Long term food storage

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I watched this 3 part video about long term food storage and it prompted me to get off my duff and get it done:



I have found a few places selling food and supplies:
It's been an adventure comparing the $/lb cost for staples across different vendors because of different shipping policies, etc. I was really surprised that my local Whole Foods supermarket actually had a lower $/lb cost for most beans than any online bulk vendor.

If any of you peeps have been doing this for a while now know of another vendor (other than what I've listed above) that offers bulk (organic preferred) grains and legumes (beans) at good prices, please share.

Oh yeah, this is pretty useful info when planning your own food storage stash:

http://www.tribwatch.com/artStorageLife.htm
 
You can get beans and rice from Costco. Sam's Club has popcorn (which can be ground up same as regular dent corn). Your local mormon cannery sells bulk.

also: check out walton feed if you want a turnkey super pail (6 gallon bucket with mylar and o2 absorber; ships via hundredweight trucking; usually $40/100lbs.)
 
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See the last link I posted in the OP.
 
I've made 2 purchases from www.efoodsdirect.com They sell food by the week, month, and even year. 15 year or so shelf life. One purchase I made over the internet for a years supply came on a pallet in a timely manner. At that time it was free delivery, so I saved about 250 bucks. My latest purchase I handled over the phone with them in response to a veterans day sale (for all you fighting types out there). They were courteous and helpful, and I got a second years supply of food for nearly 50 percent off, even though shipping on this particular offer was not free.

It sounds like they are going to offer regular discounts, all you have to do is ask what they have on special at that time. They also have a large supply of extended shelf life vegetable seeds, water purification systems, and other goodies worth looking at.
 
I have found that Emergency Essentials, www.beprepared.com has some very reasonable prices for their freeze dried food products and also on shipping costs, both for smaller orders, and for larger orderds of the 5-6 gallon superpails of grains, beans, etc in mylar bags with oxygen absorbers.
 
Mountain House is what we have. Mostly entrees with some dried fruit from a generic producer for sweetness and a little variety.
 
... Emergency Essentials, www.beprepared.com ...

Whoa. How did I miss that in my OP? :shrug: They have the best deal on food grade 5 and 6 gallon buckets (no lid) that I have found (when I was searching). Also good deals on mylar bags and oxygen absorbers.
 
I'd promised to show some of what I'm doing here about a food stash. This doesn't cover all, but shows the philosophy. I'm not of a mind to buy the high priced dehydrated stuff and keep it forever, mostly, my thinking along those lines is different, and perhaps differently motivated.
For one, thing, should I suddenly need a food stash, I know I won't want to totally upset my eating habits and feel like I'm downgrading, or exposing my body to such a sudden shift that it makes me slightly ill in doing it. If anything, I'll need to feel better than usual should I need it! To me, the stuff that keeps forever just doesn't satisfy that, costs too darn much, and is likely to get messed up in deep storage that I won't be paying much attention to.

So I have a different strategy - and at least one different reason to be doing this at all. Right now, food is a much better investment than say, SPY, so pulling demand ahead means I'm eating food at around 6 months ago prices. And thus, the stuff I stash is what I'd eat normally anyway.
Now, that might be a good bit different than most. I went all solar in '79 or so, and at first, couldn't have a refrigerator, or afford gas to the store (30mi round trip) all the time, so I had kind of an enforced boot camp in all this anyway, and got used to it. Like some in Detroit say, when it all goes down into a worldwide depression, we won't notice, we're in practice already.

I'm assuming you can go with a semi-oriental style - you have some things that are main calories, that are dirt cheap in bulk, then some lesser quantities of things that make it taste good enough to eat. In my case, those base things are rice, pasta, and wheat products (flour-bread).

Those store easily in old airtight ammo cans. I take say a 50 lb bag of rice, divvy it up into half full gallon freezer bags, and put it in the can. Ditto beans. I leave pasta in the box it came in (including mac and cheese). A neat trick - you can put a lump of dry ice in the bottom of the box, set on the lid, let it fill the box with CO2, displacing the air, then go ahead and clamp down the lid. This works pretty well for almost everything, though I've not found anything that can keep corn meal from going buggy - leave that out, or experiment with it in another box. I've also toyed with putting a fitting and valve on a couple of the larger boxes, which I can connect to a vacuum pump, remove the air and water, then let in argon/CO2 welding gas mix. Both work, and since I have welders, for me the second one works nicely for the boxes I'm opening now and then. You do have to put in some box stiffeners/dividers so the vacuum doesn't implode the ammo box.

Most canned food lasts nearly forever, if not longer. And you can tell if it goes bad usually. This is a great way to store things like meat (not self-canned, the "pro" stuff). Doesn't take much of that over rice or pasta to feed a big crowd. And veggies are nice to have. It's important to remember all the other stuff you'd normally cook with, or figure out a way to do without it. Spices, sauces, salt, sugar - all those are real important. For some people tobacco is a good one and can be bartered. Some med supplies, the basic stuff goes in with the food kit - aspirin, vitamins, small bandages and the like. I also built a more-advanced 1rst and 2nd aid kit separately.

Most of the time you won't need too many calories if hunkered down, but you need fiber (those veggies) particularly if you're not eating as much. Keep that in mind. If you're going to be busting hump, and need the calories as a result, it's hard to beat MRE's. I like those enough that they rotate through the system and I've never found out how long they can last(!). Again, a little of that rich stuff converts a lot of cheap calories into a more edible meal when you're stretching things out.

So, here's some pix of the "ready to bolt" stash. In addition, there are some shelves full of self-canned garden produce - which is just normal if you're living the rural lifestyle, and more MRE's on their own pallet elsewhere. This is kind of the "good stuff, variety" pack.
FoodStash1.jpgFS2.jpg
Obviously, even a condo dweller such as DoChen can do it at this level, and it gives you some peace of mind well ahead of a similar amount of fiat cash (which you should also have a bit of).

Did I mention there's a cheap "saturday night special" in every box somewhere? Might be a nice place to have one just in case someone is too demanding about the content of a box. I suppose you should have a combo lock on these as an excuse to be the one closest to that...

Oh, the ammo boxes on the left have, duh, ammo in them. A few different kinds for the various guns I own; I have a LOT of guns, not for defense, but for competition and general fun, but they are obviously "dual use". Again, that's far from my ammo stash total - since I reload I tend to have a lot around, and a lot ready to reload and full supplies. I lucked out on some of that. Being known as the "uber gun guy" in the 'hood, when people die off, and leave their stuff to people, those people tend to give me any gun related stuff, like powder, bullets, dies, primers, brass. So I'm in an overstocked condition by any measure - not from paranoia, but from "hey, it was free!" I should probably either shoot a bunch of it up or file to pay the armory tax...hmm, which is more fun?

The key here to all this is that you rotate through it to keep it reasonably new and fresh (applies to ammo too). Just use some along with whatever fresh you're also eating, and when you see a good deal at the store, like "10 for the price of..", or "a case for xxx off", now you have a reason to go for it, and get a good deal. Saves money in the good times too! Which in my philosophy is the best way of all - a corollary to looking for everybody-wins solutions to problems. And the glass being half full.
 
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Don't me to necro-bump a thread but this is a topic I'm currently investigating - looking to expand my logistics.

Just ordered a couple things from Honeyville and eFoods.

I'll let everyone know how it works out.
 
I'm curious if anyone does any eating out of their stash, and how that affects decisions around it. Most of that self-declared emergency food is pretty high priced, for example, and perhaps not exactly gourmet quality (I have had some that was really good, though). Does that mean it's just a security blanket, being too expensive to eat except in emergency that may not come before it spoils?

If a sudden emergency comes, would there be danger that your food stash had gone largely bad and you never know till it's too late? The situation commonly arises with say, emergency power generators that don't get tested regularly.

I'm rotating through my stock. It discovers the true storage life of the stuff - what you should really eat and replace more often. I'm finding canned food is eternal, or close enough. MRE's are not forever, but pretty close - and one can really make a lot of other food edible (say rice or beans) as the good flavor - like the Chinese do, a little rich stuff poured over a lot of cheapo stuff.

Are people remembering how important herbs and spices are, or are they going to condemn themselves to eating bland food when the time comes?

Dried foods (mostly freeze dried stuff, not rice or beans as much) - well, unless stored in argon or nitrogen, and tested once in awhile, not so much, they kind of get something like freezer burn (oxidation, going rancid) and taste nasty after too long a time unless you have a real hermetic seal.

Seems to me that unlike PM's this is a thing where active management of inventory is required, you can't just stack the stuff and forget about it. So far, I'm liking my plan of having pretty good to eat food, that doesn't last forever, because then it doesn't have to - I'll eat it in normal times and replace it with fresh stock as things are on sale at the grocery store - or a neighbor (or myself) finds they have way too much of something canned.
 
I tend to agree with you DC in that I prefer more normal food/storage methods in contrast to the tailor-made 30 year shelf life stuff. I'm not sure I want to eat what may be in those anyways.

Rice, bean, grains, canned goods, and nuts can all last quite a while.

And then there is the local deer population...
 
I'm curious if anyone does any eating out of their stash, and how that affects decisions around it. ...

I'm not stashing freeze-dried foods. I've mostly got whole wheat berries which I intend to start grinding into flour and baking my own breads (haven't started yet even though I have all the tools), beans (eating), grains (eating), salt and sugar / honey (not eating - they keep forever). I've got a stash of yeast too, but should the power go out, they have a fairly short shelf life outside of a freezer, so I'll have to cultivate that like they did in the old days.

I haven't really started stocking spices (I'm gonna be lost without tumeric :(), but I'm growing plenty of fresh herbs and peppers in the garden.

ddbmb - nuts have a high oil content and do not keep well for long term storage. The oils turn rancid at room temperature after a while.
 
Excluding oxygen will prevent most things from going rancid (but not from rotting, there are anaerobic bacteria). I have to deal with that one here when storing some of the lab stuff - say things like sodium or lithium metals. So far, what's worked best is Argon (cheap from welder supply), since it leaks out of things less than say, helium. We're testing CO2, as you can get it in dry ice form, and there's that trick I mention above - essentially canning in CO2 - letting it slowly rise in a container to displace the air. But it's a little bit reactive (and dissolves in water) and might have taste issues for long term - I'll be finding that one out.

But flushing all the air first is actually pretty hard. Just like dipping your hands in water doesn't get all the soap off. Argon is about the same density as air, so just blowing a bunch in there doesn't necessarily displace all the air, which tends to cling to surfaces pretty tightly. You can do the flushing thing, but it takes a long time and a lot of wasted gas. When I can, I use containers that will take a vacuum, and pull the air out first for awhile, then let in the argon back to STP conditions, then seal.
At that point, a screw lid with black tape wrapped around it seems to be good enough for things like sodium and lithium - they stay clean and untarnished, and if it's working for those, it should work pretty well for food. You can't do the vacuum trick well if there's much water present, as water boils at 20mm pressure at room temperature...at that point, you're in the freeze drying business.

I have an herb garden too, but gosh, I just can't seem to get A1, soy sauce, etc to grow in it on demand:rimshot: I do dry some of what I grow and put it in little airtight bottles for later. A little dried habenero goes a long way in winter.
 
Most of that self-declared emergency food is pretty high priced, for example, and perhaps not exactly gourmet quality (I have had some that was really good, though).

DC - which vendor and what item was "really good"?

Curious about your experience here.

Thanks!
 
I have a bunch of Mountain House stuff that we keep for emergency bug-out [mainly hurricanes] and I do eat some from time to time. It's not bad, but it ain't great either. I kind of liken it to cafeteria food, sort of like what you would get at a Golden Corral.
 
A few comments from the peanut gallery:

1) PMBug: I suggest you go ahead and try grinding up your own wheat and baking bread now. It is not as easy as one might think. It will probably take you a few tries before you something edible! Better to make those mistakes now.

2) WATER!!! I do not know how many people I have run across over the years that have massive amounts of food and ammo stored, but have maybe a week's worth of water stored. You can live weeks without food, but you will die in days without water. I was reading an article earlier that most municiple water facilities only have enough chemicals stored for a week or two. Imagine if the water coming out of your sink wasn't safe to drink or stopped flowing all together!
 
Imagine if the water coming out of your sink wasn't safe to drink or stopped flowing all together!

heh

i will try

a verrry dry summer might do it though .......

however there is a plan 'c'

Please bring lots of food when the time comes :cheers:
 
Imagine not having a sink with running water for the past 3 decades, and not minding! Well, it runs if I put on sneakers and go get a jug. It just saved my butt too - I got a snap inspection from the building inspector, and passed fine since I didn't have the stuff I didn't have permits for. Instead, I have 5-6 pretty nice springs and a creek. Seems pretty resilient to failure.
 
Other than our regular cupboard and pantry grocery rotation system, which we try to keep well stocked, I've opted for #10 cans of freeze-dried foods for my larder. To me, cans of FD foods are a no-brainer; just buy it and forget about it. With a 25 year+++ shelf-life, it will outlast me. I add to the stash from time to time, but don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.

I use Emergency Essentials (be prepared.com) as well for most of my freeze dried foods, the bulk of which is Mountain House. Great service, excellent prices, and very reasonable shipping charges.
 
Oh yeah....we also have a small garden and can a lot of vegetables and meats, and we're always cycling through those. Don't really think of that stuff as my long-term emergency rations, but it will add to the supply.
 
Wow, lot of freeze dried fans on here. Generally it seems a #10 mountain house costs $25-32 bucks for usually between 2000 and 3000 calories. That's almost $1 for 100 calories. I have found that 5 gallon super pails are a far far better deal. Grains are more like $1 bus 3500 to 5000 calories. Beans tends to be more like $1 buys 1500 calories. Basically go with 5 gallon pails and things are 10x cheaper than freeze dried. Even cheaper if you DIY. Now I do think have some freeze dried on hand is a good idea... its fast and pretty tasty. It just happens to be expensive and high in sodium.
 
On average, an Australian farmer's "breakeven" wheat price last year was $180 (Australian dollars) a ton but they were paid between $130 and 140 a ton with rising input and fixed costs a major drag on farm incomes, Hickey explained.
"In Australia, many midsize farmers cannot afford to buy a $500,000 harvester or a new $350,000 tractor when you're struggling to cover the fixed costs of growing grain or of producing meat. This is why much larger operators than us had machinery 30 years old that they could not afford to replace."
Abah Ofon, senior agriculture commodities analyst at Standard Chartered in Singapore, said anecdotal evidence from farmers he'd spoken to "definitely tally" with the theme of tight or negative margins.
"This is largely a result of higher production costs for fertilizer, energy, labor, insurance and machinery juxtaposed with stiff price competition," Ofon said. "This rings true for sugarcane farmers in India, onion farmers in Tasmania, cotton farmers in Benin or wheat farmers in Kansas."

...see, how it nicely fits in my line of thinking, how even increasing price of gold might not be enough incentive, to start mine lower-grade deposits, and maybe even current-grade ones might become unprofitable? Just like farms - record food prices, yet farmers are closing shops. Counter intuitive, until you consider that the cost of the INPUTS (again: ENERGY and MACHINERY - both created using depleting resources) is going significantly up in price, versus the outputs we are talking about. And since farmers not really sell their produce to consumers anymore, rather to supermarkets (at best), these (global) companies might strangle them with competition from developing economies, where manufacturing costs (labor, taxes, insurance, farmland) are much lower.

Secondly - is anyone surprised, that if food & energy is conveniently excluded from calculating CPI inflation, that these are the areas of a specifically HIGH inflation?
 
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Why do you even look at anything whatever on Yahoo? Very low credibility source, only accidentally right, sometimes. That stuff will rot your brain, man!

Nearly all the price for food obviously does go somewhere other than to farmers, it's been that way since my grandpa's youth when he wanted to form what amounts to farmers unions so they wouldn't constantly underbid each other. He started an AG university instead with his dough - we're the family that invented "the coulter", the little blade that cuts prairie turf so you can flip it with a horse drawn plow.

The rather interesting net result is that there's like a nickel's worth of wheat in a $4 box of cereal, and if that doubles - so what? We don't notice 2.5%. On the other hand, you can pretty much lay the Arab Spring at the feet of rising basic costs - because they don't buy that box of cereal (never could afford that), they buy the wheat and bake themselves at a far lower base cost, and a small rise in that really crushes them.

And remember that when prices rise due to shortages from say, bad weather, that really means that most farmers didn't get a crop or make money at all - and the few who did get those higher prices might have got them on a reduced crop - and they have to get more when they do have a crop to allow for those bad years, but some don't hedge that all that well and fail - which then drives prices up further, later on. It's getting to the point where small farmers are becoming quite rare, handing pricing power over to the few really big outfits, and that won't be good for us - but again, most of the money goes elsewhere anyway...those costs have far more net input to what we pay at the stores.

Here in Floyd, 50 years ago every place was a small farm. Now it's about 1/20 or 30...the rest is broken up into smaller pieces now and amounts to a retirement community, or young people home/farm-steading but not "making it" yet.

Personally, MRE's when on sale are a lot more calories for the bucks...yeah, they don't keep as long (maybe - who has tried actual 25 yo FD food?). But I cycle them through the system and use the nice little trays around here as organizers for stuff.
(especially nice for batching up reloading components for ammo)

With such a high-calorie/high-nutrition food, they also work well in the Chinese style, you can pour one over a lot of rice and feed a few people with just one of them for variety and flavor over the basic rice carbs.

Which makes me wonder - what's the shelf life *truly* of multivitamins you'll probably need since nearly all processed food lacks crucial nutrients or has them in a form that easily degrades over time - still safe to eat, but...
 
Why do you even look at anything whatever on Yahoo? Very low credibility source, only accidentally right, sometimes. That stuff will rot your brain, man!
...

I usually go to yahoo finance and/or cnn money to get a read on what the Herd is doing. For example, today I wanted to find out why the dollar was gaining strength. The Herd may do things that make no sense, but it can still run you over if you don't watch out!

:cheers:
 
Ah, I get my herd info elsewhere where I at least find it easier to skip the "talking my book" crowd, or at least know who is doing what.

The ticker alone tells you what the herd is doing....actually, and it never lies.
 
heh

i will try

a verrry dry summer might do it though .......

however there is a plan 'c'

Please bring lots of food when the time comes :cheers:

Rblongtous, here in the small hick town of Burnet, Texas, where I live, our city tap water has failed federal guidelines for safe drinking water since 2003. The letter I get every six months from the government says the water "causes kidney and liver failure and can cause cancer, and if you think you have cancer, please see your physician." You can't make this stuff up. We have used a Berkey since shortly after we moved here, which coincidentally eliminated the constant diarrhea and stomachaches we always had.
 
We love our Big Berkey. It's the real deal. I have tested it a few different ways and it never let me down. I have filtered out pond water using a standard 10 micron media through a cartridge using simple gravity, then re-filtered through the Berkey. I sent a sample to Schneider Labs for bacterial analysis ands we came back clean. If you are still concerned, a tiny shot of chlorine or a simple steri-pen UV light can finish off any uglies still inhabiting your drinking water.
 
Back on topic for a mkinute, we will be consuming some delicious Mountain House beef stew today, served over Quinoa with some fresh spinach and spring green salad. We like to keep the freeze dried stuff in the rotation to remind ourselves that the day will come when we need to be creative with it to make it last through whatever tribulations come our way. My MO is to buy two or three entrees and some side dishes about twice a month. We only consume the stuff once in a while, but have tried nearly everything.

The Red Feather butter is three years old, but is still as sweet and delicious as the day it was packaged in New Zealand. Same with our bacon. Since life simply is not worth living without bacon, we have 24 cans of the stuff.
 
I have quite a bit of food storage, including buckets of rice, pasta and beans. It gives me a great feeling of relief knowing my kids won't have to eat dirt if the SHTF.
 
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