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BrewerGeorge

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It's that time again for me to start stocking away food for the winter.

Last weekend I bought another 50# bag of white rice from GFS for $20, replaced all my water (Walmart has 35 half-liter bottles for $2.88), bought and mylar bagged 20 lbs of pintos and 5 lbs of split peas. Still need a couple tubes of oatmeal (5# total) and probably going to get 5# of lentils as well. Added to what I had from last year, that brings me up to approximately 128 man-days of calories. Protein is a little low at 60g per day, and fat would be half that. That doesn't include anything in the pantry or fridge, or any venison (20# in the freezer) we could eat while we still had power. Oh, and maybe a weeks's worth of dehydrated stuff.

I'm seriously considering buying 50# of flour and 25# of sugar and bagging it up as well. I have the bags and O2 absorbers left over and that flour and sugar would only cost about $22 total.

Anybody else actively stockpile food?
 
Is this preparation for the winter or nuclear fallout?

After 9-11 and in the early 2000's when things were a bit uncertain in the world, my kids were only 4 and 5 years old, I began to think it would be a good idea to stockpile food just in case. If anything were to happen, I definitely wouldn't want my kids to starve due to my lack of planning. I still have it all sitting in my basement. 100lb or so of rice, 50lb of beans, boxes and boxes MRE's, water filtration systems, lots of propane cylinders, generator, fuel... just about anything you can think of for an extended emergency. Enough food and resources to last a family of 4 for at least 6mths.

I look back now and kinda think I went a bit overboard... Who knows if it's still any good. It was all put into giant food grade mylar bags with silica gel packs and then sealed into 5 gallon buckets. I've been debating over whether or not to throw it all out, because I really don't think I'm ever going to need it... (now that I said that, something is bound to happen)
 
Rice and beans should be good if they are in mylar. MRE's probably not.

I am preparing for a short-term disruption in food and power availability for whatever reason - ice storms, floods (not me but infrastructure), disruption in gas/diesel supply, and things like that. I don't try to prepare for the true TEOTWAWKI scenarios because they almost certainly would mean leaving my house (and all my preps) behind.

128 man-days sounds like a lot, but there are three of us at home now. That's six weeks. Bring in all the grown daughters and their partners and we're up to nine people eating, dropping us down to two weeks.
 
Our small house has pretty limited storage space, so I don't actively stockpile food unless I'm trying to find different ways to preserve all of the oranges our 2 trees throw at us, but I've lately been watching a lot of pressure canning videos on Youtube, because about 10 years ago or so my hubby gifted me with an All American 921 pressure canner (was on my wish-list) so that I could preserve low-acid foods such as my own chicken stock, beef stock, etc.... Unfortunately, the beastly thing intimidated/scared me so much at the time that I had only enough courage to use it once before boxing it up and storing it away until I could work up enough nerve to use it again. :lol:

Fast-forward to today....... after having just spent the past 2 to 3 weeks binge-watching all kinds of pressure canning videos in my spare time to familiarize myself with it, I feel like such an idiot for having been blessed with what so many consider to be the Cadillac of pressure canners, but too scared to use it all these years. :oops: Anyway- to make a long story short- it's now out of storage and has been put through a (successful) full trial run without me getting scared. The only thing that I am waiting for now is for the next sale on chicken.....or beef!


IrishLass :)
 
I usually have about 20 kg of flour (baking our bread) 3 kg of sugar, and veggies in freezer, G do not forget about lard which is a food , half of my freezer have CO, talllow, and lard
 
I sort of stockpile food. I keep enough non-perishables on hand to feed the two of us for 2 to 3 months. It might not be the best balanced meals, but it's calories and multi-vitamins can make up for most of the nutritional lack. My chest freezer has 40 or 50 pounds of assorted meats in it, in two-serving packets. Where I live, if we lose power and it looks like it's going to be a while before we get it back (it'll take 2 to 6 days depending on time of year before the chest freezer starts thawing significantly), I can turn most of that meat into jerky in less than a week. LOTS of sun and relative humidity in the single digits most of the time, and I keep soy and teriyaki sauces by the gallons (high salt content to help preserve dried meat). Give the window screens a spray with dilute bleach water, and lay strips out on those, cover with a sheet to keep the flies off.

I've got materials and instructions to hand to build several solar ovens (room to store them is another matter, and why I haven't actually built any yet), and we have a small fireplace (more decorative than anything, but I can cook in it in a pinch) so cooking without power might be annoying but it's doable.

The big problem is water. We're on well water here, and the pump is electric. I want to get a manual pump conversion kit, but haven't been able to yet. They're ridiculously expensive. I keep several 5 gallon jugs of water stashed, and have the hand pump thingie for them.
 
I tend to stockpile (rotation system) out of habit, including seeds.

On my wishlist is a dehydrator upgrade, because the one I've got just won't handle the volume I want to process (and I look on with envy at the freeze dryers and commercial vacuum sealers like the butchers use).

Irish, now I'm going to have canner envy as well :)

(Edited to add: Oh! We call them pressure cookers ... I thought you meant you had a machine that seals cans lol)
 
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I have an American 921 as well. It's a beast, isn't it?

I find it intimidating too, and I'm someone who has worked around industrial chemical reactors pressurized to hundreds of atmospheres above normal atmospheric. But I guess a situation that seems safe enough at work doesn't necessarily feel the same in one's kitchen. Even so, I'd rather use the American with its multiple latches and metal to metal seal than a pressure canner that uses a twist lock and rubberized gasket to seal the vessel closed. It had to have been designed by an engineer for all the safety bells 'n whistles designed into it. :)

I don't really squirrel food away in the sense that you do, BG. But I've always had an interest in self-sufficiency just as an intrinsic quality. I dry, can, and freeze a lot of our food. I keep bees, although that's easier said than done nowadays compared to my grandfather's day. And where we live, there is year-round hunting and fishing -- deer, turkey, squirrel, fish, etc. We have our own well, a nearby stream for livestock water, transportation by our horses, and plenty of wood to cut for the wood stove. I'd like someday to get enough photovoltaic on the roof to run the well pump.
 
I tend to stockpile (rotation system) out of habit, including seeds.

On my wishlist is a dehydrator upgrade, because the one I've got just won't handle the volume I want to process (and I look on with envy at the freeze dryers and commercial vacuum sealers like the butchers use).

Irish, now I'm going to have canner envy as well :)

Gosh yes on the envy bit. If plans to build a house pan out for us, I'll have plenty of room for all the gadgetry my heart desires plus a year's worth of food storage, AND uninterruptible electricity (solar panels and battery bank), AND a propane range with a 200 gallon tank, AND a protected enclosed area for gardening, AND a dedicated craft studio that could double as an efficiency apartment. It'll have a small fridge, range and sink (soap kitchen), as well as attached bathroom with a small shower stall.
 
I get the 50# and 25# bags of flour and sugar (respectively) during the winter, but I also bake a LOT of bread this time of year (at least 2-3 loaves a week) and I also am the candy maker for the holidays. I wouldn't say I stock-pile any other type of food for the winter, but it is also not a hardship for us to get out, as we are only 10 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart and grocery store, and our winters are generally mild. Cold, but not snowy/icy a lot and if they are, usually within a day or so it's all melted off and passable.

Sometimes I get motivated enough to think about prepping, especially if I happen to catch one of those shows on the food network about the apocalypse preppers, but never motivated enough to actually do it. LOL
You'd think since I watch TWD I'd want to be prepared in case of a zombie apocalypse, but... nah... LOL
 

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