Time to hide more stuff

[Straight Shooter]

In view of rescent events and even more uncertainty , i am now zeroed in on more food preps....more grains, pulses , tins... in fact everything ...but where can i store it all ...safe and out of sight ? i have stashes set up but i'm out of room ...this lot needs to be hidden but with a reasonable access and NOT around or in the house....the plan is 20 ltr and up barrel/kegs with screw tops ....maylar bagged inside.

These will be packed with living rations and will hold a full diet of various foods and provisions...if we are hit by not very nice uninvited visitors....we will have a better backup than we have at present ...the intention is around 25 kegs at least.

1. Does anyone know where i can get these kegs ? had a look on ebay ..bit pricey .
2. Anyone have ideas on the items I SHOULD PACK so i do not cock up.
3.I have 2 acres to hide it in mostly woodland

Any comments or thoughts would be very much appreciated.

many thanks SS

[Jonas]

Just drop it off at our BOL. We'll take good care of it for you.

[Mortblanc]

I am surprised you have waited this long to cache items! Are you sure 25 buckets is enough if Russia comes streaing down from the north?

One thing I have learned from use of caches is that you pack a complete assembly in each keg and not just one thing. You do not want to dig up a cache and find that you have 20L of corn meal or 20L of macaroni and nothing else.

Each keg pulled from the ground should have the items needed to process and cook the food including seasonings and spices and a pot or pan (it can be a cheap one from the pound shop). Each 20L keg should last two people for one week. If you have more people plan appropriately. Items should be carb heavy and protein rich. I would toss a cheap bottle of multivitamins into each bucket.

I would not bury whole grains in a cache. You would have to also bury a mill or grinder to process the grains.

The kegs work best when used with Mylar bags vacuum sealed. Most goods are safe to 25 years with that treatment.

As for how to bury them?? You have 2 acres and it is planting time. Dig all you want and plant potatoes/turnips/cabbage in the backfill and do not explain anything to anyone. You are just putting out another veggie patch, no matter how small or large or how bad the soil.

[Straight Shooter]

I have caches in a few locations including a few at the cardinal points around the ground and some on the opposite mountain (one of which was dug up when contractors putting up a solar panel farm array ...they widened the gateway ) and as for grains two stones would do the job at a push ....as for various food stuffs i have covered that in the post and mylar vac packed is the way i have already gone with the existing caches . used an iron to seal those and oxi obsorber's also use a vacuum cleaner to remove most of the air before you seal the bag.

But none the less MB good advice...the pan i must admit i never thought of ,but the tin opener i did ...its easy to miss the obvious , even if you have been at it a long time hence the thread ....i am not above reminders and nor are any newbies that happen on this thread ...the kegs might well turn into 45L ...also good info on amounts to people ratio many thanks MB.....i was out on that calc.

[Mortblanc]

See, if you were an American you would just stack the stuff in the house and buy more ammo to protect it.

And if you buried it you would insure you marked the spot with a rock that had the exact range painted on it so you would know how to aim.

There is nothing like looking at a flat rock in the middle of a field with 175m painted on it to get your mind racing and your head on a swivel.

[Mortblanc]

BTW, I have worked at enough archaeological sites doing demonstrations to know that grinding enough grain for three meals with a mano and matati is a half day job and the result tastes like crushed weed seeds with grit mixed in. I would much rather store the flour and corn meal already ground and do not forget to toss in a container of baking powder and plenty of salt in each keg.

[Straight Shooter]

Question MB ....would grain be good to reseed ,if so how long would it be good for if stored in mylar ?

[Straight Shooter]

BTW .....JP .....will send you a map when i plant them mate.

[Mortblanc]

(11 April 2017, 09:06)Straight Shooter Wrote: Question MB ....would grain be good to reseed ,if so how long would it be good for if stored in mylar ?

Grain that has been treated for preservation with CO2, nitrogen or Oxy inhibitors does not germinate well. Some of my friends have tried and could not get but a scattering of the seeds to sprout. Same with freezing before packing, which is a popular thing over here.

There have been attempts to sprout grain recovered from the Pyramids, and they got some germination even after 5k years. I could not find the % rate. Of course their storage was inside a pottery jar sealed with bees wax in less than 1% humidity.

For seed purposes in the climate we inhabit I would follow a strict rotation plan, buy fresh seed each year and eat the old. Do not treat the seed stock in any way and just keep it in an air tight container on the shelf.

In other words, do what you feel is needed for the long term storage grains and keep a fresh batch of seed from year to year.

it will keep for a year with no problem and give the standard 90% germination rate. Germination goes down by 10% each year.

It is strange how the whole grains will keep for a long time while flour is quicker to spoil. Even then flour lasts longer than most people think. I just found a hidden stash of white flour in the back of the cabinet, stored in a Tupperware container. It has been there for 8 years stored in that air tight container. It was free of pests and baked bread as good as freshly ground flour.

I do not store wheat or seed wheat. I store maize. It is easier to process, store, grind and easier to grow in adverse situations and grows in a wider variety of climates and soils, plus it is a native grain, engineered for my environment.

I can plant maize in small or large patches in hills raked up with a sharp stick and hide the plantings in small spots that are never accessed. It will dry on the stalks and needs no further processing for storage. It will keep for months still on the cob if stored in a dry place or can be removed from the cob if desired and stored in nothing more than cloth sacks on a dry shelf.

When spring comes, about this time of year actually, you stick what you did not eat in the ground and watch it grow.

There are areas of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa where you can drive for hours on roads bordered by cornfields, some of the stalks growing 12-15 feet tall.

You would have to plant your entire 2 acres and several more in wheat to feed your family.

Our big wheat regions are to the west of me where the area from Middle Canada to the north Texas border, a region about 3000 miles X 500 miles are cropped in wheat each year. Canada alone fed themselves and most of the entire Soviet Union for more than a decade back in the 1970-1980 crop failures.

[Straight Shooter]

Many thanks MB .