Preppers, like those accused of being “tin foil,” have enjoyed a new found respect these days and I suspect that will increase. But this thread isn’t about that, rather it’s an attempt to find some common ground. Do you like to eat food? Would you like to have some food just in case there was no, or limited, or super expensive, food (for whatever reason) in the future? Do you agree that having food you can eat, but not needing it because everything continued just fine in our chaotic world is still a good thing when you lock in today’s food prices for tomorrow?
Food prices are skyrocketing and will continue to do so due to the massive inflationary pressures as a result of our government’s reckless spending over multiple administrations (but massively increased in recent years). So buying food now, and storing it, is like investing. Not just investing in the prepper sense of having food on hand, but also in the traditional sense. If food costs X and you buy a bunch of it today, you will have made a hefty return (that you’re not likely to make in the stock market) in two years when you eat that food instead of buying it for 2X the price.
If you are late to the game I would urge you to very seriously consider building a food stash for your family just in case the world is in a worse state than you think. Here is what I recommend in this order:
Step One - Dry Canning
You can find stuff on YouTube for the specifics. In short, you can put years worth of rice, pasta, beans, and “wheat berries” (ie also get a grinder and you can easily ground these into flour when you use them) and quinoa and a bunch of other foods and store them in a way that requires no refrigeration and can freeze if you leave it in the garage, using jars or mylar bags. This can be done in a few days. It will put you way ahead of the power curve in a short period of time and it’s not expensive. In mylar bags with oxygen absorbers, this food will last you twenty-five years.
Step Two - Pressure Canning
Buy a Presto or other pressure canner that will do at least 16 pint jars at a time. Then buy as many pint and quart mason jars as you can (I recommend wide mouth jars). Then you can pressure can meat (pork, beef, chicken, fish) and you don’t need to refrigerate it. You do need to keep it from freezing though. For two people’s worth of meat, you can store two years worth of meat in about a month of solid ten hour days. This takes more work than dry canning. Each pint jar holds about one pound of meat so that should give you an idea of how many jars you’ll want. We bought 1500 jars to store two years of meat for two people. Five years later, we still have about 400 jars of meat to go. You can also use the jars to “water can” vegetables too for storage. If you’re too busy for this step, skip to step three and just do step two on the weekends…
Step Three - Freeze Drying
If it wasn’t for the fact that this takes a long time to do, this would far and above be the first step. You can freeze dry meat, vegetables, and just about everything else with a few exceptions (peanut butter, butter, pure chocolate, and a couple others). And the stored product is lighter and easier to store than the other two steps, and it keeps 97% of the nutrients whereas pressure canning only keeps about 40%. Best of all, it will last 25 years in mylar bags and it doesn’t need to be refrigerated and it’s no big deal if it freezes. The problem is, however, it takes forever to build a freeze dried stash. A Harvest Right medium (4 tray) machine takes 24-35 hours to do one batch (about ten pounds of food). So unless you buy several of these machines (and they’re about $4K a pop) and run them in small a warehouse or storage unit, or your house if you have one, it will take too long to build an immediate stash. But once you’ve done Steps 1 and 2 above, I would get on this. Imagine how much food you can store now, that you’ll be able to rotate and eat later. You could achieve food security now, with prices now, and not even need to grow food.
Step Four - Rotate Your Stash
You want to eat the food you store. Especially anything pressure canned since it will only last about two years (people say it will last three years, and you’ll have to figure that out for yourself – we’re still eating our canned meat and it’s about 5 years old now). Once you have your food supply, you just eat the oldest stuff first as part of your regular food preparation. Then you can replace it in intervals (assuming food is still available and affordable).
Once you’ve got a freeze dry stash built up, however, you can feasibly just eat off that for the rest of your days depending on how old you are. A 25 year shelf life allows for a whole lot of food. Short of a bunch of freeze dryers making the ultimate “rest of my life” stash, you’ll want to look into growing/raising your own food if you have the footprint to do so. When it comes time to replenish your pressure canned stocks in the future, it may be cost prohibitive or just not available depending on where the country and world is headed.
But I’m not retired, I’m busy, I don’t have time to do food 24/7
Valid. In that case do Step one first because it takes very little time and will set you up ahead of the power curve quickly. Then do Step three because it’s not labor intensive (but is expensive up front) while doing Step two on the weekends.
We have ten years of food stored up for the wife and me based on normal calorie consumption (so we could stretch it out). It feels kind of like playing Dungeon Siege from back in the day and storing up loot, except it’s actually useful. Having that food on hand during all our world’s uncertainty is an amazing feeling.
