I don’t know about you, but a life without coffee is just no life at all and if Yellowstone were to blow the first thing I’d want after the ash settled is a cuppa or three from my trusty Breville.

I’m only half joking, of course. I’m well aware that living on top of a super volcano means I would probably not survive the initial blast and if I did, I’d probably have to use my hand crank grinder and French press with some water boiled over an open fire because the grid would probably be down, rendering my electric coffee maker useless.

Which is perfectly fine with me! I love using my antique coffee grinders and French press now, so that wouldn’t be a problem at all. Hopefully the blast won’t knock this one off the wall since it’s my favorite.

Coffee is one of those “we can not live without” things my hubby and I both agreed on when it comes to stocking up for the apocalypse. We are both huge fans of the bean and are heavy drinkers. You could even say we are addicted. Which means that it was pretty important to us to figure out just what form and how much coffee we’d need to hoard in case of disaster.

We envisioned something like this.

Because at our house now, just running out of coffee qualifies as an emergency!

We didn’t know if we could just buy extra canisters of pre-ground or if we’d need to buy 50lb bags of whole beans or if we’d be forced to (gasp!) stockpile jars of freeze dried, instant “coffee” that we both loathe oh-so-much.

Would we need to keep it in the pantry? The freezer? Locked in a safe so the marauding post-apocalyptic bandits can’t get to it??

It was actually one of the first things I dug into when we began our prepping journey a few years ago. And, it turns out, you can keep coffee in its various forms stored for quite awhile. According to the experts over at EatByDate.com, unopened ground coffee can last 3-5 months in the pantry and 1-2 years in the freezer past the printed expiration date. Whole beans can last roughly twice that long and freeze dried can last up to 20 years in the pantry and indefinitely in the freezer!

So we may have to rethink the freeze dried stuff after all. And we may need to get a new freezer dedicated just to keeping a year’s supply of emergency coffee. We go through about a pound and a half a week between the two of us, so we’d need at least 100 lbs just to be sure.

OR… we could just grow our own coffee beans, which is what I plan to do to supplement our supply!

I ordered this adorable little coffee arabica plant from FastGrowingTrees.com and it just arrived yesterday.

According to them, it’s a must have for coffee lovers like me.

Harvest Home-Grown Coffee

Why Arabica Coffee Plants?

Grow your own coffee with ease…no matter where you live! Just walk over and harvest your beans when they ripen from your Arabica Coffee Plant. Dry your savory, Arabica coffee beans in your oven or roaster. Once they have completely cooled, they are ready to grind and make into a delicious brew.

It offers year-round growth. This will become your favorite houseplant. It produces colorful cherries against a background of glossy dark green foliage. They go from green to yellow, to orange, then finally to deep red. Each cherry will produce two coffee beans each. And you’ll get hundreds of these cherries each

And it’s no-fuss. This evergreen plant requires minimum maintenance and is trouble-free. Keep it in a pot indoors or out. If you live where it’s colder, just place in a room with windows during the winter or grow indoors all year round.

Plus, the Arabica’s caffeine production has another huge benefit: Resisting pests, diseases, and temperature extremes. The caffeine actually acts as a shield against these tough conditions!

Now granted it is tiny and it probably won’t produce enough bean-filled cherries to satiate us for a few years, but we’re not in a hurry for the apocalypse to come anyway.

Hopefully Yellowstone will wait until my little coffee plant is full grown and fully productive before it blows its top. 🙂