The Gun Counter

Hi all. In the past, I was proud to say we had about a 3-month supply of food in our house. Unfortunately, 9 months without a paycheck caused us to eat through much of it.

I'm now in the process of trying to re-stock the larder, and with everything that's happening I'm sort of re-thinking the whole thing.

I'd like to get back to 3-months of canned goods and etc, but given what COULD happen I don't want to have to rely so much on my freezer. Plus, canned goods are heavy, with lots of water inside and thus not especially conducive to a bugout situation.

So anyhow... I'm thinking a lot about rice and beans, pasta, sugar - dry goods. Yesterday I spent a bit of time running around, and came home with 50# of rice and flour, 25# of sugar, 24# of pasta, and other staples, and a bunch of free buckets from various bakeries and donut shops. I've washed the buckets out with bleach and water, rinsed them well, and put them out to dry.

I plan to put the dry stuff into gallon-sized double-zipper freezer bags, then seal the bags inside gasketed plastic buckets.

First the bags - I will:
(1) put a chunk of dry ice in the bottom,
(2) Fill the bag with whatever
(3) zip the zipper almost all the way, leaving it open only a little bit,
(4) wait for the dry ice to sublimate out before sealing.

I expect this will chase most of the oxygen out of the bags.

I'll then seal the bags in gasketed plastic buckets.

I'll:
(1) put another ~1/4 pound of dry ice in the bottom of the bucket,
(2) fill it with bags of whatever (rice, flour, sugar, corn-meal, salt, etc),
(3) dump a bit of DE in, over the bags (to kill any insects which might manage to get in - this would make it necessary to rinse or at least wipe down the bags before opening them)
(4) Wait for the dry ice to stop burping out of the bucket - it should raise the lid and "burp" as the pressure rises from the D.I. sublimating
(5) Seal the buckets with a layer of "cling" wrap and burp the lid as it seals on. I'll then watch them for a couple of days to see if the lids raise - indicating more pressure inside from dry ice that wasn't completely gone. If that happens I'll burp the pressure a bit...

Since we don't have a basement, I'll probably store all this in a closet under my steps. It's the darkest place in the house, and rarely entered except for coats and etc. My research indicates that rice and beans, corn-meal, flour and pasta should last near-on forever if stored this way. I also want to add some fats in the form of veg. oil...

I've been wondering if it would be more prudent to mix stuff in the buckets -- some rice, some beans, some flour, salt, corn meal, powdered milk, etc. - I think a 5-gal. bucket would hold about a week's worth of such supplies for my family, especially if supplemented with the abundant deer, rabbit and squirrels we have around here. It would be harder to package this way, but much easier to rotate. If we rinsed the empty bags in some bleach-water it would be possible to re-use them...

If I went this route, I'd do some more research and try to make sure the proportions were appropriate to meal planning. The reason I think this would be good is that we could avoid having to open one of each type of bucket every time we wanted some of what was in it - thus making it more likely to stay good for a longer time. It would also allow me to rotate stock a bit easier, with grocery-store quantities of the staples... The down-side to this thought is that for the price of a few bags of rice or beans at the grocery store I can get 50# at the restaurant supply place... Staying with the cheaper big-bags would mean I'd have to essentially double the size of my supply in order to be able to rotate and still keep at least a few months' supply on hand.

Another possibility I've considered for the bags is a relatively cheap vacuum pump from horror-freight. I think I could rig up a large "needle" with copper tubing and use it to suck the air out of the bags using a process similar to those air-bags often used for padding boxes in shipping. I'd work out some method of using clear tape and cellophane, ensuring the vacuum sucked the little tube closed when I removed the "needle." All in all, it seems to me the

I've looked at the retail vacuum-sealing machines designed for food, but they seem ridiculously expensive - the supplies to store a large quantity of food would cost as much as the food itself.

I'm trying to figure out how much I really need to store to give us a 3/6/9/12-month supply for what amounts to 3 adult males and 5 adult females (including my Dad, siblings, S-mom, wife and daughters. Realistically, Mom's diabetic and severely obese, hence she wouldn't survive when her insulin ran out. If that sounds callous, well - it's going to be a callous world if this sort of thing ever happens...).

Honestly, if TSHTF to such an extent that we needed more than 3 months, I'd probably be working on getting all of us out of here and going roughly a thousand miles to my grandparent's old farm in the Ozarks, for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is the simple fact that we could help farm the land and there's enough land there to support all of my relatives forever.

Trying to be completely realistic about things, if it ever got bad enough that we really needed even a year's supply of food... I'm not sure I'd want to live that way, and I don't have the skills or equipment to survive in such a world once our food ran out. For these reasons, I'm more concerned with keeping us alive for a few months. I figure game would have to supply meat, supplemented with protein from beans and whey-powder. Vitamins are part of my planning as well - a high-dose multi per person/day and additional vitamin C and calcium.

One big problem with all this is rotation - our family just doesn't do a lot of cooking "from scratch" and though we eat far better than most, we're still eating a lot of expensive short-cuts. Needing to rotate a large amount of stuff might force us to do things a bit better - and would save us a bunch of money, too... We have a bread-machine that never gets used, that's one little thought of how to save and use what we have...

One last thing: While looking at all the "bulk" stuff in the stores - like restaurant-sized cans of veggies, applesauce, spag. sauce, etc - and thinking on the much higher prices I'm paying for smaller cans, I've considered loading up on mason-jars and re-packaging. I think the necessary supplies and equipment would pay for themselves in a few months, since I wouldn't need a huge number... Assuming I followed proper precautions, is there any real risk to doing this?

For clarity, what I mean is buying gallon cans of (for example) spaghetti sauce, peas, green-beans or whatever for long-term storage. When we open one of them, pulling out what we'd eat before it spoiled, and repackaging the remainder into mason jars, using them up before opening the next big can. From what I remember of watching Grandma doing her canning, I'd just need to put the stuff in the jars, immerse them in water and bring it all to a boil before sealing the jars - right? As long as the tops didn't "pop", it should be safe to assume the stuff is good - right? Like I say - we wouldn't be storing them for a long time, probably a month or 2 at most. All I'd be trying to accomplish with this is saving $$ on my "hoard" costs by buying the gallon-sized cans instead of the smaller, much more expensive ones. The savings would make it easier for us to afford to expand our stores!

Sorry for this "book", but I'm trying to figure out how to do this on somewhat of a budget and figure it might be good for others to think on this for a bit too...

DD

If you start rotating, you won't need extra long-term sealing on a lot of the items you mentioned.

I'm single, but have started to cook more for myself (to save $$ AND to learn how to cook!). I rotate canned goods, dried beans, rice etc.
Canned goods will last at least a few years. The 1# packs of dried beans, large containers of oatmeal, dried potatoes, rice, etc. I use have an expiry date of at least 2 years ahead.

ETA: Re: Large cans of stuff.

I've found if I look around and watch for sales, I can get the same amount of goods in smaller cans for the same (or less) per # as I would pay at Costco or Sam's for the giant cans.

If you are willing to take some time to weed through other stuff, you can find useful info on Rawles' SurvivalBlog - Here. Scroll down past the plethora of advertisements and you will find a "categories" listing.

Research the Mormons and food storage/cycling. Personally I start with things I like and cycle them though their expiration dates , then move to the basics , grains , and other long term storage, then as a final backup, nitrogen packed food for 20 years plus storage. Ymmv, good luck.

D.D. - the dry ice is overkill to the extreme...expensive, dangerous fumes and really won't do anything as it isn't air that spoils the dry stuff but vermin and moisture...how much drier do you want your spaghetti--too dry and it will crumble?

As you're probably aware, we've stockpiled a fair amount of food, (because they eat it all, the ingrates) and have nearly a years supply of most items--beans--7, 8 different, flour--3 different, salt, sugar, rice, pasta--10 different, powdered milk, yeast, baking powder & soda, spices (salt, pepper, cumin, etc.)...I've gotten some food safe plastic barrels, bins, buckets and canisters and just placed the items, in their original packaging--in most cases--directly into the tubs etc. which are used more for vermin protection then for sealed against air...

As long as you keep them dry and away from heat/direct sun you don't have to do anything else...They have found grains in Pharaoh's tombs and in the tomb with all the terracotta Chinese soldiers they found rice and in all cases still quite edible...Canned goods will keep, depending on the product, from five to ten years and as long as there is no bulges to the tin or severe rust the contents will still be edible and safe...I found a large can of commercial pumpkin pie filling up at the farm that had to be at least 25 years old--the price tag was of a store that closed then--and it made excellent pies...

The other item that you should consider is a food dehydrator--it's amazing that a bushel of apples will fit into a large zip-lock bag and will plump up if soaked in water for 20 minutes before you use them to make a pie...I make very little jerky but dry out lots of fruits and vegetables and will mix them together--trail mix sorta thing--for munching or cooking...I have pre-measured the ingredients for the likes of bean & barley soup, chili, fruit cocktail and just dump them into a pot of water to cook...

With the above we also stockpile a huge amount of various seeds and nuts--peanuts, pecans, cashews, walnuts, hazel etc. as a large handful of nuts has the same protein value of a 6oz steak and we'll use them and popcorn for evening sitting around the TV snacks as well as for cooking

Even though I've got two large chest freezers and an upright stuffed with meat, fish, fruits and vegetables and backed up with a small diesel generator for power I can still eat very well--although vegetarian--if the frozen stuff did spoil...

Another thing that you should develop is canning--we have sauces, jams, jellies, fruits, vegetables, fish, pickles etc. in 1, 2 and 5 quart mason jars...

I want to get a couple cases each of certain types of MREs but that's for laziness, nothing else...

The only thing we don't have enough of is filtered water--not that bottled stuff that's expensive, that's filling up landfills faster then disposable diapers and that's damn expensive...We just use a device similar to the Brita Filter for our drinking water but the pipes for bath and kitchen come through a water softener only but the drinking taps have a reverse osmosis something or other system on it...As we're on our own well and if the power failed I have an old hand crank sink pump hooked up in the basement on an old cast iron double deep washing sink so I'm not scared that I don't have "lots" of water stored...

We have the same type of arrangement up at the farm as well but it's my cousin's food stored there but they also have an old Elmira water reservoir wood fired cook stove/oven hooked up in the kitchen still--they/we just never bothered to take it out when the farmhouse got electricity back in the early 1950s as my great uncle and grandfather didn't really trust that new fangled stuff so it was there "just in case." Besides the well there is a 800 or 1,000 gallon cistern in the basement floor that has all the rain gutters draining into it and everyone of the girls uses that water to wash their hair.

Both places have external cisterns hooked in line with the septic field to store grey water while the toilet waste goes directly to “the pit”…It means we have a much smaller leeching field and the water is great for washing the cars, watering the grass and if I could I’d add a rain water cistern at the house…

At the lodge we leave lots of dry foods in a heavy gauge bear proof steel container--not because we don't want to schlep it back and forth but on the off chance that someone requires it for survival--its happened three times already and we would never begrudge them raiding the larder as we have a large sign in numerous languages with a large arrow pointing at the key for the padlock...If they can replace the goods fine, if not no big deal, but we ask them to leave a note of whom and how many, what happened, what was consumed and a contact address/phone/internet so we can check that all is well...

Food Shelf life.


HTRN

I've heard from several sources that unprocessed rice (not parboiled) should be frozen for 3-4 days before long term packaging to kill any weevil eggs. The dry ice treatment (removing oxygen) is also supposed to kill them.

We're on a shorter term plan still, working our way up to 30 days of food (water for that amount of time is problematic due to space issues, but we're up to 14 days now). I have room for four 5-gallon buckets without considerable reorganizing. One will be rice, others TBD but definitely including some pasta, which can last a long time (the pasta cooking water can be saved and reused, perhaps for rice, though I'm not sure how that would turn out).

HTRN wrote:Food Shelf life.


HTRN

Thanks, taped it to my rotatable stock.

Rich Jordan wrote:I've heard from several sources that unprocessed rice (not parboiled) should be frozen for 3-4 days before long term packaging to kill any weevil eggs. The dry ice treatment (removing oxygen) is also supposed to kill them.

Freezing may or may not kill the insect eggs. But heat treating your rice will. I do it on occasion.

Preheat oven to 170-175 degrees. Using a actual thermometer is a good idea.
Pour rice into 9x13 pans until about an inch deep. Place in oven and heat for 1 hour. Leave pans in oven, turn off oven, and allow to cool for a couple of hours. Remove pans and empty into gallon Ziplock freezer(not the thinner storage bags) bags, and put bags in some type of hard container. I use a 5 gal plastic bucket fitted with a Gamma lid. Rice treated and stored this way will last a long time.
We also store the dog's food in one of these buckets. Stops insects and any mice from getting to it.