Dry foods and their long term home storage

(Survival Manual/  3. Food and Water/ Dry foods and their long term home storage)

A.  The Survival Food Pyramid
Survivalcache.com
Pasted from: http://survivalcache.com/survival-food-pyramid/

From personal experience I know, when you first get into surviving/prepping the information thrown at you can be overwhelming. The Survival Food Pyramid will get you started stocking food in a logical, simple, and economical way.
Everyone who has a basement full of canned goods and a survival garden started somewhere. We will help get you started.

The Concept
The top of the pyramid is for stocking the smallest amount of food for the shortest amount of time. The idea being that someone who is completely new to prepping can start with a cheap and easy goal and build (downward) from there.

This pyramid will keep you from spending time and money on preps that, while they may be useful overall, are pointless to you right now. How much of a 50 pound bag of flour or rice will you use in a 3 day long power outage? Prepping in complete, logical steps is the smart way to go.
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Immediate
If you are new to prepping, or you are experienced but find your supplies jump all over the map, start by stocking enough food and supplies for a 3 Day Emergency. This can be as simple as a single trip to the grocery store. Buy a 3 day supply of food for you household (be sure to get things with a long shelf life) and place it somewhere other than your pantry. (See our selection of Mainstay Food Bars – they have a 5 year shelf life and come in 1200, 2400, 3600 calorie packages)

If you have a typical local situation, such as a major snow storm or power outage, you won’t be one of the people raiding the grocery store.
Be sure to include at least 1 gallon of water per day, per family member, and something to cook on, like a MSR Whisperlite stove, with fuel. 

Extended
The extended food preps simply build on the immediate preps. On further trips to the store, add a few food items to your 3 day cache each time and you will soon have enough to survive for several weeks. Perhaps choose a dedicated closet or other area to stock your preps.

Remember that the extended survival food supply is going to need regular cooking supplies to be stocked, such as oil, flour, sugar, spices, etc. You will also need larger water containers to support not only drinking and cooking, but hygiene.

Long Term
Long term food preps mean there has been some type of major disaster and there won’t be any trips to the store for months.. This step moves on from basic stocking, to self sustaining.

You will have to have stocked bulk supplies of staple foods for cooking, like flour, wheat, sugar, and canned goods. A large fuel supply, or alternative cooking method will have to be used, and hunting if it is available. You will also have to have an alternative water source such as water collection, filtration, and recycling.

Perpetual
The perpetual food supply is for total collapse from which there is no coming back or voluntary off grid living indefinitely. You must have a self sustaining food supply, like a garden with heirloom seeds and large hunting area. You must also have a natural water source other than anything you have stocked.

*Take Note
All of the time periods and recommendations in the pyramid are general. There are no specific rules. You immediate preps might last you a week. Your extended preps might run out in a month. It all depends on your situation, and what you have stocked.

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B.  Bulk Food Storage 101: Using Plastic Buckets and Mylar
25 Apr 2013, AmericanPreppersNetwork, By Ann Weinstein
Pasted from: http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/2013/04/bulk-food-storage-101-using-plastic-buckets-and-mylar.html
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New to prepping?  Wondering how others use those large buckets and Mylar bags for food storage?  Wonder no more.  The mystery that is Mylar will be revealed in three easy phases.

Phase 1) Plastic buckets are generally used for bulk storage because they’re fairly rodent proof.  They tend towards water impermeability, but they’re not always great at that.  What they really do is keep the mice and rats out of your food.  Important thing, right?

Phase 2) The second layer of the food storage is a plastic Mylar bag. Mylar evolved out of the NASA space program and is a really cool material which is used everywhere.  It’s an interior layer of polyester and an exterior layer of evaporated aluminum that has the ability to keep all moisture out of the things you store inside it.  It is not, however, strong enough to be used on its own – you need an exterior layer.

Phase 3) The third thing that goes into many Mylar bags is something to kill bugs.  I use oxygen absorbers.  You can purchase these purpose made, or you can simply buy off the shelf hand warmers at the end of the winter season.  Either way, the iron filings/powder will reduce the amount of oxygen left in the bag after it is sealed, thus reducing the ability of vermin to live in your stored food.  Alternately, you can look at a food grade diamatacious earth to add to the bag.  This product gets into the shells of insects and sucks the moisture out of them, causing them to be incompatible with life; read as, not eating YOUR food.  These should be used only in food stuffs that are biologically reactive; this means that if  moisture gets into it, will it get wet & hard (like salt & sugar) or will it mildew?  If it mildews, toss one of these puppies in there.

Instructions:
Step 1– Get plastic buckets.  I get mine free from my local grocery store bakery.  These are food grade.  However, when you are using Mylar, you have the choice to use other materials that are not, such as dry-wall buckets.  Food grade plastic will not leach any chemicals into your stored food.  Other buckets might.  Use these at your own risk and with your own best judgment.
Step 2 – Purchase Mylar bags and insert into the bucket.  Fill with what ever food product you are storing.
Step 3–  Open O2 absorber and toss into bucket.

Step 4– Press all the air you can out of the top of the bag.
Step 5 – Have, on hand,  a hot iron and a board.  Flatten out bag at its seams and use iron to seal the bag.  Mylar adheres to itself with heat, so just iron it shut and double-check that no air is able to get in and out – I do this by flattening the whole thing down as I fold the extra material into the bucket.  If there is a little bubble of air pressing back at me, it’s a good seal.  Alternately, you could pull the extra material up and see if it sucks air back down into the bag.
Step 6 – Put lid on bucket
Step 7 – Label and date so that you can rotate the stock.

Other handy tips:  A bucket wrench is your friend when it comes to opening these puppies back up.  Mine lives in my tool drawer.  It cost about $5 at the hardware store.  It looks like this:

If you choose not to use Mylar, sometimes you get moisture in a bucket.  It will mildew and cause rot.  It looks like this on rice.  Use of Mylar will prevent this problem in most cases.

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To see how the sealing process works check out, “Sealing mylar bags for storage” at YouTube, click the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk9b0dAtJ80