Category: Food Storage & Cooking

Hi Jim, Thank you so much for the wealth of information on your blog. It is encouraging to see so many people working towards self-sufficiency. I was recently introduced to a gardening concept called Square Foot Gardening. There are several advantages to the concept not the least of which are: much less area needed to grow a bounty of fresh veggies, no longer needing to till a large area that only grows plants in a few inch-wide rows, less watering, no weeds, and also no need for numerous gardening tools to tend your crops. A friend used this method last …

Jim, I have found that Dairygold dairy (and probably also other) dairies in Boise, Idaho will sell once used HDPE #2 Food Grade buckets with lids inexpensively. (These were $2 or $3 the last time I bought a bunch of them.) These were used for bringing into the dairy the flavorings for ice cream, so you might have to wash out the strawberry syrup or whatever. These are HDPE #2 and Food Grade marked. They also have some food grade 55 gallon drums, metal and plastic that they will also sell. The same should be true of other large dairies …

Greetings JR- Regarding the discussion on the mother lode of seed buckets: Be aware that seeds meant to be placed in the ground are almost always treated by industrial seed firms with a pesticide that is designed to protect the seed and give it a greater chance of making it out of the ground from such enemies as rodents, weeds and fungus’ etc. For the same reason you don’t want to eat seed grains if they are treated as seed materials, you might want to make sure that you are able to adequately wash or remove the pesticides that might …

Mr. Rawles, I’m glad that I bought the “Rawles Gets You Ready” family preparedness course! It has a ton of great information. I followed one piece of advice in the course, and I struck pay dirt: I went to three local bakeries (one was actually part of a supermarket). All three had food grade buckets available. At two of these bakeries, I got charged just $1 each for five gallon buckets with lids. Most of them had already been cleaned. They also threw in a few extra [bucket]s with no lids, for free. And at the other bakery, the buckets …

Jim, Being born and raised in Maine, I was introduced to B&M baked beans at a young age. Beans and brown bread were our standard fare on Saturday nights for many years. Over the years, I have grown increasingly fond of them, although harder to find in the Midwest – they seem to get crowded off many grocery store shelves in favor of lesser rivals. In particular, I love B&M brown bread (with or without raisins) – rich, moist dense bread made with molasses and packaged in a can. It is heated inside the can (hint: slice it cold, before …

Mr. Rawles, My test indictor for properly functioning Oxygen Absorbing Packets while packaging bulk storage in food grade buckets is the downward pull on the lid. If a good seal is formed by the lid (which is imperative for any method of purging the Oxygen) the packets will cause a vacuum to be created in the bucket and the lid will be concave. It may take up to three (3) days for this to happen. I have had one bucket so far not seal properly and it did not display the concave lid. I replaced the lid and absorber packets …

Jim: For anyone in Northeastern Ohio, look into taking advantage of the resources in and around Amish country. Lehman’s Hardware in Kidron, Ohio is an excellent place to find non-electric household and farm equipment. They do sell some bulk grains to be used with their wide variety of grain mills, but I would also suggest looking at Swiss Village Bulk Foods in Sugarcreek, Ohio. They run sales weekly, and there are often coupons and additional discounts offered in local newspapers. There are many other similar resources in the area, but these two stores are the largest, and the ones I …

Good Evening, I recently purchased your book, How to survive the end of the world as we know it. I wanted to say that I have found it to be extremely useful and very helpful. I have been researching everything that I need to do to keep my family safe WTSHTF, but I have not been successful at finding information on how to properly prepare and safely store food for my larder. My second problem is were to find a store that sells bulk oats, wheat, flour etc. I live in northeastern Ohio and have not been very successful at …