The thought of spending several hundred dollars all at once on food storage made me both excited and apprehensive. I was thankful to be able to get a bunch of food in one fell swoop, but I also felt the heavy responsibility to spend the money wisely.
After a lot of thought, I decided to split the money between our three month supply and our long term food storage. The goal is to have a balanced range of food stored and to gradually increase the amounts of all types of items until we have a full year of food.
Here's the first installment of our Food Storage Blitz Month: an order with Emergency Essentials.
I ordered 4 "Superpails" of hard white wheat, plus mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, and buckets to package some things on my own. (More about that in Part Two.)
We now have ten of these six gallon buckets of wheat and yet we still need to buy a lot more. We're about 200 pounds short of what we're supposed to have according to this food storage calculator.
I also bought some whole egg powder, freeze dried green peppers, drink mix, and lentils. Not very exciting, eh? I'm going to buy a dehydrator sometime soon and dry the peppers we grow ourselves, but these freeze dried ones are good to have on hand for now. The drink mix is high in Vitamin C (something that we are a bit short of in our food storage at the moment) and would be very welcome if we were living on stale-tasting stored water. The egg powder and lentils are simply good staples to have around.
More of our Food Storage Blitz Month coming soon!
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It's exciting to get a bunch of stuff done all at once! A couple of suggestions, rather than spending all the money to purchase buckets and have them shipped, have you looked into getting used buckets from food manufacturers in your area, or from bakeries? Many grocery stores with bakery areas will have buckets they just throw away. This way you only have to purchase the mylar bags. Also, there is a company I heard about that is a manufacturer of mylar bags that sells to the public at wholesale pricing. The name of it is Sorbent Systems. Their website is sorbentsystems.com. They're really great to work with. And it's a the more you buy the less it costs type of thing, so if you know anyone else who wants mylar bags you can go in together. I went in with a bunch of people last year and ended up paying 1.12 per bag, the same exact size and everything as the ones I'd gotten from E.E. Good luck with everything. I'm excited to see what else you get done.
ReplyDeleteMy Emergency Essentials order is about three weeks overdue. We finally got the shipping notification late last week. I get ansy waiting for it! More wheat, some beans, and oats. Love seeing what you do each month!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous is there a good trustworthy source on the internet that shows the correct way to long term store grain, do it yourself?
ReplyDeleteso far I've found:
freeze bags of grain for 3 days in freeze (kills any bug eggs)
mylar bags vary in thickness
WiJoyMom - Check out this post - http://theharriedhomemakerpreps.blogspot.com/2010/09/month-four-preps-long-term-storage.html
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'm not too worried about bug eggs hatching since I put a ton of oxygen absorbers in with my grain. Without oxygen, nothing can survive.
I'm not sure what mil (thickness) the mylar bags I have are, but they are plenty thick. I got them at Emergency Essentials. You can probably get them cheaper elsewhere, but I like having a one-stop-shop.
For future reference:
ReplyDelete- Costco sells 45lb buckets of wheat for $20.00 each.
- Costco often sells #10 cans of eggs and strawberries for $10 each (on again off again - this isn't a constant)
- Some Walmarts sell #10 cans and super pails of food. ALL walmarts in Utah do this I think, and some outside of Utah (my Walmart dos not do this, so I watch at Costco for their foods)
- It is cheaper to buy in bulk at Costco and can it yourself most of the time. I pay about $2 for each set of 20x30 mylar bag and 2000cc oxygen absorber (ordered online), $2 for buckets with lids (used from Firehouse Subs (just soak water and baking soda to get pickle smell out)), and the item in bulk from Costco or Sams.
- Mormon canneries are open to non-mormons as well, although most items are cheaper purchased in bigger bags (50lb) from Costco.
Anonymous - I always envy those who have access to Costco! There is neither a Costco nor a Mormon cannery anywhere near me. :(
ReplyDelete