Have decided to put some bulk dry grains and legumes into 5 gallon sealable buckets with oxygen absorbers. Got the hard winter wheat over the internet. Went to Sam's Club and got some deals:
popcorn 50# $16.58
washed pinto beans 50# $32.99
Long grain rice 50# $20.99
4 gallons veg oil $24.89
sugar 50# $22.49
Salt 50# from feed store.
Will put some whole shelled corn in buckets also, having bought several hundred pounds for the deer feeders.

Any other suggestions or ideas appreciated.

It's hard for me to be serious in this response but assuming you are, I will be too.

You haven't mentioned an absolutely critical component....water. Since I don't know where you live, that may or may not be a problem.

You probably know this but salt at the feed store comes in two grinds, finer, which is still fairly coarse, and coarse. Get the finer grind.

That's a lot of popcorn but you could eat it like corn if necessary.

If you're really worried about survival long term, I'd include a goodly supply of basic condiments especially black pepper which you didn't mention. They sell Tabasco in gallon jars if that is to your taste.

Also, in the same vein, some seeds, such as heritage tomatoes, keep some potatoes around for gardening, etc.

Personally, since I like them, I'd include a few boxes of grits, and keep them rotated out by use. Also keep a few pounds of butter in the freezer. It won't last long, but would be good with the grits when the stuff first hits the fan.

I could go on and on, but one critical item which I'm sure you have but is not mentioned is a few thousand rounds of .22 LR. I'm not sure what you're preparing for, if you're thinking insurrection that's actually less of a problem than nuclear but if you're really thinking buttoning down, then you need some canned proteins, such as fish, chili, etc. Thinking as I'm typing, I'd go pretty heavy on the wheat, flour would be hard to replace since growing wheat is not a realistic backyard process.

Also, depending on your thoughts, keep at least 40 or 50 gallons of gas or diesel (if you have diesel equipment around) and rotate it out all the time to keep it fresh. Generator? Tea? Coffee? Booze?

Gatogordo,
I agree with essentially everything you've mentioned.
I am fortunate to have both city-water and a good well, plus year round creeks, a forever supply of firewood (unless AlGore makes burning firewood illegal).

A good supply of garden seeds, either packed air-tight or stored in the fridg is probably a good idea (their lifetime doubles for each 10 degrees cooler they are kept from 72 deg.).

The popcorn is actually an easy way to eat corn and is recommended by some of the survival "experts". Cornmeal takes some work, but hand and electric grinders should suffice.
Some freeze-dried stores sell canned butter that is suppose to have a long shelf-life, but I've never tried it.
Space for a milk cow and some chickens would be a good thing to have, too, if possible.
Thanks.

Steve:

I would consider, if you don't have it, a wood buring stove, we have (but not for survival purposes) what is called an earth stove, somewhat expensive (was in house when I bought it) but it provide both heat and a cooking surface. In the dreaded ice storm of Christmas 2000, locally we were without grid power for 15 days and we are an all electric house. I suppose one could survive under almost any conditions for just 2 weeks but with 3 small kids, that earth stove made a helluva difference. Chain saw? Extra chains, files?

Depending on your taste, pasta, tomato sauce in cans?

I remember that storm. Although my house only lost power for a few hours, a friend 10 miles away was without electricity in similiar conditions to yours for 2 weeks also. He borrowed my generator and heated the house with his fireplace. Those stove inserts that fit into the fireplace really are useful. I heat the current house primarily with wood, but just have a fireplace with blowers.

Steve:

I'm not much of a "survival" nut (and BTW, just to be clear just because you want to "be prepared (boy scout motto)" doesn't mean I think you're bent), but we're far enough out of town (average sheriff/cop response time=45 minutes) that we prepare for the worst all the time.....given that, I consider dogs that alert/bark when someone comes around to be an essential element of home defense, you should too. They don't have to necessarily bite, just alert.

I just opened up a bunch of 5 gallon bucket of wheat, beans, rice, and some other grains that we put up about 22 years ago, and they are all still edible (though you'd have to be hungry to eat them IMHO). Here's my thoughts-

All this stuff, 27 buckets worth, was sealed in 5 gallon buckets with snap on lids. Snap on lids are a major PITA! You can buy lids with the screw caps, but next time I do this I'm going to use 3 or 5 gallon jugs. Either the ones that restaurants get the cooking oil in (and wash, rinse, and dry) or new ones that look like those. Most of our buckets were translucent, so you can tell something is in them but not what exactly, so clear plastic jugs are usefull there if you have a lot of stuff. Also, 5 gallon buckets are heavy when full, smaller ones are easier to stack and carry.

If you want to really prepare, pack up a jar of powdered pool shock chlorine. Then you can use it to make bleach- 1 teaspoon to 2 gallons water. Mix it 1:100 to disinfect water for drinking, which is 1 pint of water to 12.5 gallons. If you just have a gallon of bleach use 2 drops bleach per quart, or a bottle of tincture of iodine and use 5 drops per quart.

MATCHES!!!! Get the Diamond Strike Anywhere kind. We gathered a a good supply of food, etc then realized that we would have a difficult time cooking & warming ourselves without matches.

Jerry

Mark,
I plan on writing the contents and date on each sealed pail. Am also getting a tool designed to open the dadgum things.
Judge Jerry, very good idea on the strike-anywhere matches.
Thanks.

A lock pick for the local Safeway.....no buckets needed.....

Whoops, could not resist. I know this is to be serious .. a pal of mine is a fan of MRE's. I don't know how they fit into the equaiton.

Mark, the two biggest causes of deterioration of stored dried foodstuffs is heat and light. The best storage would be in totally black containers with the contents and dates of storing written in white ink on the outside.

Bill, MRE's are about $80/case of 24 meals!! Good stuff if all you need is a few days, but that amount of money will keep a family in beans and corn for months!

This stuff is like concealed weapons. We'll probably never need it, but when we do, we really need it.

quote:

Originally posted by SGraves155:
Bill, MRE's are about $80/case of 24 meals!! Good stuff if all you need is a few days, but that amount of money will keep a family in beans and corn for months!

I told my pal today about this thread. He told me the same thing.....looks like I might be snowed in up here for a few days....predicting
20-30 inches. I can understand the subject a bit better contemplating what could happen in a real time scenario...like some guy living in a remote part of Alaska. My biggest problem is not the 30 inches, it's the damn snow plow guy that will make the end of my driveways look like Mt Everest.

Oxygen absorbers are nice, but when sold as such are over priced.

Get one use chemical hand warmers, they are essentially the same thing.

And while removing the oxygen is nice more can "seep in" later, particularly if the container is less than perfectly sealed and exposed to temperature fluctuations.

the air in the container has a tendency to expand and contract, so when warmer it breathes out your oxygen
reduced air and when it cools it draws in fresh air.

You really want to seal something off?
take an odd sock (clean) and put half of a small block of dry ice in it and put it at the bottom of the bucket before filling.
THEN put a hand warmer on-top.

Dry Ice is CO2 and CO2 gas is about 1.5times heavier than air.

Pure Argon would be even better, but it's more expensive.
Argon is nearly twice as heavy as air.

The main reason staples like beans and grains spoil is not heat or light, it's oxygen, the fat content even in rice can make it pretty foul tasting stuff after only a year or so unless you take the steps I've mentioned.

Corn has a high oil content as well though it isn't as perishable as rice (particularly brown rice) it won't keep as long as you'd like

As for flour? No, get yourself a couple of grain mills
I recommend and store the grain whole. under CO2.

what would be absolute best is to find smaller containers
Individually purged that will stack in a plastic 55gal drum with a removable top that you can also drive the air out of.

Grain found in egyptian tombs has actually germinated even after being burried for thousands of years.

Seems when the burial crew left they left the lights on and it consumed all the oxygen... and left behind CO2...

AD

Allan, thanks for that. I have located a dry ice source and will use that to flush out the oxygen.

http://beprepared.com/Default.asp?bhcd2=1220920501
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...6YpE&feature=channel
http://www.survivalistboards.com/index.php
Watch the youtube first, mylar bags with the buckets are the way to go.

We have stored cracked wallnuts in glass canning jars.Filled jar with nuts, placed in oven at 150 deg F for 1/2 hr with lid loose then tightened lid. after 2 years nuts still tasty and crisp. I would think that maybe you could do the same with rice and dry beans.

Just an update, I wanted to post that this winter I've been feeding the 22 year old wheat to our sheep and peacock, they all seem to like it. The beans and rice not so much! We did the CO2 packing too, used a fire extinguisher and just gave it a shot. Nowadays I think I'd mix some baking soda and vinegar in a just and run some plastic tubing into the container for 30 seconds or so.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeN:
We have stored cracked wallnuts in glass canning jars.Filled jar with nuts, placed in oven at 150 deg F for 1/2 hr with lid loose then tightened lid. after 2 years nuts still tasty and crisp. I would think that maybe you could do the same with rice and dry beans.

Mike,

Are your nuts shelled or just cracked? Do you pick them up and wash the black stain off somehow? I have a ton of walnut trees but have never done much in the way of gathering the nuts as I don't really know a hygenic way to clean them up. The traditional way around here is put them in your driveway for a couple weeks, but that makes a mess too.

It takes quite a bit of CO2 to completely purge a bucket.

And your method will also introduce water (water is nearly as bad as oxygen)

But I don't use plastic buckets.

Plastic buckets allow light through and are not entirely impermiable to gasses or air, in addition to this the plastic itself gets brittle with age.

what do I use?

I brew my own beer and actively dislike bottling beer, so I tend to keg most of my beer.

Kegging in cleaned 5gallon soda syrup kegs (commonly called Corney Kegs") uses a lot less priming (malt sugar to generate gas pressure) than bottling does and a lot less time. And I've never seen beer in a stainless steel keg get "Light struck"

I have several times more kegs than I actually need so I use spare kegs to store my brewing grain.

as well as other things....

Sealed in a stainless steel 5gallon container that has been purged, vacuum pumped, purged again then pressurized to 75psi with "inert" gas will store many things for generations if not centuries (or millenia)

Yet I still drop in a disposable handwarmer (as an oxygen/moisture absorber) for a final defense....

The really neat thing is I'm not restricted to storing dry goods this way.

Edible oils, Beer, wine, alcohol can also be stored this way
Vinegar can easily be stored in it's original containers

My point in storing oils in purged containers is that the dissolved air in any food oil is the "seed of destruction"
to that oil, given enough time even a small ammount of air can turn the entire batch rancid.

But purging the gases by flushing (bubbling) inert gas through it drives some oyygen out, storing it under
vacuum for a short length of time (several days) draws
out more, then pressurizing with inert gas prevents air
from getting in later.

For storing oils I strongly recommend the use of argon
rather than CO2.

Though if you really want to pt a high shine on your turd polishing you could bubble Carbon MONOXIDE through the oil while keeping the oil HOT (in a water bath) as a purge step. this would positively strip any dissolved oxygen out of the oil.

the real beauty of using pressurized containers
for oil storage is that oil can be drawn off
(like beer from a keg) without compromising
container integrity.

though when storing oil I only put 4.5gallons of oil in each 5gal container. I get to leave a far greater volume of pressureized gas in the container, mitigating the effect
of any small leaks.

and you can check the container for pressure at any time.



AD

What exactly are we preparing for? My plan is to sit tight in Asia until whatever it is, blows over.

Kensco,

just you and 250,000,000 American loving Muslims!

there's a reason I moved to Idaho, anybody remember 16% prime rates during the Jimmy Carter debacle?

Rich
Buff Killer

That all??? Hell, I thought you had a problem.

quote:

Originally posted by Kensco:
What exactly are we preparing for? My plan is to sit tight in Asia until whatever it is, blows over.

Inflation.

I am a bargain hunter, but the downside of bargains is balancing against shelf life.


AD

Google "Backwoods Home" and look into picking up some of their anthologies.
These folks are the reincarnation of the 70's survivalists w/out the Rambo approach.
I've been getting (and saving) their magazines for years. Good articles on living "off the grid". I've applied some of their ideas to my hunting camp and always feel comfy and secure out there.
Here in the UP we comment that we have a meat market in our back yard and a fish market in the front, almost as much wood as Maine and "Fudgies" (tourists) for entertainment.
"Culture" is a bottle of wine with a cork and a video w/subtitles!!
Having done a lot of emergency management work there are two mottos which I live by:
It's not IF, but When and...
Control the situation, or the situation will control YOU.
Mike

In the part of Pennsylvania where I am one of the more popular bummper stickers was
"If it's Tourist season why can't I shoot some?"

"Leaf Peepers" the fall foliage idiots are the worst.

Then there are the "snow birds" who because they actually own a house THINK (incorrectly) that they are a "local"

AD

How about using 30mm Ammo cans for storage? They hold a lot, they have a gasketed lid, and you can fit bigger stuff inside than you can with a Corney keg. (but no gas in/out ports for purging. Get around that by vacuum bagging the food that goes inside)

Remember those 5 gal buckets I wrote about earlier in the thread? I've been feeding them to our sheep bucket by bucket. Even though they are translucent all you know is they have grain inside them, the rice is about the only one you can definitely identify. We had labelled them by putting masking tape and writing on the tape. Well the tape either fades-even with ballpoint pen- or comes off so if I did it again I'd use a sharpie directly on the lid.

Anyway, I opened up another mystery bucket and it was oatmeal, which looked and smelled pretty good for 20+ years of storage. So it being morning I brought a couple cups inside and cooked it up for breakfast. To put it politely, the stuff cooked up nice but tasted horrible. So, while 20 year old oatmeal will keep you from starving it is not necessarily a pleasant experience. And this is from a guy who has eaten snakes and alligators..

Oatmeal has a high protein and oil content and doesn't store real well.

I tend to eat a lot of oatmeal (plain old fashioned rolled oats) so I tend to rotate my stock pretty rapidly.

I've been known to run through 10lbs of oatmeal a month
all by myself.

Hell even my meatloaf receipe uses oatmeal.

AD

quote:

Originally posted by Mark:
Remember those 5 gal buckets I wrote about earlier in the thread?...

Wait. That was you? I didn't even notice. I have this image in my head of Robin Williams in the Movie "The Survivors". Oh yeah. I'm thinking of the scene in which Walter Matthau has him tied to a chair and says "Wes is an asshole". Williams responds with "You'll smoke a turd in hell for that".

But back to the topic...I wonder if a gas valve could be put on an ammo can to purge it with nitrogen or CO2?

LDO, seems to me the lid's seal and weight, without the lever-lock employed, would probably act like a semi-efficient one-way valve, at least for the 6-8 hours it would take for a handful of dry ice placed within to sublimate.

quote:

Originally posted by SGraves155:
LDO, seems to me the lid's seal and weight, without the lever-lock employed, would probably act like a semi-efficient one-way valve, at least for the 6-8 hours it would take for a handful of dry ice placed within to sublimate.

So that's a good thing, right?

After I made last night's post, I looked for 30mm cans. They are not easy to find. One site called them "fat 20mm" cans. I also saw some cans that held mortars or rockets. They were HUGE.

If someone wanted to buy a pallet of 30mm cans, I'd go in with them.

I'll just stock up on ammo, the food will take care of itself.

Some good quality outdoor/hunt footwear /clothing, Although I reload , I would stock some ready use factory that my rifle liked, MRE's are a must, just to bulk out the odd treat from the land!.

quote:

Originally posted by SGraves155:
popcorn 50# $16.58
sugar 50# $22.49

Any other suggestions or ideas appreciated.

You forgot the yeast!

steve you need a good place to store everything where no one could find it.A good cellar away from the house with no visible door. It takes about 5 acre's depending on soil quality to be totaly self supporting. If things get really bad it will not take long for hunting to get harder to so some protein storage is not a bad idea. Other than the beans. I like kippers myself