Jim ~
We subscribe to an organic grocery delivery service and have the food dehydrator running non-stop around the clock now that local produce is coming in. Our preference is dried over frozen because of smells and off flavors that frozen can pick up. Even through I pay a premium for organic foods, my feeling is that if inflation or hyperinflation is around the corner, the price I’m paying now will at the least even out in the face of inflation, and I’ll still have a superior product.
I know that the food we are preserving is top quality, not sprayed nor full of other questionable chemicals.
In the summer, the pressure canner will be going full speed with our garden and with what produce we supplement to put food by.
Some Observations:
1. Grow and buy the very best produce and food possible for your food storage. Your future health may depend on it.
2. Fresh organic foods have a fraction of the shelf life of grocery store produce. I just didn’t realize that everything from the grocery store must be sprayed with preservatives until I began ordering all organic. It goes south very quickly. On survivalblog.com you have published links to expected shelf life and storage. However, until a person is actually faced with the reality of spoilage, the numbers are meaningless. Potatoes sprout much more quickly, oranges shrivel, you get the idea.
3. My food dehydrator is now 25 years old. We bought it back in the 1980s when our hero, Howard J. Ruff, told us to prepare for the coming bad years. We hadn’t used it in years, but just dusted it off, plugged in, and it works like a charm. The brand is Harvest Maid. These are simple machines built to last. I would love to find another one used on Craig’s List [1], eBay, or from an estate sale.
4. I’ve gardened my entire life, started when I was 9, but never as if our lives depended on it. We who prepare need to continue to urge people who are prepping — and those who are not! — to learn to garden. As all gardeners know, it is a learning curve that gets better with time, but the key is practice, experiment, and learn. My mission is get people to try to grow at least one of something immediately. I tell people, get a tomato plant or get a pepper, you can even just put it in a pot. If hyperinflation or worse comes to pass, there are going to be a lot of angry, hungry people around lacking in basic skills.
Keep up the good work. – Elizabeth B