Self-Reliance: Sprouting

Sprouting is the practice of soaking, draining and then rinsing seeds at regular intervals until they germinate, or sprout.

Sprouting and Food Storage

Everyone knows the typical long term food storage foods that are recommended for our storage. Grains, legumes, powdered milk, etc. However, when you look at the calculators you notice a severe shortage of fresh fruits and vegetables due to their short shelf life. What most people don’t realize is that your grains and legumes PROVIDE an automatic source of fresh vegetables for your storage.

Learning the art of sprouting and making sure you have the proper equipment necessary to do it is a huge benefit to adding a lot of nutrition into your food storage diet. We love the idea of practicing these skills now so that if/when the time comes that we NEED to know how to do it, we will be able to easily adjust. And the bonus part is, there are actually a LOT of benefits to growing and eating your sprouts.

Benefits of Sprouting

Super healthy (view our Sprouting Overview post for a list of examples)
Counts as an actual vegetable in your diet
Very inexpensive to sprout your own foods out of your food storage
Wide variety of sprouts you can grow/eat (grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, etc.)
Lots of versatility in how you can add sprouts to your diet (salads, sandwiches, meat fillers, plain