Stockpiling for tough times

MUKILTEO -- Food storage warehouses owned and operated around the country by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are stocked with nonperishables sealed to withstand natural disasters, virus pandemics and even the Great Tribulation, that biblical era of suffering said to precede the end of the earth.

In recent months, the warehouses have become more popular with Mormons who worry about a threat more subtle than the drama of Armageddon: high food prices.

"When food prices rise, the cost of my food doesn't," said Jenny Webb, a Mormon mother who feeds her husband and three children meals based on her pantry's rotating stock of spaghetti, wheat, beans and other goods intended to stay edible for 30 years.

Webb, 37, said she has enough food in her pantry to feed her family for at least three months if her husband loses his job, an earthquake turns grocery stores to rubble, or market prices swell too much for the family to afford.

She buys many of her pantry staples at a church-owned warehouse in Mukilteo, where food sales have increased to staggering rates over the past two months.

A year ago, church members bought and canned about 18,000 pounds of food for themselves and their families at the warehouse each month, said Al Cripe, a church elder who, with his wife, Opal, runs the Mukilteo warehouse.

Last month, church members bought and canned about 62,000 pounds of food, Cripe said. The warehouse bought a second can sealer three weeks ago to help expedite work for Mormons lined up at the warehouse's canning station.

"This is going on throughout the country," he said.

Webb said she's not sure how much money she saves by using the church warehouse. Like many Mormon women, she was raised on food storage and doesn't know any other way.

Church leaders since the time of Brigham Young have commanded their followers to store up food for three months, a year, even seven years. The end could be nigh, they said, and Mormons should be prepared.

"Natural disasters are going to happen right before the second coming," said Alissa Howell, 50, referring to the Mormon belief that Jesus Christ will one day return triumphantly to the earth. "But even people who don't believe in the second coming talk about earthquakes, and that the 'big one' is coming."

When it comes, whether an earthquake or a natural disaster signaling the end times, Howell said she'll be prepared not only to feed her family, but also to feed her neighbors.

That's a sense of pride shared by many Mormons who stockpile food from the warehouse.

"If you're not a Mormon and there's an earthquake, the next best thing is to have a Mormon neighbor," said James Amis, who runs the Bishop's Storehouse, a small grocery in the warehouse that offers free food and toiletries to families in need.

Today, the church owns nearly 100 warehouses throughout the country. Church-owned farms and factories produce wheat, dehydrated fruit and vegetables, beans, and other long-term pantry items. Short-term storage items, such as canned chili, cocoa mix and pancake mix, are produced under the Deseret brand, based in Salt Lake City.

The food is sold to church members at cost, Amis said.

"The church isn't making any money off this," he said.

Trucks based at a large church-owned facility in Hermiston, Ore., deliver with increasing frequency giant bags of food, as well as cans and pouches for long-term storage, to the Mukilteo warehouse.

The warehouse is open to people who are not Mormons, Amis said. More people who are not church members have come to the warehouse in recent months than ever before, he said.

The women who gathered Tuesday morning at the warehouse to can sugar, beans and cocoa mix shared cautionary tales of families who lived off their long-term storage pantries for months when a husband lost his job.

"You never know when a family is going to have hard times," said Laree Ricks, 49, of Redmond. "It may be a loss of a job for a short time, or it may just be that gas is so expensive that you want to conserve in other ways."

Ricks said she's never lived without a deep store of food tucked away. Her cans are stored in her garage, but many families slide boxes beneath beds, behind shelves, in clothes closets.

"When it's a priority, you find room," she said.

Most families rotate the food in their long-term storage so that nothing is more than a few years old, but others find themselves with stockpiles of wheat or rice that could feed a small army.

"I'm eating rice we've had at home for 20 years," Amis said.

Faced with cooking from bags of hard red wheat and dry pinto beans, Mormon families get creative. Stacks of recipes are set up near the warehouse's checkout table: 15-minute barbecued beans. Eggless chocolate cake. Nutritional Soup from Bean Flour.

"I bought a wheat grinder so I can make flour from my wheat," Webb said. "The wheat stores longer than regular white flour."

Most young Mormon couples are overwhelmed at the prospect of creating long-term storage, said Opal Cripes. Church leaders encourage them to start small with a church-sanctioned "Starter Kit," which includes hard red winter wheat, white rice, pinto beans and quick oats, for $34.25.

"It's eye-opening for people who realize that we have a religion that not only cares about our souls, but also cares about our basic needs," Webb said.

Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.