A pantry plan for the year, step by step
Interactive lesson: the family in adult equivalents, yearly standards, how much of each food to store for winter and one pantry plan on a single page.
Free sample Chapters 1 and 2 (8 steps) are free. The full lesson comes with the Pantry plan module. Already bought? Unlock
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The whole lesson as text
1. The pantry as one system
A pantry isn't one room. It is everything the house keeps so it can eat when the garden, orchard and barn give nothing.
- One sum — How many of us there are, how much we eat and how much of it has to be in the house when the first snow falls. That is the whole plan.
- Veg and fruit: 30 weeks — In a temperate climate vegetables, potatoes and fruit are eaten from stores for roughly 30 weeks, from November to May.
- Dairy: 18 weeks — Goats and sheep are dry roughly from November to March. During that time you eat the cheese and butter put by in spring and summer.
- Grain: 12 months — Grain and flour are planned from harvest to harvest, not to New Year, with a 10–20 % reserve.
Why: When the plans for preserves, cellar, meat and grain are made separately, the house has sixty jars of pickles and not a kilo of flour in April. This module answers one question only: how much.
- A pantry has at least four places: the cellar, a dry store, a cold larder and the freezer.
- Recipes and methods stay in their own modules; the pantry plan holds only the figures and a pointer to where everything is.
2. How to count the family
A four-year-old doesn't eat as much as a parent who has been digging all day.
- Adult: 1.0 — Adults and children from 15 count as 1.0 AE.
- Children by age — A child aged 7 to 14 is 0.7 AE, and a child up to 6 is 0.4 AE.
- Example: 3.1 AE — Two adults, a child of 10 and a child of 4: 1.0 + 1.0 + 0.7 + 0.4 = 3.1 AE. This example runs through the whole series.
- Add and take away — Heavy physical work, growing teenagers and breastfeeding mothers: +0.1–0.3 per person. Older people and small eaters: −0.1–0.2. For regular guests add roughly 0.2–0.5 AE.
Why: So the family is counted in adult equivalents (AE), not by heads. If you count two small children as two adults, the plan is too big.
- Food for sale, gifts and swaps isn't part of the AE. Plan it as a separate item.
- For one month, write down what the family really eats and multiply by 12. That figure beats any standard.
3. Yearly standards per AE · Locked
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4. Vegetables and fruit for winter · Locked
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5. Milk, eggs, meat and grain · Locked
Buy the Pantry plan module and you get the PDF to download and print, plus lifetime access to this interactive lesson: all 6 chapters, 25 steps.
6. The plan on one page · Locked
Buy the Pantry plan module and you get the PDF to download and print, plus lifetime access to this interactive lesson: all 6 chapters, 25 steps.