When disaster strikes, grocery stores won’t stay stocked forever. If you’re serious about long-term survival, you need a steady supply of protein. And that means raising your own meat. But […]
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The backyard of the average suburban home is an open space that is sitting there begging to be used for prepping. One such way you can utilize your backyards for prepping and survival is to bury barrels in them. But why would anyone want to bury a barrel in their backyard? There are several reasons […]
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Today, I want to share my tips on storing food safely. I’m very concerned with what I see on Facebook and many blogs concerning food safety. Here’s the deal: We can’t afford to waste our precious dollars on the goods we buy to feed our family if we can’t store them properly.
You may have a different opinion, and I respect that. I have been canning food for over 50 years, and even so, Mark and I went several years ago to get our Master Canning Preserver Certificates.
Things change, and canning has had to change because food grown now is less acidic. Therefore, we have to adjust our canning habits. If you missed this post, please read it: Four Things That Are Not Safe To Can At Home.
My tips are easy to follow and will save you money in the long run. You have probably heard me say, “Buy right the first time.” To help you understand and deal with the necessary changes, I will walk you through my journey of storing food, and I’ve been doing it for 56 years.
I have been married for 56 years and have always had food storage. Some years were leaner than others, but I have always had food.
My mother taught me to make bread and to cook from scratch. Those are two valuable skills, and I appreciate the sewing skill that she taught me. If you have taught your family these skills and more, I applaud you. I do because you have taught them to be self-reliant.
Today I’m only talking about food, not water. You know my thoughts on storing water, please store at least 4 gallons per person daily. You may think that is way too much. It’s not, trust me on that one.
When Mark and I were first married, we built some shelves ourselves. We were newbies, but we knew we needed to store food. We bought brackets, metal strips, and shelving.
Then, in our next home, we built shelves attached to the two-by-four studs in the basement. Those were perfect because I could see all the jars lined up that we had bottled. They were super strong and held up very well.
Fast-forward to now, and we have downsized to a much smaller home in Southern Utah. This house was perfect for the two of us and our two puppies. We even had room for guests. Thankfully, our family didn’t mind sleeping with buckets of wheat in the guest bedroom.
To stock our #10 cans, we purchased shelving from Costco online. The shelves in the store are not as sturdy. These are the ones I bought (then I added plastic sheets on the shelves) at Costco: Trinity 6-Tier Wire Shelving with Wheels.
We had wheels so we could move them easily if necessary. Those are 4-foot Bungee cords from Home Depot holding my cans in case of an earthquake.
As you know, we have moved up north to be closer to family and friends. We now have a home that is 1000 square feet. This was trickier to store our food storage and emergency preps. I have had to let go of some things because of my oxygen issues.
We had custom shelves built to accommodate most of our food storage. They were supposed to be 2 feet deep, but the builder didn’t hear that somewhere along the line, so it is what it is.
This is how I store my Lehi Mills hard white wheat. I only buy wheat from them because they clean it at least six times, whereas most companies only clean their wheat two times.
My wheat grinders are pricey, so I can’t risk running cheap wheat through them. These Lehi Mills buckets are 6-gallon in size.
I store all my white bread flour and wheat with Red Gamma Lids. Everything in my house is color-coded.
I admit I may be a perfectionist—yep, I own it. I don’t put oxygen absorbers in my wheat and never use Mylar bags. I also don’t live where it is humid.
The wheat comes in these buckets, and I replace some lids with Red Gamma Lids. I pour the newer wheat into the buckets with the Red Lids, which is how I keep track of the freshest wheat.
I love to buy Rubbermaid 8-quart and 12-quart commercial containers, like the ones below. They are airtight, and the lids are easy to remove and put back on. I use them because we used to live in the desert, and we had critters.
Yes, I have bug spray monthly; I have to. But I only spray the perimeter of my house. Mark and I can sleep at night knowing our food is protected from pests outside.
These are mason jars made by Ball and Kerr. It’s been an easier year to get canning supplies, including lids, water bath canners, and pressure canners. Please note: Be careful what you read on the internet.
It is not SAFE to oven-can any food. The jars are not designed to have DRY HEAT, they may EXPLODE. In case you missed this post, Four Things That Are Not Safe To Can At Home
FoodSavers are fantastic for food storage. I don’t use oxygen absorbers when I place food in my mason jars when using the FoodSaver Jar Sealer. I did call FoodSaver, and they said the old-style accessory hose is going away. It only works with the V2000 or V3000 series. The new accessory hose is now green and black, which is why people were having trouble getting the old style hose. The picture below shows what the old style looks like. Now we can use the Dicorain! Thanks to Ray for telling us about it.
Now we can use the Dicorain! Thanks to Ray for telling us about it.
My suggestion to all is to start with small cans of food, and when you have extra money, buy some commercially processed Freeze-Dried food in #10 cans with a shelf-life of at least 25 years stored inside your home.
Please buy one #10 can a month. Since the prices have skyrocketed this year, I advise waiting until they are not so high to continue your long-term food storage efforts. Here is a post you should read: Canned Foods I Highly Recommend You Store (these are short-term). Another option is to sign up for their newsletters and watch for discounts.
Having a dehydrator is awesome for dehydrating your food. Mark and I took classes to get our USDA Master Canning and Preserving Certificate. We have both been canning together for 56 years or so.
But I wanted to know if there were changes in the canning world. Yes, indeed, there are changes. Our food has changed. It’s less acidic, so we have to make a few changes to our old canning ways.
We learned in class that the food we water bath, pressure can, or dehydrate ourselves has a shelf-life of one year. Yes, I have eaten some home-canned peaches that are 2-3 years old.
I get it. But it’s best if used within one year. So there you have it.
I have an Excalibur Dehydrator, but I have friends who have a Nesco and love theirs. Please get one that fits your budget. You will never waste food again. You can dehydrate leftover fruits and vegetables for snacks or soups.
Let me explain freeze-dried food in a nutshell. The first step is freezing, followed by placing the frozen food in a vacuum chamber under low heat.
The third step starts when the frozen water crystals evaporate directly from ice to vapor, a process called sublimation.
What’s nice about freeze-dried food is that, depending on the manufacturer, it generally lasts longer in your storage stash. Please always look at the cans and see the shelf life listed.
You can eat the food directly out of the can, so meal preparation uses much less fuel. Freeze-dried foods usually have an open shelf life of 1-2 years.
Again, please look at the #10 can or the manufacturing company’s website for details.
Pros: You can eat it right out of the can. It uses less fuel because we can get by on most foods without cooking them. The bonus is that it has a longer shelf life than dehydrated food.
Cons: It’s more expensive.
Okay, most of us purchase dehydrated food every day. We buy cereal, spices, pasta, beans, baking mixes, etc. Dehydration is the process of removing water from the products.
The water is slowly removed from the food without actually cooking it. This is one of the most affordable, lightweight, and compact ways to purchase food for storage or everyday cooking.
We need to be aware of the term “dehydrated.” It generally takes longer to cook. Most items can’t just be “eaten” right out of the can—they’re too hard. This is fine for soups, stews, etc.
We must remember that dehydrated food does not typically last as long as freeze-dried food. Dehydrated food usually has a 5-8 year shelf life, while freeze-dried food usually has an OPEN shelf life of 6 months to 1 year. Please read the information provided by the companies you purchase from or produce the food.
Pros: It costs a lot less money.
Cons: It uses fuel to cook it and has a much shorter shelf life.
I must set the record straight about not using Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers. About 12 years ago, I dry-canned food from a local church cannery in Salt Lake City, Utah, in #10 cans. Mark and I purchased the food there and were handed Oxygen absorbers. It was the first and last time I ever did this.
My daughter came, and we were all working together. Our mistake was that the volunteers at the cannery had zero experience using oxygen absorbers.
We dry-canned beans (full of large, inferior-quality rocks), dehydrated onions, carrots, and celery, and were so excited to be getting the food cheaper than, say, a commercial company.
Our problem was that the oxygen absorbers were open, warm, and used, so they would not work.
We were newbies and had no idea what we were doing. One year later, my daughter called and said, “Mom, I think these carrots are rancid.” So I opened my cans, one after another.
Yes, indeed, we wasted $1,200.00 on food we had planned to use for our entire family to have some food storage. All of the food had to be trashed.
At the time, I was teaching classes at Honeyville Grain in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company offered free courses to show people how to cook with food storage, and many outstanding teachers came and shared their expertise.
On one of the days I was teaching, an expert on oxygen absorbers was also teaching. What I learned that day changed my view forever on oxygen absorbers and Mylar bags.
There is a margin of error that can’t be missed when combining ounces of food with the different sizes of oxygen absorber cc’s. You don’t just throw an oxygen absorber into a Mylar bag or #10 can without first calculating the exact number (or more to be safe) of cc’s per ounce for the TYPE of food you put into #10 cans or Mylar bags.
MISTAKES can and will be made. This means different foods use different cc’s. Please be careful, or you may become sick from your processed food.
I hope you enjoyed today’s post on how to store food safely. We must stock food to keep our families safe. My gut tells me that there are still families out there that are not doing what they should be for one reason or another.
Do they love standing in line at the city and county buildings to get food after a disaster? Maybe they think the government will deliver food to their homes after a major disaster, I don’t know.
I have heard from local church leaders in my Southern Utah area that less than 10% of people are prepared to take care of their families after a disaster. Some leaders have asked me to come and teach some of the mothers in their congregation how to cook.
It was hard for me to say no because I love helping others. But I was surprised that in a congregation of 350-500, no one was close by to teach others to cook from scratch.
One leader sent me an email and asked, “How do I light the fire under these families in her church so they’ll be better prepared?” Wow, all I can say is, wow.
I feel like shouting from my rooftop, “People, get your act together!” Of course, I know several families in each area will be able to take care of themselves. At least I hope so. May God bless this world, Linda
Copyright Images: Various Fruits and Vegetables that have been Canned at Home AdobeStock_211841782 By Pamela_D_Mcadams
The post Tips On Storing Food Storage Safely appeared first on Food Storage Moms.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
In a long-term disaster, your food storage will only last so long. Eventually you're going to run out. But even if you don't, you'll be eating food that isn't very nutritious. That's why it's a good idea to have a survival garden. It will give you more food to eat, and it will make a great nutritional supplement to your food storage.
The problem is, if things are so bad that you're relying on a survival garden, then there are probably a lot of hungry people out there. People who wouldn't think twice about harvesting all your food while you sleep.
It's not hard to identify a garden: Plants in straight rows, usually with bare soil or mulch between them, and paths leading to it. This means you need a survival garden that either doesn't look like a garden or is completely hidden from sight. The good news is there are several methods for doing this.
Before we cover the methods, let's talk about the content of your survival garden. In a SHTF scenario, annuals will grow out. And unless you save your own seeds, the seeds will run out. If you want annuals, plant ones that will self-seed and take over open or normally grassy areas.
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Orach, spinach, some lettuces, and some edible flowers will turn a grassy yard into an edible meadow in short order. Leave the dandelions in, too, and add a few small fruit-bearing plants if you want. All this is part of what's called an edible landscape.
Perennials, however, should be the mainstay of your survival garden. Thorny plants are particularly beneficial around the outside of plantings. No one's going to push past a thick barrier of hawthorn, especially if the area under the hawthorn is covered in stinging nettles.
Hawthorn is a useful herb tree, while nettles are edible when young, and you can get fiber from the older stalks. I would recommend using stinging nettles more than poison ivy or poison sumac as it's much easier to treat a nettle sting than a poison ivy rash.
All of the following methods can vary in size depending on how much land you have to work with and how well the plants do in your growing zone. Now on to the list.
If you're in a crowded urban area or a neighborhood with very small yards, an indoor garden is probably the best way for you to keep your survival garden hidden. Cover any windows facing your garden with slightly opaque plastic to prevent prying eyes from spying your food. Paint walls white or reflective to provide adequate lighting, and use full spectrum grow lights as well as outside light.
Have fans and vents to keep a steady supply of fresh air and mimic natural wind. If you can't have vents to the outside, try growing mushrooms as well as plants because mushrooms produce a lot of carbon dioxide which the plants need. Hydroponic growing may also help you to use your space efficiently.
Most people, in cities at least, do not recognize flowers as food. So plant roses. Climbing roses left to trail over the ground can make a thorny barrier that will protect your ground growing perennials (for example, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, and herbs) from detection.
Hedge-type roses, on the other hand, can provide shade to shade-loving perennials and yummy flowers and rose hips (a great source of vitamin C) for you, too. You can also plant other edible flowers, or flowers that produce edible seeds, as part of your planting. Beans and peas can grow up sturdy bushes and flower stalks as easily as up a trellis.
You can also mix in herbs like lavender, thyme, and basil among flowers to add fragrance and further mask edible plants. Many herbs have flowers that blend in seamlessly and even repel pests or curious foragers.
People think of gardens as places where plants are laid out in nice, even rows. Let's mess that up. Instead of a row of four or six tomato plants, drop the plants throughout your growing area. One tomato over there, another in the middle of a bunch of orach or herbs, and so on.
The less your garden looks like a conventional garden, the better. Companion planting gets a bit of a different meaning here. Who would suspect strawberries of hiding among asparagus plants? Who would think this forest of random leafy stalks and thick ground cover would be hiding corn, beans, and squash?
If you have land, anywhere from half an acre and up, you can plant mini survival garden forests on different parts of your land. These mini forests should be planted in a circular pattern with a food-producing tree at the center. A nut or non-obvious fruit works best.
Around the tree you can plant shade-loving edible perennials. And around those you can plant bushes, preferably the kind with thorns. Around those bushes and outward you can plant lower growing, sun-loving perennials and herbs blended together.
On the very outside of the circle you can plant thorny vines, stinging nettles, or any other plant that would deter intruders. As long as there's no obvious path to and from these little forests, there will be no indication to passersby by that they're a source of food.
Permaculture similar to the mini forest method. Just plant perennials in thick groups or in a section of built-up organic matter (logs and branches stuffed with hay and straw, covered in manure, and buried in a thick layer of soil).
This type of bed works best with perennials, including some trees, and the organic matter within the bed helps retain water and reduce the need for numerous visits. As the planting degrades, it looks like a mound of soil and the plants on it look more like random plants than a garden bed.
Most people know, or can at least guess, what a tomato or pumpkin plant looks like. They may not, however, know what a lemon cucumber looks like, or what certain unusual looking squashes are. Obvious plants should be planted near the center of your property, out of sight of the average passerby. Less obvious plants, however, can grace areas slightly closer to the edges.
Heirloom plants, with unusual coloration or growth patterns, are good options for this. And they will also grow true to seed, so you can save your own, too. Root crops are also highly recommended. Most people would have no idea what potatoes, sweet potatoes, ginger, turmeric, peanuts, and other root crops look like when they're growing.
Consider lesser-known native edibles, too—like sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes), ground cherries, or miner’s lettuce. These blend into natural landscapes and rarely raise suspicion.
At the edge of your land, in front of the thorny or stinging barrier (a barrier that is hopefully inter-grown with your fencing), plant some obvious spreading perennials like dandelions or other local and wild edibles.
If someone can get something at the edge and the barrier is obvious and not so friendly, then hopefully they won't bother trying to see what is on the other side.
In closely packed urban areas, a tall fence, say one made out of concrete blocks and about six feet high, will make it impossible for anyone to see your garden. Add a large, sturdy gate as well.
The only downside is that some people may think that if your yard is that well hidden, there must be something very valuable inside. This could make certain people even more determined to get past your fence, so it might be better to have a less visually imposing plant barrier (but no less difficult to penetrate).
Aquatic and semi-aquatic plants can also be utilized, especially if you already have some water on your land. If you're in a city location, creating a small water retention zone and planting a few water-loving plants can increase your survival garden options substantially.
Planting wild semi-aquatic plants like wild rice, cattails, water lily, or arrowroot can provide a wilderness border to your watery hiding place and plenty of food options for you, too. A network of floating mats, either as is or covered in soil for non-water plants, can also increase the hidability of your survival food sources. And what marauder wants to get all cold and wet?
Sometimes, the best hiding spot is in plain sight—especially if it's disguised as something no one wants to look at. A strategically “messy” yard can mask a lot of things, including edible plants. You can grow in and around:
This method uses the psychology of neglect—people tend to ignore what looks abandoned or unappealing. Climbing plants like beans, cucumbers, or even tomatoes can trail over junk piles or trellises disguised as scrap. Edible ground covers and herbs blend right into weed-like surroundings. It's the ultimate stealth garden.
Hiding your survival garden isn’t about paranoia—it’s about preparedness. Whether you have a quarter-acre or just a back patio, these strategies help you grow food quietly and protect your investment from wandering eyes and empty stomachs. The less it looks like a garden, the more likely it’ll still be there when you really need it.
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The post 10 Ways to Hide Your Survival Garden appeared first on Urban Survival Site.
Have you stopped to think about what your garden plants need, the very first thing you think of is probably water. The next thing you think of is probably sunlight, and that’s what good reason. All plants, no matter what kind, need sunlight in order to photosynthesize and produce energy. But where many gardeners go ... Read more
40 Shade-Loving Veggies That Don’t Need Much Sunlight can be read in full at New Life On A Homestead- Be sure to check it out!