Wonering About How Much Grain To Store.

[Wifezilla]

Some of us here, don't believe in storing bulk amounts of grains and such, i'm not one of them.

I don't have a lot of grains because I have issues with them, but I do have lots of "and such" stored. Beans, peas, lentils, etc...

While a lot of people think I am crazy by prepping for a hyperinflation scenario, I think it is foolish to not have at least some food storage. Blizzard, flooding, tornado, wild fire, toxic spill, rock slide, etc... can all cut off food supplies to stores and leave you wishing you might have paid a little more attention to your paranoid "nut job" friends with the buckets full of beans in their pantry.

 

[TanksHill]

Or when your pres. promises 50M tons of wheat to a foreign country when it's in short supply to start with.

I'm thinking of placing an Azure standard order. I think if I order all of the GF stuff I need as well as white and red wheat it will be a large enough order to justify delivery.

I guess I should check their prices.

g

 

[Icu4dzs]

ALCON,
Once again, we take on the issue of "how much is enough" and what to do about cost.
I would recommend that you find a grain elevator in your town or one in a small town near you. Here in the midwest, the most prominent structural edifice is the town's grain elevator.

If you take a small truck and have them "fill it up" you'll get about 35 bushel of wheat and that means about 1855 lbs of wheat which equates to about $.07/lb. Even if this is 3 times the cost now, $.21/lb is do-able for most of us. I did this and paid a grand total of $135 for it. Admittedly that was about 4 years ago but the cost of wheat rising will be offset by you doing your own work of shipping it and packaging it.

As K0xxx states, the LDS calculator is still the best way to approximate what your needs will be, although they tend to be a bit generous with items that may or may not be "critical needs" but more of "creature comfort" type things. Nothing wrong with that in a serious situation but now that we are about to see "hyper-inflation" the likes of which will boggle the mind, it is wise to be certain to have plenty of the "critical needs first.

Of importance is the fact that wheat, if kept dry, will store INDEFINITELY. That means spend some money on good steel trashcans and put them in a dry place in your house. I do suggest freezing what you buy from the elevator for a while first because they don't screen it for visitors. AND you will find some "visitors" either at first or after a while (Don't aske me how I know this!)

Another thing that stores INDEFINITELY is HONEY.

I don't use mylar bags but probably should. I buy food grade plastic buckets and have a number of gamma seals so that once I open a sealed bucket, I can re-seal it and just take what I need from the bucket with the gamma seal. I pack all my grains and beans with food grade Nitrogen gas. I'm not all that high on oxygen absorbers since you can't re-use them as far as I know.
Nitrogen gas can be pumped back into the container after opening and then you still have the 10+ year shelf life you started with which is a good thing. Yes, a tank and the regulators and all is rather spendy, but if a few folks go in on it together, it becomes very cost effective and helps you know "who you can trust".

Buying one gallon buckets helps but I have been using one gallon steel paint cans and the Nitrogen gas. They are air tight and store neatly. They are easy to label, categorize and if one goes bad (hard to imagine) the others won't. I'd rather lose one gallon than 5 or 6!

Recently I tried using powdered butter/shortening and find it quite satisfactory for baking. Tough to spread on toast, but then we ARE talking about a serious situation here.

As WZ mentions, there are certainly a significant number of scenario's which require the preparation we are discussing but certainly the cost of everything now will never be that low again.

Now that our gov't is giving money away that we really don't have, I worry about who is going to call in all their bank notes(like the Chinese). But we can, if properly advised and prepared, manage to control our vulnerability to the situation by taking aggressive action now. Do NOT buy flour. Buy whole wheat berry's.

The "Country Living Grain Mill" is an ideal piece of equipment. I admit, it too, is rather spendy but you can grind up anything in it...little bones from "visitors" have been known to show up...LOL
I put an electric motor on mine to speed things up a bit and since I make my own electricity, it is something I CAN have since I am limiting what I buy now to what I can power myself either with my hands/back or my power generation system.

I'd also recommend the 365 day diet which was constructed by a family in the LDS church. They built 15 meals packaged in mylar bags and packed 25 of each. They are complete "kits" for number of different types of meal so you would go two weeks or so without a "repeat". These folks live in an apartment in a city so they store these little mylar bags behind their couch and under the bed. Very clever use of both food storage and space.

Hope this makes some sense.
//BT//
Trim sends

 

[TanksHill]

Do you have a link for the LDS 365 day diet? I have not seen that before.

Thanks,

g

 

[Icu4dzs]

Do you have a link for the LDS 365 day diet? I have not seen that before.

Thanks,

g

http://preparednessnibblesandbits.blogspot.com/2009/01/concept-of-365-days-of-pre-made-meals.html

This is a very well thought out process and takes up very little space.

Here is another site with the same concept except they use mason jars.

http://dinnerisinthejar.com/

 

[TanksHill]

Thanks. I like the dinner in a jar page. I will have to do some reading there. It reminds me of a book I bought a long time ago for crafting gifts in a jar. I will need to find that. This might be a use for all of the 1/2 gallon jars I bought.


Thanks again,

g

 

[Icu4dzs]

Those 1/2 gallon mason jars are hard to come by so take good care of them. I use them for my kitchen supply. I take what I need from the gamma sealed buckets and fill those jars. The mung beans, lentils, and alfalfa seeds (which I sprout) last quite a while in the 1/2 gal jars. Rice goes fairly quickly as do the beans if I cook them rather than sprout them.
I bought a case of them a few years ago and just bought two more cases. I love them!

 

[TanksHill]

I am using them for dry goods as well. When I found that last lot of mason jars on CL I ended up with 8 dozen.

I use them for everything now.

Do you have the dinner in a jar book? After reading the page I noticed they mentioned the "gifts in a jar" book I have.

Just wondering if it's worth the 14 bucks on Amazon of if regular recipes could be converted.

g

 

[Boyd]

Where do you get a good manual grinder???? I bought one for about 69. oo year before last and it's only good for grinding cereal.. then last year I was able to get an electric one..
I have been buying pop corn to grind for cornmeal.. I have it in the freezer right now as a 4 lb bag will make 13 cups.. that last a pretty good while.

http://www.survivalcenter.com/mills.html

 

[Wifezilla]

I like the dinner in a jar page.

In my storage, I have many "dinners in a bag". For chili, a bag of beans, 1 large can of tomato paste, dried onion, dried peppers, and a spice packet. For chowder, 2 cans of clams, a can of shrimp, dried carrots and other veggies, a can of coconut milk, and a spice packet of Old Bay seasoning.