TGIF ~ Food Supply Inventory Program ~

Wow this was very useful Knuckles. I have been wanting to do something like this for a while. I have a similar one (although a lot simpler) for my firearms, ammo and magazines.

I am surprised that no one else has commented on this ?. So if I am the only one who found this useful just know that you helped me along the way with this.

Thanks :).

WOW...a compliment 😆 😆 Thanks.

I found it easy to use Knuckles. But then again I have worked a fair bit with Excel sheets. However putting one like this together would be hard for me as I also have forgotten many formulas etc over the years. Its always easier to explain what you want and someone goes off and does that task for you :).

I will go over this over the next few weeks and enter all our data so I will get back to you with any suggested changes. But its a great tool even right out of the box so I would recommend others to use it too.

LOL !. Yeah my wife is an accountant and a wizard with Excel and I am sure she would laugh if she saw my ammo excel sheet. Its simple. With few formulas but it lists each of my firearms with a little data and then I list what I have on hand and what I need to purchase. Along with how many magazines for each that has magazines. Not that you need many for your hunting firearms any way. I would be willing to share if you really want to see it ?. Just let me know and I can email it to you. But don't get your expectations up :).

Don't get too hung up on the no response. This forum has quite a few "old timers" who can be quite dominant in conversations. I guess you the fact that you are new means you have nothing worth to share and can be ignored and maybe Excel is just not an accepted tool in prepping for them "you are not a real prepper if you don't live like me" sort of thing. Too bad as its really a great tool you offered up here.

Cheers Jensen

I have now reworked my other program and entered the weapons program called caliber/kill in the forum. Check it out and let me know what you think and if I could do anything else to improve it.

I figured that maybe it was time to revamp this food program but would like some input as what changes I should make. I keep thinking that folks likely can't make sense of how it works and therefore won't use it. I did the calorie count because I don't know of any better way to measure how far food supplies could last. I also wanted to determine salt intake along with protein and carb count. I know this makes the spreadsheet alot more complex but cannot see any way of avoiding it. Is there?

As mentioned in other areas, bulk storage of items separately would require persons to open many containers to create meals. this would make things more complex is regards to having to search thru bins for each item. Dividing supplies to various locations now becomes complex, as with other scenarios. Therefore mix and match seems much more logical to me. Consuming items that one purchased just because they could buy bulk also creates possibility of lack of nutrition from an imbalanced diet. Yet the sorting and grouping of stores would become very complex when storing in portable containers. The only rational approach is to shelves your supplies as store does. This scenario works for the Bug-In but not the Bug-Out.

These (and many others) are some questions that I haven't seen mentioned so far. Folks talk of storage and their simplified inventory systems without proper mention of how they work, just that it works for them. Listing items in a container is fine and well, but one needs to know how long those contents could sustain "X" number of people. eg: The wife stocks up on sardines because they are cheap and she likes them. The calorie count per can is only 150 while the salt content is 850 mg with just 17 grams of protein. This is a way to get your daily salt requirements for sure but you'd be running on low energy fast. The harder you have to work, the more calories you have to eat or ones health diminishes. And stocking large quantities of sardines in your pantry is not a good thing as you'd be overdosing on salt especially. Fish will help folks get their essential oils but even fishing and eating quantities of fresh caught fish wouldn't provide a balanced diet and sometimes too much time spent for the rewards. Trapping and netting would likely be more efficient in bad times.

Gardeners:

The Gardening in Hunter Gather section is something I wonder about too. Maybe the gardeners here can tell me if they see room for improvement as again, it is sometime I am only reading about, not something I know about. I have somewhat of a system going but you can likely pick this apart without much effort. I often just start and let the idea grow as I write the program. As you can see, I haven't quite come back with a real plan as to how to go from seed to harvesting. Think of factors that I haven't covered and how I can get from A to B in a realistic manner that can be tallied into the rest of the program.

Cmon, take a few minutes and tell me straight what and where you think I could go with this (other than to Hell, that is 😮 ) that would make things easier to understand and hopefully onto a better path than it seems to be taking.

... There has to be a simpler way to make this work and I've just been looking at it from the wrong side (or something like that). If you come up with something, throw it out there and see if I can work with it...or you work with it too as this program is completely unlocked.

Menus:

The pull down menus I started in the Menu section was logically the meal planning aspect, but trying to relate the meals out of the chaos I created elsewhere is why I set it aside.... any ideas?

... Is it worth the effort or is this getting too complex anyways?

Supplies:

It is barely a thought so far. Just enough to suggest consideration. Seems more likely to tie in if I'm to factor livestock into this sheet too. What should be included? Should this just be for food or the whole shebang?

To echo Goldie from somewhere else, I'd simplify it.
I would for sure pull the hunting, gathering and gardening out, and any livestock and supplies you choose to do, and just make them separate. They're not really part of the food storage until they're in jars, anyway.
If you want to include them, I'd just go with the general nutritional information per pint or quart or pound, as you choose.

Part of your livestock issue is also going to be grass-fed, free-range critters, farmed greens/grain/worms, or pellet/milled diet, for all types: hares, chickens, beefs, pigs, ducks. Fat content (and thus calories per pound) and the time it takes to reach harvest sizes vary greatly between free-range and prepared pellet/grains.

You also have to account for winter climate and housing for feed even for the small livestock (hares, winter-hardy and winter-laying birds), because they need more oil seeds and grains leading into the cold seasons the more exposed they'll be.

And when it comes to winter-laying fowl, you run into:
- whether or not you're decreasing your prime laying life by providing extra light and just breeding more replacements faster (for the long term)
- whether you plan to increase the base group by breeding out as soon as disaster strikes (babies more susceptible to cold, plus need even higher protein feed than layers)
- whether you're going to need to provide heating and what your backup for heating is, because once a henhouse or winter feeding hoop is heated, if those lamps go out, you lose birds because they never adapted to the full force of cold, or you have to have the mega of mega insulation plans (+backup feed if you were using a cold frame hoop house for green partially feeding a few hens over winter)

All in all, I'd stay stick with simple on the calculators, and break them into individual calculators if you're trying to make them more "digestible".
-P

Thanks for the input, Mrs Prep. I appreciate the time and will have to work that thru in my head vs paper to fully figure it. When you mention all these other factors, I can see that it's something I don't want to factor in for sure...

The reason I started this was because I saw there was no way to accurately measure the one's food supply unless I went with the calorie count. Once I started reading labels, I concluded that salt intake was high in many of our food items and should factor it in as it is a necessary part of a balanced diet...and then carbs vs protein and sugar were obvious additions to factoring a balanced diet.

Building meals means taking into account what all users store ... and cook.

If you're just looking for a "balanced diet" type assessment that includes age and sex for its calorie, you can check out the Emergency Essentials version.
You have type in most things yourself, but it will give you a day tally and your % of major nutrients and minerals.
http://beprepared.com/company/food-storage-analyzer

You're still going to run into things like how many to take out. But when it's me, Boy Toy, pups and kitty, I'm taking out more per meal and thus have a different "can" count than if it's me and pups because he and Ham Cat have run to make contact with the world.

I actually keep my own ledger of purchases, and as purchases come in, simply build meals in another ledger. I am sitting right there with calories and know what we need as well as how much Boy Toy needs to feel full.
Example:
This size can is supposedly 10 servings, but for us it's 5, if it's applicable for dogs that's 1 meal; if not, 2+ depending on what it is and I have columns to each side that say I need pet meals to go with it, another for if it's got the veggie included. If not for the latter, I leave a line to tell me which of the veggies from that section (which are numbered) is going with that meal.
Chicken and rice turn into a casserole with mixed soup veggies, a different one with broccoli and cheese, and my "+" becomes a base for a chicken-rice soup with bouillon and carrot, pea and green bean blend.
I also keep a tally of drinks (milk/shake type + energy type, and sometimes pick-me-up cocoa; herbal teas are bonuses and coffee and hot tea are "world is never enough" items).
I also plan for a snack every day, and a reasonable sized snack for him (this is not a 1/4-cup pudding or 2-cookie or 1/4-cup fruit man; all three might get close).
Milk/milk sub/milk-like-nutritional value drinks are tallied separately, as are snacks.

My ledger sections for the "meal count" includes:
Breakfast
Lunch/Dinner meals
Veggies
Fruits
Snacks
Milk
Drinks

Fruits are labeled with a "B", "D" or "S" once they are allotted to Breakfast, Dinner or Snack menus, and have spaces for that page number and menu item - which get penciled because many are going to oatmeal, but some to many are going with things that expire in less time than they do.

The simplest way to do a "menu" would actually probably be to somehow link them by category to a pie chart.
X% protein, which meats and beans would pull from
X% fats, which dairy and meats would contribute to, as well as oils
X% carbs, which may be your main calorie staple
X% fruits & veg, which is going to be rainbow or not, as people's appetites, seasons and preferences dictate

Meats and beans with their far-differing fat content will make that crazy. Some seeds and nuts have higher fat contents, as well, than the general ROT, and also fall under a protein.
A pie chart would just ensure people are purchasing what they need to fill in the balanced diet, with each pie chart generated for a calorie base (1200, 1600, 1800, 2200, 2800).
I have no idea how you build it to pull out a cup and a half of beans this time to match the fats and calories of the 1/2 cup of canned ground beef from last night or the 4 sausages from this morning.
Good luck with that.
-P

Wow....brain food! You'll have my brain swimming with maybe a rewrite yet. At least the layout to menus for a start. You sound like you have accounting skills already and that works on the same principles as spreadsheet coding.

I've always been of the mindset to throw everything into one pot a stir because that eventually happens anyways in the stomach and I don't have so many dishes to do. 😉 Yes, it's the nutritional value which should rule, yet we all have our own favorites when shopping and this is why the program has to allow for personal choice in the end. So when writing formula, it's what comes first, the chicken or the egg in the formula presentation?

Thanks for the kick in the right direction. With your organizational skills, you could likely write this program better than I. With all the things you seem to already be doing, you best do this while sleeping though. 😯

That's very sweet. Inaccurate, but sweet. Organized I am (mostly; you should see the SEED binders). Math or computer oriented I am not. Excel and I get on great with some things, plugging in codes is not one of them. For real. It's like computers can scent the numbers and electronics fear.

I'm all about the one-dish meals, as well, particularly when my dishwasher is down. She-Bama actually did a useful thing and spearheaded MyPlate.gov, which is a new way of looking at nutrition as opposed to the traditional pyramids and triangles.

One thing that's likely to be lacking, especially in game meat, bean and rabbit diets, is fats. You could add a "tub of butter" or "shot of oil" beside her glass of dairy.
🙂

Mrs Prep;

Did you ever get time to look at the Hunt/Gather section? I started an idea at the top regarding seeds and planting. I came up with it trying to factor how bi one had to make a garden. Leave it to me to see the mathematical aspect of it first as this is just logic, something I can handle...

The white areas are where you enter the data. The GR section was likely just a copy/paste from other workspace(I would change later...I can't remember) and so just ignore it. The middle section was the concept. By entering the (a)# of servings you expected to eat per week and (b)the size of each serving, I concluded that since others stated the area that plant required, one could formulate how many plants and total SqFt would be needed to meet your demands.

This is as far as I got before losing interest. The rest is again likely for expansion as I often do when following my "write as you go" concept.

Does this idea have merit? Is this round about how you work things out or is there a better way? If you click on the various boxes, you can see the formula used and the respective cells light up to make things easier to define. In this way, you can maybe see how I determined the answer would be obtained. Does the formula lack other factors? Do you have grow data that I could use to plug in to this sheet to make it complete or more accurate? As you can see, I even thought about dehydrating the results too. Just another idea as my thoughts wander....:D 😆

I finally figure the Food Stores program is complete. I added the new file at the beginning of this thread to hopefully make it easiest to find. I have added a complete garden section with all the trimmings. I made a new Forage section for those who might supplement their supplies with forest gardens or Wild berry picking. There is add in for small to large game hunting and even fishing too. I now included simple notes to help you understand the program and hid alot of the data that might otherwise confuse you.

This program took me hundreds of hours of to write. I give it away freely for a reason though. I hope those of you who download this to offer it to others for free in turn. Maybe you can use this program as a means of having something free to offer a neighbour while maybe feeling them out of the subject of preparing for hard times...I dunno! But I do know that if you give something like this to others, it may inspire them to start a garden (because a lot of the figuring is done for you) or even just start stocking up . If so, that would be one less person you have to fear confronting during hard times as they might be better prepared due to your offer and promotion of preparing ahead. See my point?

I'm hoping that people do find it useful in their everyday lives as it measures you dietary needs along with your food reserves. I had to shrink alot of food areas quite a bit to allow the program to be uploaded to this forum. This might be restricting but I hope you can work around it still. I never expected this program to cover such a variety of food sources but it definitely suites your regular food stores while allowing for those country girls to add in such as dehydrated and canned goods to the mix also. Mrs Prep's links put me onto many of the garden aspects and I hope I met some of her needs while providing the basics for everyone else too. I might try another sheet someday for livestock and such as she mentioned, but the size limit kept that from happening for now.

I have checked and rechecked many areas, yet likely have missed a few minor glitches as yet. If you find them, let me know!

enjoy!

~ Knuckle~

I wrote it in Excel so you can use many compatible programs to view and run this program. Therefore by simply installing free software on your cellphone, tablet and home PC, you can access and update your inventory while at home or even while shopping for groceries. It will run on both iPhones and Android and of course,Windows and Linux for your PC.

For those who don't wish to pay extravagant money for MS Office, download this free equivalent version http://www.pc-file.com/openofficeorg?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=PC_CA_en_Top_Productividad&utm_content=OpenOffice.org&utm_term=openoffice%20download

For Android, I found Office Free http://www.ksosoft.com/product/office-free.html while I prefer Officesuite pro myself

For iPhone, there is Microsoft Office mobile for free too http://microsoft-office-mobile.en.softonic.com/iphone

I am really curious as to what experienced gardeners think of the garden section as I wrote this with no real knowledge of gardening and therefore don't know if it is useful to them or even practical in helping beginners to consider starting to grow a garden(as this was my main intent). I found gardening required so much prior knowledge to even properly start, that I myself had to find a way to wrap my head around determining even the basic size of garden or how much soil would be needed to start.

- At least knowing the square footage required was a start. Then you have only factor in maximum depth of soil to finish off knowing total soil requirements.

- Knowing what you wished to eat was the next factor.

- How much seed and when to plant became the next questions and are influenced by factoring in first and last frosts for your region.

- Then the possibility of maybe even growing 2 crops per year could be answered and factored in. If I had more room, I'd have written in this option too.

I'm expecting Mrs Prep, Goldie and FarmGal to really make chop-suey out of much of this as they likely have done this factoring in their heads since youth and see umpteen flaws in my approach. Can't fix it if I don't know the flaws though, so it's better to point them out than have me mislead others with my present grasp of this topic. As usual, your input has helped take this program to the point it presently sits at. And if others find flaws in how I factored things, also let me know too.

Thanks

Knuckle