Gunner Quinn
(Continued from Part 1.)
Repackaging vs Keeping Original Packaging
Whether we’re using freezer or mylar bags for our SOP food storage, we’ll need to know what needs repackaging and what doesn’t.
Leaving in Original Packaging – Pest-wise, some of the items on our shopping list can be left in the original packaging if the packaging is good enough or if the food doesn’t attract pests. Sugar can be left in its original paper bag. If it clumps inside the bag before opening, a few raps on a countertop will break up the lumps. The powdered milk I use comes in a sealed pest-proof #10 can. Vegetable oil, spices, yeast in glass jars, etc. are more items that can be left in their original containers.
Foods Which Must Be Repackaged – Other items on our JIT shopping list like beans and grains will eventually be attacked by pests if not repackaged. It may be a month or two, or it may be a year or so in the future. Spending a few dollars to double bag everything in freezer bags is the best option that makes sense pest-wise for JIT preppers who don’t have mylar bags. Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers are a certain guarantee against pests as long as the bags don’t get punctured.
If you buy JIT and use double freezer bags, pests are probably more of worry than a problem. After experimenting with freezer bags, and investigating all of my stored heritage seeds, I was pleasantly surprised at what I discovered. This topic will be covered in the follow-up article. If you have available freezer space the filled bags can also be frozen to kill any pests present at the time of filling.
Inspections and Rotations
Food Inspections – The biggest worry with any kind of food-storage program is pests. When I think of storing wheat for example, the first thing that comes to mind is weevils. With mylar and oxygen absorbers, the odds of pests causing problems is next to zero. Oxygen absorbers act as a “pesticide” to eliminate pests by depriving them of oxygen.
Whether we’re a hard-core prepper using 30-year food-storage methods, or a wait-and-see prepper using these JIT methods, it’s paramount that we do regular inspections. One of the benefits of using freezer bags is that we have a clear view of anything that may be going on inside the bag, making inspections easier.
Food Rotation – When thinking of the JIT food storage discussed in this article, we’re not talking about a long-term program with a nebulous time frame that requires a 30-year storage life. We’re talking about storing for an event that may be imminent so if we’ve used freezer bags our food only has to last a few years at most, depending on how good our timing turns out to be before the SHTF. While food rotation is always a good idea whether we have a prepper mentality or not, it’s not absolutely necessary.
Preventing Pest Damage
First I’ll discuss various pests, then edibility issues.
Weevils – We’ve all probably dealt with weevils at one time or another. With fine powdery materials like flour and cornmeal, pests will typically confine themselves to the topmost layer. Foods with more air space like beans, rice, and wheat will allow weevils to feed at all levels. Weevils are easily visible to the naked eye because of their size and dark color.
If the contents of a freezer bag has weevils, the bag will generally have a fine dust-like material in the bottom of the bag which is easily seen.
Pantry moths – also known as Indian meal moths, are typically the “grossest” food-storage pest to deal with. They can infect a broader variety of foods than weevils including moister things like dried fruits including raisins. They’re more readily visible to the naked eye than weevils, have four stages to their life cycles, and can leave a webbing on top of certain moist foods if they’re left long enough. The first tip-off there’s an infestation is when the adult moths start flying around the house. Upon closer observation when they’re found, there are also eggs and larva of all stages in the top layer food, and possibly on the cabinet shelves depending on their stage of development.
Pantry moths can chew through thin plastic and cardboard. I’m not sure at what thickness plastic and cardboard are impenetrable but during two infestations I had (one intentional as part of my freezer bag experiments) they didn’t penetrate freezer bags or oatmeal containers even though they were only inches away from the infested foods. In my heritage seed storage, I did have a few pantry moths that had chewed holes in the thin sandwich bags I had some seeds stored in.
The literature also says pantry moths can be very difficult to eradicate but once I removed the problem food (a new container of raisins with a broken seal) from my cabinets they didn’t hang around very long. The more food we have in cans and jars, the less likely we’ll be to have an infestation. The more foods like flour and cornmeal that are in paper packaging, the higher the probability we’ll eventually see weevils or pantry moths.
As with weevils, one sign of a pantry-moth infestation is dust-like detritus in the bottom of the bag.
Book Lice and Flour Mites – Other pests are almost invisible to the naked eye but are completely edible so it’s not a concern. These include such things as flour mites and book lice. They’re not only too small to be seen unless you’re looking for them but they don’t build up to destructive quantities like weevils and pantry moths can.
While sugar comes in paper bags, they have no pests to be concerned about other than possibly ants. They can be physically controlled and don’t lay eggs in the sugar so once the ants are gone, the problem is solved.
Pests and Edibility
An important word on edibility. Today, we think nothing of wasting food for various reasons. If a dinner roll gets dropped on the floor, if enough flies land on our food, if the butter or oil is slightly rancid, we toss them all in the compost bucket. If the Big One ever hits, we’ll have to raise our tolerance of “gross” from the 1 or 2 level where many people have it today, to somewhere closer to 8 or 9. If the Donner Party and a bunch of Argentine rugby players can get to the point where grossness is no longer a consideration, we can certainly get over wormy apples, weevils in the flour, or pantry moths in our corn meal. If we can do that, the possibility of pests getting into our freezer-bag food supply shouldn’t deter us from using Method 1 if it’s our only option.
Here’s an important fact for preppers: even if grains are infested with weevils or pantry-moth, or the nearly invisible book lice and flour mites, they’re still edible and won’t cause any problems if consumed. The corny old saying is true, it really is extra protein. They can be sifted out by the cook before using and nobody will be the wiser. Our ancestors had no way to prevent weevils and nobody balked at sifting them out or even eating them.
In a long-term grid-down situation it would be a crime to waste food just because there was an infestation by “gross” but non-poisonous insects which are easily sifted out or even eaten when not sifted.
Storing the Prepared Bags of Food
If you end up getting to the point of actually buying your JIT food and getting it bagged up in plastic or mylar, you’ll need a place to store it all.
Food will last the longest when stored in the dark in a cool place but it’s not absolutely necessary. With freezer bags, this can be in a dark closet or room. With mylar they’re already inside a dark bag so they can be stored anywhere. Looking around my house, I have a large closet with many shelves which are holding things like blankets, linens, sleeping bags, etc. These can all be moved elsewhere to make way for the freezer-bag foods I’m storing to feed my neighbors. The rest of the closet is mostly stored non-perishables like toiletries, dish soap, sponges et cetera and foods with a long shelf life like salt and spices. These too can be moved elsewhere if I need to make more room for any JIT food stores which need a dark place.
The big thing to keep in mind when storing bags of food is to prevent punching holes in the bags. This can be done by stacking the bags neatly in totes, cardboard boxes, plastic office file crates, DIY mason jar crates, other DIY boxes, and even things like repurposed tulip bulb crates. I currently use all of these for various storage items and some are designed to stack. Some totes are on the expensive side so all of mine I’ve acquired very inexpensively at auctions, DIY’ed, or gotten for free (used tulip bulb crates) just by asking. I also have a pile of folded moving boxes, all of a uniform size, acquired from a friend who moved here. Size uniformity makes it much easier to stack boxes. Under beds, converted bookshelves, old dresser drawers, there are lot of options if we look around the house and consider other options when we’re shopping. Those with more funds can walk into Walmart and buy some heavy totes or order them online. One of my sturdier large totes currently has 80 lbs of freezer-bag corn in it.
And don’t forget some of the off-the-wall places for storing bags of food. In one of my rooms I have 13 beehive boxes in two stacks. The total space inside the stacks is nearly three 55-gallon drums. They would hold just short of 900 pounds of beans, rice, wheat, etc, enough for two people for a year. An added benefit is that they’ll probably be hidden, who’d look in beehives for anything? Another good hiding spot is behind that collection of plastic grocery bags in the broom closet.
Periodic Inspections – Whatever storage options we choose, we should keep in mind that we’ll be doing periodic inspections. One thing that I wouldn’t recommend is using a garage, shop, or outbuilding unless the bags are stored in something rodent-proof. I had some clothes stored in a tote in the loft of my shop and after a few short years a pack rat had chewed through one corner of the tote and made himself a nice winter home. He had his own food storage too! If I stored food in my shop or well house, then I’d almost have to do weekly inspections so I only keep heavy-duty 5-gallon food-grade buckets in my well house.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 3.)
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