Buying food for storage

sneedle · Coal Joined: Mar 25, 2005 Posts: 2

I've been lurking and learning here for the last few weeks, and now have a question I hope someone can help me with.

I'm considering ordering a ready-made stockpile of food from one of the suppliers that caters to the Mormons who do food storage. I know this is just a stop-gap, and we really need to get our garden going and figure out where our food is going to come from in the future. But at the moment, I have more money than time, plus shipping charges for heavy items like that are only going to go up and up.

Has anyone bought a prefab stockpile like that? (I'm considering getting just the beans and whole grains, sealed into big plastic buckets. Yes I know there are cheaper ways to do that, but not where I live.) Any recommendations for good companies to order from? Types of food to store, or avoid? Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks so much!

seahorse2 · Expert Joined: Oct 18, 2004 Posts: 1956

I'm like you, I would rather buy stuff than spend the extra time trying to do it myself. I had good success with a company called Nitropak. You can buy either freeze dried or dehydrated foods, in any combination, to include one year supplies. Look at Nitropak, but there are others. Don't buy a bunch of MREs. More expensive, plus, rodents can eat through the packaging.

BiGG · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Mar 28, 2005 Posts: 1027

Walton is the biggie and a great resource for information regarding storage and shelf life.

SurvivalAcres · Heavy Crude Joined: Mar 29, 2005 Posts: 135

Try our website, we've got an online shopping cart and the best prices in the industry. We are resellers for Walton's and Alpine Aire (at a better price!).

Shipping costs are based upon weight and shipping zone, you can enter your items into our online cart and send this quote to us, we'll send you back the shipping quote.

There are a number of prepacked units we sell, from 30 days to one year for four people, or you can pick from over 1,000 items we offer.

For long term storage, I'd recommend either cans or buckets, which are sealed with oxygen absorbers. Buckets also contain nitrogen, and these type of packaged products can last 10+ years (some 20+ year!) and can give you and "edge" on learning how to garden and become self sufficient (something we strongly advocate). Food storage is good, learning how to grow your own is even better.

We ourselves are moving into the gardening / greenhouse stage for long term sustainability. We're also putting in chickens and rabbits. Already got the bicycles for human powered transportation....