Walton Feed is a major U. S. supplier of food for individuals, families and organizations interested in putting food away for both their short and long-term needs. Really, Walton Feed’s mission is two fold: We supply foods already packed for long term storage and we are also a low cost source of whole, unprocessed, nutritionally sound foods for immediate consumption.
As technology in the food industry increases and the foods we purchase in the grocery stores are being ever more processed with more and more nutrients lost, we owe it to ourselves to eat the most nutritious foods available for the health of our families. By eating these foods we get back to the natural foods our bodies were designed to digest; foods to keep us strong. One would think that something this good must cost a lot. But that is one of the great beauties of natural foods. They are the least expensive foods you can buy, costing you only pennies per meal compared to the dollars you spend your hard earned money on in the grocery stores for processed foods. Frequently, we can beat local prices for many of our common as well as our exotic or hard to find items, and this includes your shipping costs.
Most of these same foods are ideally suited for long term storage. Why store food? After all, there are grocery stores full of food all over the country. If you need food, all you have to do is go buy some, right? That�s certainly what most of us have become accustomed to over these years of plentiful food supplies and a healthy economy. But things may not always be that good.
A hundred years ago the average family would have been extremely uncomfortable without a year’s worth of food stacked away in the back room or barn. Today, most of us have lost sight of this. Even though it’s unthinkable, we could still have food shortages in our times. Although it is morally wrong and even illegal to hoard in times of scarcity, putting away food in times of plenty is simply wise. If we all did this, think how much better off we’d be as a community when disaster strikes.
Just about every family has a financial crisis sometime during their lives. These are times when even though there’s food in the stores, there’s precious little money to buy it with. You are probably familiar with the term, “Better ready a year too early than a day too late.” Rotating these foods through your storage room as you eat them will not only save you a bunch of money, but will also give you great peace of mind through good times and bad, knowing you can feed your family if nothing else. With a bit of forethought and preparation, you can be equipped for life’s challenges, and because of it, be more fully ready to live a life of abundance.
Insuring that you and your family have sufficient food in the event of challenging circumstances is just one part of self-reliance. It was the spirit of self-reliance, of “can-do,” that made this such a strong and healthy nation. We have devoted a whole Web area of self-reliance topics for your information. I hope you’ll kick back and stay a while. So, whether you’d like to get a few things for more healthy eating or want to put some food away for that rainy day, feel free to look through our catalog of over 1,302 food and self-reliance products. Then let us know how we can help you…
Al———————————————–
What follows are two accounts. The first story comes from the preface to Ms. Geri Guidetti’s book, Build Your Ark! Book 1; Food Self Sufficiency, where she experienced first hand the “Blizzard of 96” on the East Coast. MS Guidetti is the founder of The Ark Institute. You’ll find on the right side a thread of three different January, 2000, postings from a food storage forum on the Internet by people who had prepared their families for emergencies. I find the contrasts remarkable between Ms. Guidetti’s story on the left and the forum postings on the right.
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…The bread, milk and snack aisles of all the local grocery stores are empty. All of the other food aisles are decimated… Ground travel is paralyzed…
Day 3, post blizzard: [There are] fights for a shipment of milk from a local dairy. Stores… have reportedly hired armed guards…
Day 5: I stood with a shopping cart in aisle after aisle, watching and listening to folks’ reactions to depleted stocks…
Woman: “No bread… I can’t believe there’s no bread.” Store Manager: “Well, Ma’am, we’re sorry, but the delivery trucks can’t get through. But we do have flour left to make bread.” Woman: “Oh…is that how they make it…flour? But I don’t do that.”
Man: “I can live without everything else, but I can’t live without my chips.” …[He] removed every bag off the shelf into his cart as I watched.
Another woman: “What do you mean you don’t have dinner rolls? I don’t want bread, I don’t want milk…all I want is my dinner rolls. It’s the only kind of bread I’ll eat.”
Man: “No milk!! What am I supposed to tell my kids? They live on milk.” Store manager: “Well, Sir, we’re sorry, but there are a few boxes of powdered milk left over here.” Man: …”What do you do with that?”
Angry woman: “But you have to have Kellogg’s Raisin Bran; it’s on sale this week. Don’t you honor your sales?”
Woman looking scared: “I can’t believe this! Look how they’re pushing at each other. People are like animals!”…
Other images of Americans faced with a sudden loss of food and water are still vivid after several years. Just hours after the Northridge Quake in Southern California a few years ago, a television reporter and cameraman for a national news network… were summoned by the owner of a neat little suburban home that was now without power. With his two little children in tow, the man gestured toward his refrigerator. “Look, look!” Inside, the camera focused on …three cans of Coke. “This is all we have, and they’re warm `cause of the power outage. We always go to the store for dinner, and now the stores are closed. What are we gonna do? Somebody has to help us. Tell the President!”
I found myself flooded with questions. Why on earth would parents of two young children, people living in earthquake-prone Southern California, keep no food in their home? …Do they really believe that their government will always be capable of responding instantaneously to a natural or manmade disaster …to save them?
What if the devastation was so enormous, …that government and disaster relief agencies were too overwhelmed to respond effectively? We have already seen this happen when Hurricane Andrew leveled whole counties in Florida. I’ll never forget the angry woman shouting at a television reporter, “Where’s George Bush?? We’re starving down here!”…
© 1996 by Geri Guidetti, All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Posted by Kristi on January 14, 2000 at 20:42:05:
I had said that no matter what Jan 1st brought I was going to use our food storage for 90% of our diet. We already used some so we would be used to grains, beans etc…but now this is mostly all we use. I still get the same food budget money each week…but instead of spending it on food I put it in the bank. I already have over $350 saved…and it’s only Jan 14th!! We have probably 2.5 years worth of food storage…by that time I’ll have a small fortune saved up. Thanks Gary North and all those who got me to prepare…we are blessed more than we can say.
Kristi
Follow Ups:
Re: I agree – Posted by Marcella on January 14, 2000 at 23:10:59
Since Jan. 1, I go to the grocery and walk out with a few items in one hand, usually fresh veges, and that is it. I can go for two years this way. That extra money goes in a savings account. We have absolutely everything we need. When my husband wants to know “what’s for dinner?” I hand him the food inventory list and tell him to choose what he wants. Want pickled beets? Got that. Want Salmon patties? Got that. What?, lost the filling out of your tooth and it is a weekend, not to worry, got a tooth filling until we can get to the Dentist. What? Lost a crown off the tooth? Got a temporary. Got a cold, flu? Got medicine. Hungry again? Check the inventory list, got everything. Lights go out? No problem. Heating goes out? No problem. Got no problems, period.
Marcella
Follow Ups:
Re: I agree …. “Me Three” – Posted by Glenn on January 15, 2000 at 07:45:04:
We started digging into our food storage (the wet pack portion) back in November, when the wife’s current problems first showed up.
Since then its just been a matter of replacing what we have used … and then only when it is “convenient” to drop by the store with our inventory list of what we need by way of replacement. So we are making about one trip a month for actual “shopping” duties. Any incidentals are picked up “on the fly” while we are out doing other things.
We are saving a couple of other ways
(1) When I started our food storage program I had both a monthly food allowance budget and a separate “food storage” budget. In that we are currently using the regular food allowance to replace what we consume, that means the separate “food storage budget” goes right into the savings account.
(2) When your objective in going to the store is to specifically “replace something” you simply don’t buy as much … so we find we have money to spare out of our regular food budget as well.
(3) We have also “rescheduled” a part of the prior “food storage budget” into an ongoing “slush fund” in order to continue to buy other items for personal and family preparedness as we may deem necessary in the future (last couple of years this was simply an “out of pocket” thing done with whatever cash was at hand) … so we can now plan ahead a little better when we want something and be able to tell when we can actually purchase it cash and carry.
And “no worries” is right on … I like the feeling of the added security that having food storage brings … not only that, but I know that what I normally spend on either regular food purchases or my food storage purchases each month, including what I spend on additional personal and family preparedness gear, can be redirected to paying cash for other things if need be. So in one sense, there is always at least a month’s “food money” that is laying around as liquid assets for whatever necessity hits, in addition to any savings that are being accumulated.
Let the hecklers and others say what they want … you can’t teach someone who thinks they already know all that there is to know … only those of us who have gone thru this process can actually see the benefits of having done so … and we seem to be reaping those benefits as well, financially and otherwise.
Regards, Glenn
(Permission was granted by the three posters to place their information here.)