[BeSwift]

I'm seeking input regarding improving my long term food storage plans and looking to survey how others are going about it.

I have primarily been buying a few cases of Mtn House as I can afford to, and have several months worth (based on caloric content @ a min of 1500 cal/day). I figure the shelf life of freeze dried food, outweighs the lack of calories per meal. I have also been trying to supplement with regular canned goods with longer shelf life (canned meats, beans, etc), but realize I will need to rotate them more frequently. I have YET to get into storing 5 gal buckets of grains, try canning, or explore other avenues of food storage.

How are you working your food storage plan? What types of food? Rotation? Products? Shelf life, etc are you setting aside, and what pitfalls have you run into in doing so? I'm trying to learn vicariously and quickly, as I believe time is rapidly running out on our food preps.

Thanks for any opinions... BeSwift

 

[AmmoSgt In Memoriam]

Food Storage is a limited concept presupposing a return of regular supply channels within the time frame of the period you have stored food for.

I personally feel that once scarcity and the loss of incredibly inexpensive food transported over conciderble distances sets in .. food selection will shrink and costs will go up.

Yes I store food.. but only with a eye to supplementing what I can't find or grow depending on the season....

First make sure you have all the kitchen tools you need to turn grain into bread and can up or dry any wild harvest or seasonal bounty, as well as process any game into either a meal or a preserved meat... lots of salt and spices.. most spice is imported. pepper is imported.. imported stuff will be the first to run out or go up in price.

Second learn how to garden and spend $50 bucks or so every year to have a goodly supply of fresh seeds.. start now to compost and improve your garden soil... doesn't take much more than a back yard to grow food for a family of four... a plot of soil of about 1000 sq feet will produce typically between 1 and 2 bushel of wheat or 5 bushel of corn.. there are about 40 "pound and a quarter" loaves of bread to a bushel... wheat in grain form keeps about 7 years.. figure about 1 loaf every two days for 4 people...

Figure out how much land you have that you could farm in a pinch and how much water you have for irrigation.. look into maybe some poly tubing and plastic tarp "green houses to extend your growing season both early and late.. set up a root cellar for storing squash and potatos .... buy and store those things that do not grow well or use to much land and enough more to get you thru winter until you can bring a crop in.

Indentify and locate wild plants that can supplement your diet... for example dandilion is the first edible green of spring and has the added advantage in that it is medicinal in many ways.. most importantly it has the vitamins and nutrients most likely missing from a typical starch and meat heavy winter diet on stored/ preserved food and what you can gather by hunting... but there are a lot of edibles growing wild and since most.. the vast majority of people don't know how or when to harvest wild food ( heck nost people don't know how to make bread from stratch or are equiped to make flour from grain or harvest wild yeast to make bread rise) so the chances of competion, at least initally for wild foods will be low.

Once you know what you can grow or harvest/hunt and have what you need to turn it into a meal then stock up on what you figure you can't get, or what will be expensive due to transportation costs.

There is going to be a real breakown in getting food to market domestically , imported is going to be crazy expensive and rare.. if inflation kicks in bad and oil goes up again as the dollar colapses.. I know I sound slightly mad.. but with all this cash being injected to stimulate things this deflation could turn arround sharpy and viciously into a real bad inflation and transportation costs could spike... right now the average bit of food a the grocery store travels 1500 miles before you buy it and take it home.. the year round fruit and vegitable selection will be, at best, severly reduced.. we are still totally dependant on oil to produce crops... simple unprocessed food in bulk and bought seasonally when it is least expensive will become a way of life if things turn really bad.. and I think they will with this economic crisis , and it is going to last much longer than people supect. Learn how to make tofu from soybean and what soybean to use.. soybean produces like crazy 100+ bushel per acre and when alternated with corn improves the corn yield and breaks up any disease or pest cycles.. so learn crop rotation

Right now for example we have been making fruit cakes... easy to store , they keep well

also even a small truck garden needs some mechanical help so look at wood gas generation or ethanol to power a small tractor if the oil runs out or get to expensive.

Hunting.. I am sure you have guns and ammo .. how about traps , bow, and fishing.. even small creeks arround here have frogs, sometimes crawdads, and minnow type fish... you would be amazed at how populous frogs are in damp land.. might practice some catch and relaease on frogs just to check whats out there in your area.

Have an alternative water source.. mine is rain barrels... 686 gallons of water per 1000 sq ft of roof per inch of rain... if you average just 40 inches of rain a year thats 52480 gallons off a 2000 sq ft roof.. if you can catch and store it... you will need to purify it for drinking.. but for gardening it's fine as is.

Knowing how to make insecticide from plants like mayapple, marigolds and tobacco could be a handy thing to know

Know what you can grow.. store what you can't... locate those pecan and walnut trees now.

Edited to add .... calories are important but you can die of nalnutrtion while getting fat on the wrong type of calories... learn nutrition .. if you don't have a good source of vitamin C you start to fall apart and get sick after as little as 2 months.. for that you need veggies and fruit.. and canning and drying drastically reduces vitamin C in most foods.. also B vitamins.. check those nutritional labels on those MH #10 cans to see how short you are falling on vitamins at 1500 calories a day, which by the way is a near starvation diet if you are doing manual labor. Eggs are a good calorie booster.. have some canned eggs and cheeses in storage of you can't have cows or chickens.

 

[limpetmine]

Vacuum bags

Sort of on topic; I'm in the market for a vacuum sealer, like the old Seal a Meal. I want to seal freezer bags, that can be boiled, pull the air out of a standard zip loc bag, pull the air out of cans for storage in the 'fridge, and long term storage of dried grains. Anybody got a good idea?
thanks..............

 

[AmmoSgt In Memoriam]

I also want to mention trading for food.. or even buying food in a crisis.. you need to know how to tell a good egg from a bad egg.. you need to be able to tell if flour is still fresh enough to rise to make bread and what kind of flour from what kind of wheat makes the best bread or the best pasta or the best cake... and not just wheat flour.. cornflour as well .. if things get to a black market on food, and I suspect they will, some folks will be off loading expired stuff/ old stuff lookig to make a profit on what is not fit to eat. Also knowing what iis likely still good past an exparation date might get you some bargins.

Truth be told even twinkies are only edible for about 3 months tops... I don't care what the urban legends of 7 years say.

Those green poly bags that retard ripening and spoilage really work
http://www.amazon.com/Debbie-Meyer-20317-Green-Bags/dp/B0011TMP3Y real handy in keeping stuff fresh until you can preserve it.

 

[carlnpa]

Mountain House is mostly freeze dried, you get 2 or 3 times more for your money with the dehydrated foods.
These folks run monthly specials that will also save you considerable money.

http://beprepared.com/Default.asp?bhcd2=1228759285

Regular canned foods are the least cost food storage item and will keep for several years, get ahead of what you use in these and just replace inventory as used.

 

[Caribou]

The Father inlaw showed us an old Eskimo trick.
We dug a hole down into the permafrosta at camp and buried 14 Caribou Bulls and two Harbor Seals , some cans of coffee and waterproofed suger inside.
That September, in two days ,we dug the cache' and placed all the dirt and sand on a big tarp.
He harvested them in late September (Freezing out all day) gutted them and hung them untill they were rock solid frozen, in the skins.
He put them about 15 feet down, in December,when the hole was as firm as the bulls and drew water from the river, pouring it one bucket at a time, over about a week, at -20 to 0 F, and filled them in to about the 10foot mark. Then he filled in moss, and logs, and the final 3 feet with sand and put the tundra back on top. He tossed the leftover soil from the tarp in the river.
You couldnt see where we buried it the next summer, cept Joe put a raised box cache ontop of it.
-"Then"-we dug up his old cache that summer. Made the same way, but at a different bend in the river. We thawed and butcherd the dozen Bulls we took from there, and they tasted fresh. Joe said he buried them in 1988.

So the meats in the freezer, just waiting to be removed.

Joe related to us that his parents talked alot about a big starvation here on Kobuk river when they were young, and this was a very common thing to do with Summers extras.

 

[IamElmerJFudd]

Just make sure you can protect your stash from the vegan zombies.

 

[Michael Jon Littman]

Zombie=protein