jar daily
• Use cheese cloth to strain – put remaining liquid in jar or bottle with eyedropper – will keep for up to 50 years
• ALWAYS do each herb separate then combine as tinctures to get the right and full maximum effect of each herb
• For dry herbs – use 1 part herb, glycerin and water – 60-70 % alcohol

Emergency Childbirth

I had the opportunity to attend the Emergency Preparedness Expo several weekends ago. I have condensed my notes, and typed them up. I will be posting information here for you to read and learn about in the coming weeks. This week I will be sharing the information I received from a midwife about how to help an expectant mother deliver her child during an emergency. As sisters this information is critical for each of us to know, so that we can help ourselves and each other when life happens during difficult circumstances.

Emergency Child Birth

• Stress and environmental changes effect a pregnant woman
• Attitude is most important – Calm the expectant mother
• There are fewer complications without the use of drugs – give her assurance
• Who would be good for a birth team?
• Vital signs/ nursing
• People with calm demeanor
• Towel dry baby off and do skin to skin with mother – be sure to towel off the head first to keep baby warm
• To keep a baby from bleeding out:
• You will need 2 clamps or cotton tie offs (needs to be sterile)
• Clamp umbilical cord an inch apart and cut in between with sterile scissors or scalpel
• Leave at least 2 inches of umbilical cord on baby in case he/she needs an IV
• Keep tools nearby
• Keep a 3oz. Bulb syringe (boil 15-20 min. to sterilize) along with scalpel, and clamps
• Use bowls to keep tools in with chuck sheets in between layers of tools to keep things sterile, bowls keep tools from falling to the ground and becoming dirty
• If giving birth in the home Dad or person delivering can just wash hands, everyone else should have hands washed and wear gloves.
• When the water breaks, if there is color - it means the baby had a bowel movement, as soon as the babys head shows use the bulb syringe to first:
• stick bulb into side of the mouth
• then use it in the nose
• this keeps the baby from getting pneumonia
• Do Not Yank on the Cord – it may not be long enough to put the baby on moms chest right away.
• Hemorrhage – birth is not over until the placenta is out and the mother is doing well – a gush of blood means the placenta has detatched
• Encourage mother to push, if she is bleeding heavily, work at getting the placenta out
• use massage
• get her in an upright position sitting on the corner of two chairs, put hand on pubic bone and use a back and forth movement back towards the butt between the legs
• If she continues to bleed heavily get her out of the upright position, from the outside hold the uterus down and in and hold a towel to the bottom to try and stop the bleeding
• after 30-45 minutes the body should kick in and hold the uterus down
• Shepard's purse stops bleeding – use ½ dropper of tincture in 1inch of juice
• can use cayenne and water to douche (painful but can save her life) but you MUST clamp down on the uterus while using he douche.
• Placenta should be out within 10-15 minutes after giving birth, longer than 2 hours is a concern – work hard in the beginning to get the placenta out, be aggressive.
• Slipper elm or angelica root can help get the placenta along with physical (holding the uterus)
• if baby is breach:
• Put mom on the edge of bed her butt hanging off
• have people hold her legs up
• DON'T touch the baby until you see he is full extended and you see the nape of the neck.
• You can then hold the weight of the baby and help deliver head after letting it hang for a moment.

The Great Utah Emergency Expo

There is an Emergency preparedness Expo to be held at UVU on Friday and Saturday April 6th-7th. These are all day events with many topics being covered and even some special guest speakers, such as Roger k. Young and Sarah Menet. Here is a link to the information you will need along with tentative class schedules. It is 12 dollars a person and covers both days of classes.

The Great Utah Emergency Expo

Making the Most of Our Cents

Most of us have felt the sting of economy becoming tighter and jobs harder and harder to come by. In this tough environment it is vital to our families to make every dollar stretch further.  How can we do this when our income hasn't changed, or maybe our situation has gotten worse? We can follow the council of our Prophet and his leaders concerning finances.

Here is a small list of things they have asked each of us to do to help us navigate our changed economy.

• Get out of debt - If we stay out of debt, money that would have normally gone to interest can stay in our pockets or help pay for things that we need more. If you have debt, make a plan to get out of it. 
• Be Frugal - By being choosy about where our money goes we can save money, and we can spend our limited funds on the things that are most important and lasting
• Emergency Savings - We have been encouraged to have a small amount of emergency funds stashed away. If we have these funds saved and available we will not have the need to go into debt to pay for the emergencies that pop up like the car breaking down, illness, or an appliance breaking. 

By following the council of the prophets we can secure for ourselves peace for today without the worry about tomorrow.