Straw Poll. How much food do you have in reserve?

[jennyjj01]

Having a food reserve is key to MY prepping angle, but apparently opinions vary.

So, how long could you feed yourself and your at-home family if all the shops closed at midnight.

By 'Feed yourself' I mean with a reasonable and acceptable diet, rather than bare survival on gruel.

3 Days?
7 Days?
A month?
3 months?
6 months?
12 months?

What's your rationale?
To what extent would your feeding yourself rely on what you would grow, forage, or trade?

I'll start you off.
6-9 months, with the diet getting grim after 6 months. Would have been more except I threw some out.
To buy some time in what I see as a reasonably likely situation.
No real ability to grow or forage more.

Water, and energy of course, are a whole different issue.

[Quill]

Honestly only about 2-3 weeks worth, 2026 is definitely going to be a year of stocking up

[GeraldTheBonzai]

We have probably a month or so. The biggest issue is storage. Things like tinned food is ok but i'd like to hold more basics, like flour and pasta etc. Can't store them outside so it has to be in the house. Which takes up space...

[Frnc]

About a month or so. I've never really calculated it. I do have more room now the lodgers have gone, so just need to stock up a bit. My staple rotational prep foods are pasta, tins of tuna, and tubes of tomato puree. I always have a bag of oats (0.8kg) and a box of cornflakes, so that's about a month's breakfasts. I have quite a bit in the freezer that obviously wouldn't keep long in a total grid down, but it's there, anyway. I also keep tins of butter beans which I make into baked beans with some of the tomato puree plus a bit of sugar, vinegar, Worcester sauce etc. I keep a big tin of Nido (dried whole milk) on top of the fridge. I buy some stuff in bulk anyway, eg boxes of 30 Koka noodles, 6 x 140g Nescafe Azera, Bisto reduced salt gravy in 1.8kg bags.

Also have some freeze dried meals and lifeboat ration bars in my BOB.

And one large FYP tin, I forget what, mac and cheese or egg, something like that, extremely long shelf life.

[Nurseandy]

We're just reaching the end of being snowed in since 1st January, could probably get out today but likely wait until tomorrow. We're a family of five (two adults, 3 late teens and two cats). We've had a very comfortable 10 days, no shortages, no change to diet, but running out of eggs, milk, breakfast cereal and bread now and only have frozen veg.
If we dig into the preps we could easily go another month but menu would become interesting.
Plan to up our flour supplies and get some powdered milk (I'm lactose intolerant so we're experimenting with dried oat milk, diamond lil posted a link the other day)
Oh, we have run out of garden bird food so they've been getting our scraps.

[Winterprep]

Can’t be accurate as I’ve been lazy in keeping track lately but as a family of four I reckon six months easily and possibly up to one year on rice and beans!!

Given current world events though I’m starting tomorrow doing a deep dive into all my preps to get better organised and do a stock up on food thats needed.A plan of what I’m going to grow this year is also being looked at,not a huge space but it can be productive.Due to a busy work schedule last year I grew very little.

WP

[Kiwififer]

I could get through a fortnight but that is it.

I have enough glass demijohns from making wine to last about a month if filled with water.

The good thing about here is we are all pretty good at spotting a crisis on the horizon. I bought enough noodles etc before Covid to last a month and kept it stocked for the first few months, I would do the same if it came to it.

[Ara]

Chez Ara we could manage a month easily and probably 3 months if necessary. By then the menus would be becoming strange.
When Covid struck we nearly ran out of tinned tomatoes so we probably stock about 6 months' worth now. Note that I said we nearly ran out of them, not actually ran out. I'm quite happy with long life milk but Mr A doesn't like it. He's happy with dried milk unlike me so we have some of both.
This morning I was looking at the top shelf of our pantry (I need to climb on the steps, kept elsewhere, to see) where I keep "things not used very often" and discovered items I'd completely forgotten about. I feel a pantry organising morning coming on.

[pseudonym]

6-9 months.

Can't grow anything, Foraging would burn more calories than bringing in.

Water Have the ability to capture rainfall and treat up to 100000 Gallons.

12Kw of Battery storage, charging dependent on solar.

Prescription Medicines 14 months worth.

Heating woodburner 2 months worth of continuous burning

[hobo]

We have about 3 months, of which one month is everyday before we have to go on rations.
I still help run a food bank but can’t rely on that other than a few cans, though it does give me other potential options and a wider network.
Some other good ideas there pseudonym!
We could struggle with water beyond 30l bottles in store.
That should be my focus…