Posted on 10/24/2009 6:59:56 PM PDT by Bean Counter
We have had a number of open discussions here at FR for quite some time about the importance of personal emergency preparedness. Many of us have taken an interest in this subject for a long time, and have been working steadfastly toward being prepared for a real emergency, and this evening I thought I would share my progress on one phase of our plan, food.
Anyone who knows anything about preparedness will tell you that the first thing you should do is make a plan that fits your personal needs. A bachelor has much different survival needs than a family of seven. Our personal plan is to prepare to support 4 adults in place for a year. We don't have kids in the family right now, so we have not set aside any children's needs, but your plan may well have a considerable bit.
To date we have spent about $3000 over the course of the past year in stocking our emergency pantry. Much of that money went toward purchase of proper storage containers. Essentially, we ended up with three sizes of food grade white plastic food containers:
6 1/2 Gallons (fits 50 pounds of flour if you pack it)
4 Gallon (fits a 25 pound bag of beans perfectly)
5 Gallon Buckets(a late addition, but good for many things).
We also can a lot of our own vegetables and fruit. I have a whole cupboard of homemade jam, jelly and flavored mustards that don't appear on this list but would last us for years...
All bulk dry goods are stored in these plastic containers, along with a couple of commercial grade oxygen absorber packets. These are widely available and are very inexpensive. I bought 100 for $20. When you put them in a bucket that has beans in it (for example) then seal the top (all of our buckets have "O" ring seals) the absorber draws in all of the oxygen in that contained atmosphere, which leaves mainly nitrogen inside. Nothing we know of can live in a Nitrogen atmosphere, so even if you have a live insect in there someplace, it will not last for long.
Again, this list just covers our food preparations. We have also made arrangements for our medical needs, sanitation, water supply, personal protection, etc.
We have made many improvements to our home over the last 12 years including upgrading and replacing all of the windows and doors, upgrading the insulation in the attic, replacing and upgrading the insulation under the house, new duct work and a modern zoned forced air heating and air conditioning system. As you can see, this is an ongoing effort that has been years in the making.
We also installed a modern 78% efficient woodstove that allows us to heat the house with the heat pump turned off at the breaker. We use the forced air system to circulate the woodstove's heat and keep the house warm all winter for a fraction of the cost of using the heat pump. If we lost power, we would stay nice and warm, and we can cook on the stove to boot.
What follows is my inventory for our "extended pantry". We have our normal household inventory as well that does not appear on this list. The process continues, and there are other additions to come that are not listed here, and I have a perpetual list of things to add that I put up as cash becomes available.
Have a look and let's talk...
From that standpoint, splashing some napthalene would cool them even faster.
From that standpoint, splashing some napthalene would cool them even faster.
Here's some oxygen absorbers
Oxygen absorbers
Here's a place for mylar bags
Sorbent Systems
grain alcohol is non toxic.
I would say that looks pretty good.
Couple of areas that could be improved but looks good. You could make it a year.
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They were used to make large chunks of ice by people that had power for their neighbors.
The place where I get my food buckets is at the local small grocery store where they are sold cheap after the store uses the contents for baking supplies. They are clean (and rewashed at home) and come complete with tight fitting lids.
I LOVE FreeRepublic! Thanks to all of you who commented (so far!) on this thread! This stuff is important and it gives us all information and perspective on what is really important. I appreciate each an every comment.
I agree that some of the quantities may seem odd, but they reflect quantities of items that are easily obtained. 50 disposable lighters happens to be the unit of issue of that item at Costco, and is the absolute cheapest source I have found. Anyone who has ever watched “Survivor” knows how important fire is, and that is only one source of fire that I have stocked.
The quantities of applesauce reflect the yield on about 80 pounds of apples, and 25 pounds of Bartlett Pears.
The Dill pickles are homemade, and reflect what is left of canning 25 pounds of pickling cucumbers.
The stewed tomatoes are the result of canning 40 pounds of nice locally grown tomatoes.
Another source of supply that I use is the local restaurant supply. I’ve bought a bunch of really cheap meat this year, which yielded not only that 40 pounds of homemade beef jerky, but a freezer full of meat as well. Providing the power for that freezer is worth a thread all it’s own.
Again, let me stress that this inventory is a work in progress. I have a master list that I update on a regular basis and continually add to the larder. The quantities reflect available package sizes along with what I could score relatively inexpensively.
Another thing I need to stress is the concept of “O.A.R.”
Organize
Acquire
Rotate
The amounts of flour I have are high limits, and we bake bread here weekly for four people. Yes, flour does in fact deteriorate over time, but if you use it and replace it on a regular basis, the amount of nutrients it loses is ameliorated when you replace it. The object is to have the means to produce bread.
Yes, it is far better to have 500 pounds of grain on hand along with the means to grind your own flour. I have not chosen that path yet, and I think we have enough alternates on hand to make up for the loss of nutritional value that the flour loses. We can debate the finer points of that in a different thread, that is not the intent of this thread tonight.
Rotating perishable stocks is essential to any plan, and my intent with this thread is to provide a snapshot of just the dry goods part of our rotating pantry. Our daughter comes and “shops” when she needs to, and that helps keep stuff current as well.
I have made other arrangements for other considerations for survival in place that could be the subject of their own threads. This is intended to be a fairly narrow discussion of what a good start on a “dry pantry” looks like. We haven’t touched on arrangements for cold storage of veggies, gardening, composting, or proper seed storage either.
We haven’t touched on the generator to help preserve a freezer full of meat or the upcoming pemmican production season. Same goes for home dehydration, vacuume packaging, the merits of .22 caliber ammunition for barter, or a debate about gasoline vs natural gas vs propane. Those are all worthy subjects unto themselves.
One useful link to start is for the Oxygen Absorbers. These guys also deal with other Survival Supplies but there are many other sources...
https://www.usaemergencysupply.com/
I also have other arrangements for water, but that too is a subject for a different thread.
This really isn’t a tinfoil hat subject. Considering that the US Coast Guard pulled over 30,000 people off the roofs of their houses in the first 24 hours after Katrina, personal readiness has always been an issue. Those people were not even prepared to properly evacuate even if the mans had been available.
I talked to a woman just last week who had to evacuate in the middle of the night here because of a forest fire that was threatening the house. She told me that she had time to grab some family pictures, and that was it. They were out of the house for 3 days in a mtel, looking at pictures, I guess.
We have a 72 hour evacuation kit ready too, but that is also a subject for another thread....
This list should be a plan to deviate from. I’m presenting it as an example of what we are doing that seems to be working well for us. many people feel intimidated about even trying to attempt something like this because it looks impossible. But you can eat an elephant, one bite at a time.
Remember my friends, the goal here is to stay out of the refugee camp if things turn badly. Yes, if the house burns to the ground we are screwed too, but even if my home were damaged in a major earthquake, I would rather take my chances here, than with 30 or 40 thousand of my neighbors in a refugee camp.
No, I cannot provide for every contingency, but it makes little sense to prepare for no contingency at all.
Ping for later reading
How much square feet of space is needed for all on your list?
Been rolling my own cigs for several years and thats one of the things I thought of also machine to roll them and tubes also....If you have access to military stores, also MRE will keep for years...My kids gave me some for Christmas and extra Pepsi...It was a hoot and I put the MRE’s into my stash....
Before Y2K, there was a guy I read about who was stocking up for the impending disaster. He purchased and stored a lot of feminine sanitary items.
When he was asked why he did so, since he had no need for them, he merely answered, “Barter.”
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We have a vacuum packer. In the past I placed an oxygen absorber inside ( to scavenge any remaining 02) then vacuum packed any dry goods, then placed it in a sealed container. Also allowed me to break down bulk goods into more manageable amounts for use.
Not strictly a food item but you might want to include multivitamins and mineral supplements to your stash.
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