Food Storage

Getting Started - Milk

Example

Here is an example of my thought process in figuring my family's milk storage. With the chart in step two I calculate that my family requires 5110 cup equivalents of milk. Once again, a holy dairy cow would come in handy, but our neighborhood restrictions most likely prohibit livestock in our yards.

So let's take a daily and weekly approach to the milk group.

Dry Milk

To allow 1 8 oz. glasses of milk/person/day we would need to store the equivalent of 2192 cup equivalents or 137 gallons of milk. This should be plenty because I plan to mix store-bought milk with my dry milk to make it more tolerable. I could double this amount to 274 gallons to allow 2 glasses of milk per day. But since dry milk is expensive, I am going to store the minimum to begin and include calcium supplements to my supply.

 

Cheese

Since packaged cheese has a storage life of about 4 months, refrigerated, I will plan to keep about 104 cup equivalents on hand. This will equal about 15 packages of 8 oz. shredded cheese.

 

Evaporated Milk

I will allow for 1 12 oz. can of evaporated milk for cooking and baking per week for a total of 156 cup equivalents.

Adding the total equivalents of each milk product I arrive at a total of 2452 cup equivalents of milk. This is about half of the recommended amount. However by having vitamin and calcium supplements on hand I can ensure we are getting our calcium requirements. Over time I can try to double my dry milk supply.