How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It - James Wesley Rawles [36]
Keep in mind that plastic food-grade buckets are oxygen and gas permeable and will not store food for a long time by themselves. A Mylar liner will greatly slow down this process. (It will not stop it entirely.)
What Determines If a Storage Bucket Is Food Grade?
I’ve seen considerable confusion both in print and on the Internet about whether all HDPE (high-density polyethylene) plastic buckets are food grade. The number 2 (inside the “chasing arrows” recycling symbol) refers to HDPE, but not all “2”-marked plastics are food grade. The “food grade” designation is determined by plastic purity and by what mold-release compound is used—not by the plastic itself, since all virgin HDPE material is safe for food. For paint and other utility buckets, manufacturers sometimes use a less expensive (and toxic) mold-release compound for their injection-molding machines. For food grade they must use a nontoxic formulation, which is more expensive. Unless the buckets are actually marked “food grade” or NSF-, FDA-, or USDA-approved, you will have to check with the manufacturer’s Web site to see if all their buckets are food grade.
Malcolm from SurvivalBlog provided some data for oxygen permeability for various materials. For long food-storage life, the lower the number, the better:
Grain Mills
Storing wheat and corn requires a good-quality, durable grain mill. I don’t recommend electric-only mills because they will become useless ornaments once the power grid goes down. An inexpensive hand-cranked mill such as the Back to Basics or Corona might suffice for a short-term disaster, but in the event of TEOTWAWKI you will want something built to last.
We use a Country Living grain mill. It is a superior machine. With just about any mill, you will have to cycle the grain through several times to get fine flour. I recommend that you get the Power Bar handle extension for extra leverage. Country Living grain mills are available through Ready Made Resources and several other vendors. Like any other quality tool, they are expensive. But it is better to buy just one machine that you know will last you a lifetime, rather than a succession of “bargains” that turn into disappointments.
Because they have V-belt wheels, Country Living grain mills are readily adaptable to an electric motor for day-to-day use, or in the event of a grid-up scenario. For someone who has some mechanical acumen and time on their hands, it is also possible to convert a bicycle frame or perhaps a piece of exercise equipment to power a Country Living grain mill. If you have a background in welding, building such frames might make a good niche home business.
To make flour that is fine enough for bread baking, you need to run wheat through a mill twice. The best mills use stone burrs. Some of the less expansive mills use metal burrs. These are fine for making cornmeal. The metal-burr mills such as the Corona are less expensive but more labor intensive. With these you might have to grind wheat three times to make fine flour. Metal-burr grinders are available from Nitro-Pak, Lehman’s, and several other vendors. Stone-burr grinders are available from Ready Made Resources, Lehman’s, and many other vendors.
Home Dehydrators
Home dehydrators are very useful. Over the years, we have used ours for everything from drying venison jerky and apples to “reanimating” silica-gel rust-prevention packets. Used dehydrators are easy to find for reasonable prices, via newspaper classifieds or a localized Web service such as Craigslist. Dehydrators are a bit bulky to buy through mail order, so try to find a local source. If purchased new, they can be quite expensive. The one that we use at the Rawles Ranch is an Excalibur brand, with a variable temperature control. They are very sturdy and typically have several trays, so they can hold a lot. Ours is circa 1980