How many of you purchase food items (powdered, freeze dried, baking items, etc.) through companies that are already pre-packaged. Companies like Emergency Essentials (BePrepared.com) seem to have a fairly comprehensive list of food items, but paying significantly more to have things packaged in #10 cans or mylar bags/food grade buckets adds up quickly. I can see it being worth the cost to just have to move the item from your porch to your pantry and start rotating it through your food selection. How many by pre-packaged for long term storage versus doing the preparation yourself?

We have at least 2 years of food on hand.

Zero freeze dried or pouched or anything like that.

We have quite a bit of freeze dried on hand, nothing purchased. We freeze dry it ourselves.

Since you're doing a thread on freeze drying, please include cost and info on your freeze drier. Thank you!

Would you mind sharing how/what you stock? I know many people enjoy canning, but I don't think my wife would go for canned meats or other things you don't typically see. From my understanding, not everything can be safely or successfully canned, but I'm sure people would argue otherwise.

For how many people?

I would love to see your setup/stock.  More details please.

We stock what we eat, we cook with basic ingredients. This lets us have a large amount of the same things, but it allows us to make a large number of dishes.

 

We buy meat by the animal. We have 3 chest freezers STUFFED full, plus 3 fridge/freezers that always have full freezers and whatever produce is in season in the fridge sections.

We have a root cellar that is 8x10 and has only a narrow walkway, otherwise stuffed floor to ceiling with food. Down in the root cellar is also the LTS pile (Long Term Storage), where we have mylar packed items such as beans, rice, sugar, powdered milk, etc. That is the last ditch effort food supply.


We actually have very little canned. We don't like canned almost anything. Its fresh, frozen, or shelf stable for 95% of our food.

We may or may not have 4) 55 gallon barrels full of whole wheat and oats.


Spices are vital. We buy spices by the gallon bag.



Now, since we rely heavily on the freezers, we have 4 generators and enough gas to keep the freezers cold for weeks at minimum. We also have canning supplies on hand (and yes, canning experience) and other methods ready as well to take the meat out of the freezers and preserve them in other ways should the need arise.

Just posted above with some details, its figured for my wife and I, and our two kids.

 

 

Thanks.


I have a website/Facebook, but I find I am a very boring person, which is very apparent with my youtube vids

What are you doing for fruits and vegetables? Off the top of my head, they can canned, frozen, freeze dried, or stored in the root cellar you speak of. How long do you keep them before eating?

Our fruit is either:

 
Fresh (we produce our own berries/apples) (90% of our fruit)


frozen (berries don't last with anything else, and we freeze apple filling for pies/crisp desserts)


canned (we buy some commercially canned fruit that we don't have easy organic access to, and we can peaches/pears ourselves)


root cellar (some pear varieties and apples)






Quite honestly, the body's NEED for fruit is low. We (as people) LIKE fruit. So as a point of preps, it isn't super important to have a lot on hand. (You can get more Vit C from bell peppers, BTW)


 

ETA: Veggies are more of the same. We root cellar all our carrots, potatoes, onions, etc.