Scot’s Product Review: Grain Mills

Some call bread the staff of life. To make it you need flour, and that usually comes from wheat. Wheat is nutritious and can be turned into many tasty foods. Some argue that wheat made the original Old Testament cities in the Mideast possible, since it could be transported and stored so easily. Storage is of special import to a prepper, and many of us keep wheat as a key item in our long-term preparations.

The part that we use is called the wheat berry. That’s the kernel. Most of the time, it is milled into flour. Keeping the kernels intact, however, is the best way to store wheat, since flour deteriorates fairly quickly. While wheat can be used without milling into flour, it would get really boring after a while. This means that if we are going to store wheat, we really need a way to mill it.

Beyond storing it, a big advantage of milling your own flour is that you will have healthier flour. A lot of the nutrition in wheat is in oils that turn rancid if not separated from the flour. Commercial millers remove these oils, since their flour must sit on shelves in stores. Since we are going to use our flour quickly, this isn’t an issue. We get to keep all the nutrition from the wheat berry and put it in our bread. There are also a lot of things, in addition to bread, we can make with wheat once we mill it. Pasta and pastries come to mind, along with cereals and biscuits.

Choosing a grain mill will depend on your goals for your wheat. If are buying a mill solely for a SHTF grid down situation, you want a manual one to stash with your wheat. If you plan to make all your own flour starting now (a good plan in my view), an electric is very alluring. Flip a switch, do some other chore in the kitchen and come back to fresh flour. A very strong case can be made that it is good to have two, one electric and the other manual, just in case. If you have the funds, that is probably the best plan.

Be sure to mill some wheat, even if you don’t plan to regularly make bread before the SHTF. You want to be sure it works. You also want to be aware of how long it takes to make flour and how much energy you need to do it. Hand milling flour involves work. You also want to be sure you can successfully make bread. It does take some practice. It is also good for your family to know what a hearty, full-flavored loaf of bread tastes like. Most people like it, but for some, it is a bit of a shock.

I’m primarily dealing with milling wheat in this review. Both of these mills will, however, grind other stuff, but

the manual grinder is far more versatile. That might make it good to have, even if you have electricity.

WonderMill Electric Grain Mill

The WonderMill Electric Grain Mill is on loan from the nice folks at WonderMill. It is going to be very hard to send back. It is stunningly fast and makes flour in one pass without problem. It will even make ultra-fine pastry flour in one quick run. WonderMill claims it can mill over 100 lbs. an hour. I didn’t try that, but it milled four cups of flour for a loaf of bread in what seemed an instant.

The WonderMill does heat the flour when it mills. Some folks are disturbed by mills that heat the flour, fearing a loss of nutrition. Although I’m not a nutritionist and have no means of conducting scientific tests, I don’t worry about it. After all, I’m about to pop it into a 350 degree oven. I might be concerned, if I were going to store the flour for any length of time, but a driving reason for milling one’s own flour is that fresh flour is better flour. Why store it when you can mill so easily with the WonderMill?

The WonderMill uses teeth on revolving plates to micronize the grain. It can handle most dry grains, legumes, and lentils. They have a page to show everything it can handle. Small grains require an attachment to feed properly through the mill. It cannot be used with oily or wet materials, so no coffee beans.

A REALLY nice feature of the WonderMill is that it catches the flour in a separate canister, and it catches EVERYTHING that comes from the mill except air. I’ve been used to mills that liberally spread flour and bits of wheat around the kitchen. As one who hates cleaning, it is a big plus to stop this mess. There is even a filter so that the air pushed from the canister by the mill doesn’t carry dust into the kitchen. They give you a spare filter, too.

The flour, by the way, made an excellent loaf in our elderly Hitachi bread machine. It had a pleasing crust and a soft, finely textured interior. It made great toast and sandwiches. A problem for many of us in using home ground flour is getting it fine enough for this sort of bread. I enjoy coarse breads, but they don’t work well for toast and sandwiches, so this is a big plus.

The only problem I have with the WonderMill derives from our cramped kitchen. It is a bit large, compared to some other mills. The detachable canister system that catches the flour and dust adds to the bulk, but I think it is worth the space.

WonderMill gives a limited lifetime warranty on the unit. Their web pages list a number of endurance tests and cases of people using them commercially to grind prodigious amounts of flour. I suspect the average family will have trouble wearing this thing out.

The unit comes with a nice instruction book. It says not to start the mill with grain in it and to not stop while grain is being milled. A video on their site, however, says this is ok. I checked with WonderMill, and they say the older version of the mill had a weaker motor. The current motor can handle stops and starts, though it is still best to keep it running until all the grain in the hopper has been milled.

Wonder Junior Deluxe

The Wonder Junior Deluxe mill uses a totally different strategy to mill wheat. You are the motor, not Mr. Electricity. This is important. It takes time and energy to convert wheat to flour with any manual mill. I get some help from my nine-year-old, but he runs out of steam about half-way through making the four cups of flour we use in most of our loaves. The hand cranking is good exercise, though. There are some options to motorize it that I will cover later, but primarily, this is a manual tool.

You can make the crank easier to turn by running things through twice. The first time breaks it into chunks; the second time makes it fine. It obviously takes longer to do it this way, and I think it consumes the same amount of energy overall, but the crank is easier to turn. This might help someone with low strength and high endurance. My nine-year-old prefers this, but he doesn’t want to stick around for the second pass.

I complained earlier about mills that spread wheat and flour about. WonderMill came up with a guide that fits around the stones on the Junior Deluxe. It does a great job of guiding the flour into a wide mouthed cup. Things don’t stay quite as clean as with the WonderMill, but it is far better than the other two mills I’ve used. A smooth steady pace helps with this. My son can get jerky, which causes more spreading of food bits.

The flour guide is a bit fussy to fit. You have to hold the crank pushed in while attaching the burrs, holding the guide in place, and screwing in the adjustment knob. It took me a couple of tries to get it down, but you can do it solo.

The Junior uses stones that rub together to mill wheat and other dry grains into flour. It is even more versatile than the WonderMill, though, thanks to the set of steel burrs included in the Deluxe kit. With the steel burrs, you can grind oily beans and even make peanut butter. It worked quite well for coffee. You can grind coffee all the way down to an espresso grade if you like. To see everything you can do with the Junior, check out the “what will it grind” page in the manual.

One of the other things I really like about the Junior is the clamp system it uses to hold it to a counter. You can bolt it down, but it’s nice to be able to move it out of the way when not using it. The clamp makes that easy. More important, though, is that it keeps the mill solidly mounting while you are using it. A lot of force is generated when cranking it, and a lesser clamp allows the mill to come loose and fly off the counter. I had that problem with another manual mill before making a better base for it.

The Junior can be used with alternative power. There is an adapter to allow you to turn the mill with the power of a drill (though it needs to be a pretty powerful one). WonderMill also sells a pulley that replaces the handle, and with some ingenuity (as shown in the videos they post) you can connect the mill to an assortment of power sources. Electric motors are one route, while others have used bicycles. The bike seems like the best plan to me, as it would work in a grid down scenario. Legs are stronger than arms, so you should be able to get more wheat milled with leg power than by hand cranking.

I made good bread with the wheat I ran through the Junior. I think that the flour from the WonderMill was a little better, but I haven’t spent enough time futzing with adjustments on the Junior. I think I could get the flour slightly finer, once I learn the machine better. Part of my problem is fear of setting it too tight and damaging the stones. I suspect I am being too cautious.

Incidentally, the WonderMill site is worth poking around on. They have a number of videos and articles that are very helpful. There is an excellent one on adjusting the Junior.

Overall, I am very impressed with both mills, and I’m planning to buy them. That means a negative profit from writing this review, but my preps will be better. So it goes. – SurvivalBlog Field Gear Editor Scot Frank Eire

Recipe of the Week: Beef Strogannoff

How to Make that Meat Go Further

People can be very picky eaters, but down the road that may not always be an available luxury. People will also start in a litany of “I don’t eat mustard, or onions, or garlic, or mushrooms, or whatever.” (This is not to be confused with a legitimate food allergy!) Remember, a recipe is a combination of pleasing ingredients that impart delightful flavors and textures. Think about liquid vanilla extract. It smells out-of-this-world, but it tastes like nothing you would want you eat. Sugar must be added to make it edible.

The following recipe uses meat extenders, so you can feed a small family with filling, nutritious ingredients. Onions and mushrooms are associated with beef and can be used to make servings larger. I’ve read that very strict Hindus will not eat onions because they are so closely associated with beef– a forbidden and sacred animal.

Ingredients:

  • 6 oz ground beef
  • 1 small can of mushrooms stems and pieces diced into small pieces, saving water in can
  • 3 tbsp olive oil, more if desired
  • 1/2 onion diced
  • 1 clove garlic diced
  • 1/2 carton sour cream
  • 1/2 cup or more of catsup
  • 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

  1. Sauté onion in olive oil until golden.
  2. Add garlic and sauté only 1 minute, so it won’t burn.
  3. Now add drained, diced mushrooms and sauté for 3 minutes on medium heat. Remove from heat and set aside.
  4. At this point, people in the house will ask, “What’s for supper?” because it smells so wonderful. Brown ground beef until totally crumbled and cooked through.
  5. Now, combine onion and mushroom mixture with ground beef.
  6. Stir in catsup, mushroom water, and sour cream.
  7. Completely mix until well-coated. Add a little water if mixture is too thick. Your entree has now doubled in size from the original 6 ounces of meat.

Serve over noodles or toast or oven roasted potatoes. By using a wheat product, like noodles or toast, the total protein in the meal is increased. Wheat has amino acids but is an incomplete protein. By combining with a complete protein, like the beef, it becomes complete and the meal is even more loaded.

Serves 2-4, depending on portion size

Storage and pantry application:

  • Freeze dried or dehydrated onion
  • Freeze dried ground beef or your own canned ground beef, if you are into that
  • Dried sour cream
  • Dehydrated or canned mushrooms

From the garden: Garlic, Onion, Potatoes

On hand: Condiments

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Do you have a favorite recipe that would be of interest to SurvivalBlogreaders? Please send it viae-mail. Thanks!

Letter Re: The Little Things, by Claymor

Hello Hugh,

In the recent post entitled “The Little Things“, writer Claymor mentions the importance of water and of providing for a means of treating non-potable water. I certainly agree with this, however he goes on to assert “If you’re lucky you’ll die from dehydration before giardia takes claim.” This may not be the case.

Every reputable survival school in the country teaches the same thing– if faced with the choice between drinking questionable water and suffering the effects of serious dehydration, you should (almost) always err on the side of drinking the water. The reasons for this are several: the negative effects of severe dehydration are rapid and immediately dangerous and will progress rapidly. Further, if the water source is merely questionable (as opposed to confirmed to be contaminated), then there is the chance also that it is safe. However the result of not drinking it (dehydration, possible death) are certain. Finally, even if your chosen water source is contaminated, many of the enteric pathogens people fear (giardia, hep A, cryptosporidium, et cetera) have an incubation period of days to weeks. That means you may be without symptoms for that amount of time, giving you time to: #1 survive the immediate crisis of no water and #2 prepare for the possibility that you may come down with some unpleasant diarrhea. Invasive diarrhea is no laughing matter to be sure, but it is treatable and at least in the healthy and strong, very survivable even with minimal medical infrastructure. Treatment of invasive diarrhea is a topic for another day (or a search of the SB archives), but it is done every day in the developing world. Lastly, there is a surprisingly large percentage of the population which may be exposed to giardia, even colonized by it, and even become a carrier of it, without ever developing symptoms. Death by dehydration, however, is symptomatic for everyone.

Surely treating your water and preparing ahead of time for that possible need is best. But lacking the means to do so, don’t be like the desert visitor who dies next to a water hole because he lacks the means to purify it. All the best, – j

Letter Re: Generators And Their Proper Implementation During TEOTWAWKI/Disasters

Excellent article about generator usage. I might mention that when using a portable generator there is a better option than running an extension cord to an outlet and then cutting off the main breaker. You can buy a manual transfer switch that will allow you to wire selected circuits in your breaker panel through the transfer switch. After plugging up and starting the generator, you flip breakers on the transfer switch. This transfers the selected circuits to the generator output and isolates them from the main incoming power. These switches are readily available at almost any home improvement store or electrical supply store. These switches are easily installed with basic electrical knowledge. This is a much safer option and will protect both the homeowner and the lineman working on the outage. Thanks, – S.R.

HJL Replies: That is an excellent idea and one that the blog has covered many times in the past. All it takes is one careless moment to put a utilities lineman at risk for electrocution. These transfer switches should be standard in any home that is using any form of backup AC through the regular wiring.

Economics and Investing:

What does $600,000 buy you in Southern California real estate? A look at Pasadena, Arcadia, and Torrance. Some boomers cashing in their housing lottery ticket.

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Items from The Economatrix:

This Is Why Hewlett Packard Just Announced Another 16,000 Job Cuts

Why Are Boomers Cashing Out In Droves? Because “Everyone Understands The Market Went Crazy Last Year”

Richard Russell – More U.S. Lies As The Public Is Going Broke

Video: Peter Schiff: Brace For Impact!

Odds ‘n Sods:

If the grid fails, will you die?. So you think that we will simply revert to the 1800 and move on with life? Try the early middle ages instead.

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U.S. Media Bias: Three large media outlets reporting on the shooting/stabbing in California, CNN, Boston Herald, and NY Daily News, and not one of them mentions the three stabbings, only the shootings. I have to find out about it in the UK based Daily Mail. – T.P.

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Physical Limits to Food Security: Water and Climate – J.W.

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Tampa welcomes “Invasion Force” – T.Y. An interesting news report on a Special Forces convention and the mock invasion performed for an audience. I do hope the news reporter learns the difference between an “Apache” helicopter and an “MH-6 little bird” at the convention though.

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Wyden: “Every American Has The Right To Know When Their Govt. Believes It Is Allowed To Kill Them” – H.L.

Notes for Sunday – May 25, 2014:

Today we present another entry for Round 52 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The $11,000+ worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate, good for any one, two, or three course (a $1,195 value),
  2. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  3. Two cases of Mountain House freeze dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  4. A $300 gift certificate from CJL Enterprize, for any of their military surplus gear,
  5. A 9-Tray Excalibur Food Dehydrator from Safecastle.com (a $300 value),
  6. A $300 gift certificate from Freeze Dry Guy,
  7. A $250 gift certificate from Sunflower Ammo,
  8. A roll of $10 face value in pre-1965 U.S. 90% silver quarters, courtesy of GoldAndSilverOnline.com, (currently valued at around $180 postpaid),
  9. Both VPN tunnel and DigitalSafe annual subscriptions from Privacy Abroad (a combined value of $195),
  10. KellyKettleUSA.com is donating both an AquaBrick water filtration kit and a Stainless Medium Scout Kelly Kettle Complete Kit with a combined retail value of $304,
  11. APEX Gun Parts is donating a $250 purchase credit, and
  12. TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $300 gift certificate.

Second Prize:

  1. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  2. A FloJak EarthStraw “Code Red” 100-foot well pump system (a $500 value), courtesy of FloJak.com,
  3. Acorn Supplies is donating a Deluxe Food Storage Survival Kit with a retail value of $350,
  4. The Ark Instituteis donating a non-GMO, non-hybrid vegetable seed package–enough for two families of four, seed storage materials, a CD-ROM of Geri Guidetti’s book “Build Your Ark! How to Prepare for Self Reliance in Uncertain Times”, and two bottles of Potassium Iodate– a $325 retail value,
  5. $300 worth of ammo from Patriot Firearms and Munitions. (They also offer a 10% discount for all SurvivalBlog readers with coupon code SVB10P),
  6. A $250 gift card from Emergency Essentials,
  7. A full set of all 26 books published by PrepperPress.com (a $270 value),
  8. Two cases of meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value),
  9. Autrey’s Armory – specialists in AR-15, M4s, parts, and accessories is donating a $250 gift certificate,
  10. Dri-Harvestfoods.com in Bozeman, Montana is providing a prize bundle with Beans, Buttermilk Powder, Montana Hard Red Wheat, Drink Mixes, and White Rice, valued at $333,
  11. TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $150 gift certificate, and
  12. Organized Prepper is providing a $500 gift certificate.

Third Prize:

  1. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  2. A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard, and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206,
  3. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  4. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security,
  5. A MURS Dakota Alert Base Station Kit with a retail value of $240 from JRH Enterprises,
  6. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances, and
  7. Ambra Le Roy Medical Products in North Carolina is donating a bundle of their traditional wound care and first aid supplies, with a value of $208.
  8. SurvivalBased.com is donating a $500 gift certificate to their store.

Round 52 ends on May 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Generators And Their Proper Implementation During TEOTWAWKI/Disasters, by RKM

I want to share useful generator information so that serious and possibly dangerous pitfalls can be avoided and tactical efficiencies can be realized.

Outside Only: First, there is an important warning– generators MUST be run and exhausted OUTSIDE! Carbon monoxide can and will kill you with no warning. Carbon monoxide has no smell or taste. Of course there are things you can do to run one inside, but that involves technical issues not covered here. Be careful and plan accordingly!

Our emergency implementation: On August 23rd of 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck Southeastern Louisiana and Mississippi. Fortunately, I was living in Southwest Louisiana, and I was no longer a Louisiana State Trooper that had to worry about going to New Orleans to help. In the following two weeks, though, all of the people pitched in at churches to send things to help out the disaster victims. Our churches in Lake Charles and the surrounding communities were also taking in some of the refugees (and later other cities outside of Louisiana did the same).

On September 18th, though, things changed; Hurricane Rita formed and was headed our way. In a family meeting on that Wednesday, it was decided that we were evacuating. As a former Louisiana State Trooper, I knew evacuation was going to be as dangerous as staying; the roads would be packed (think TEOTWAWKI), and drivers would be tired and fuel scarce. Within one hour though our entire plan to evacuate changed. My (now) ex-wife’s company– a major gulf coast helicopter provider– had forgotten about ten pilots that had come in for training and now had no way to leave with the airport quickly closed down. Feeling responsible for these people, we offered our home and made preparations to ride out the storm.

Fortunately, I had already located and purchased a 9KW Troy-Bilt generator (13K surge) that someone coming into the area had picked up for me in San Antonio, Texas, on their way into my area. (Southeast Texas was still in the “cone of impact”, and all of Southeast Texas was sold out of generators.) I started gathering fuel cans and filling them, cutting plywood, boarding up windows, and gathering what supplies were available in the area stores, which soon dwindled to nothing after the first day of being “in the cone of impact” for Rita. I then made contact with all of my neighbors to determine what their plans were. I quickly found out we were the only ones staying, but my neighbors gladly donated their refrigerator contents to us. They really didn’t want to deal with the mess post-hurricane after power outages. One neighbor had just purchased a side of Black Angus beef! Most had milk, eggs, and bacon. We ate very well on the Friday of Rita’s landfall! I grilled steaks and fried bass, red fish, and catfish. We boiled shrimp. My refrigerator and extra freezer were full.

To get power to the house from the generator, we rigged up an electrical cord that we ran through the dryer vent and plugged it into the dryer outlet (with that breaker switched off), safely connecting it to the electrical panel. The other end connected to another heavy-duty extension cord and then to our new generator. I had the generator in the back yard, away from the house, to keep the noise level down in the house. I had figured out which breakers needed to be switched off once we went on to generator power and labeled them. IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTICE: Once the power goes out and before you run or engage your generator, you MUST shut off the main breaker, normally at the top of the panel and labeled “main.” This prevents “back feed” to the utility lines that could easily kill an electrical company lineman. (You would certainly not want to be responsible for that!) Once the power went out, we simply had to throw the appropriate breakers– open the main thereby disconnecting the home from the incoming utility line, open all of the non-essential breakers, and then close the dryer outlet breaker allowing the generator to feed the house through the electrical panel. Then we had to start the generator, and we would be set. We had two rooms in the house that had small 110 volt air conditioners that could keep the room cool for sleeping (from Sears).

My step-son and I made one trip out on the town that Friday afternoon around 1 pm. The winds were low at this point, but the clouds in the sky were swirled as the outer band of the hurricane approached. The streets were completely barren. I could have used Interstate 10 east and west for a tank gunnery range! One gas station in our town was open and running. I topped off the truck, filled up two more five-gallon cans, and chatted with the owners as to their plans. They were riding it out and bringing the station on-line after with a generator. My in-laws, at this point, had been on the road evacuating since Thursday morning. They traveled 20 miles in twelve hours! By Friday afternoon they had made it to a friend’s apartment in Monroe, Louisiana after driving 20 hours total! This is normally a three and a half hour trip, at most. At one point in the trip my father-in-law had fallen asleep at the wheel, but since they were all only traveling about 2-3 MPH nothing was hurt other than his pride when he rear-ended the car in front of him. If they had left Friday morning, they could have made the trip easily in the two and half hours it normally takes. You just had to have some place to go though as every hotel in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and east Texas were full. They reported there were no gas stations open, or they did not have gas. When my father-in-law ran out of gas at one point (after only 75 road miles from our community) and pulled to the side of the road, he lucked out because a good friend of his was a few cars behind and gave him two spare, five-gallon cans of gas.

The hurricane force winds started hitting too hard to stay outside around 9pm that Friday evening. The power stayed on until around 11pm. In anticipation of losing the power, I had run the A/C full blast to keep the house cool through the night. Once the power went out, the generator could not run the house A/C units (due to the small size of the generator and heavy starting load of the A/C units). All we would have for A/C would be the two small units in the bedrooms for who knows how long. The waiting began, and everyone tried to settle down and relax, but the noise outside was a persistent roaring noise with the noise level growing by the hour.

I eventually fell asleep in my bedroom, while my (now ex) wife and the children hid in an interior bathroom on a mattress for fear of a building collapse or tornado impact. I’ll never forget the noise at 2 am. When I awoke, one of my neighbor’s little metal storage building went airborne and hit the roof right over my head! It was, you know, the kind you bought at Sears for storing your lawn mower. That impact caused all of the water damage my house suffered as it peeled off a huge patch of both shingles and tar paper. I had quite a few patches on the roof where one, two, or even three shingles flew off, but that did not cause any more than a drip or two. I was now awake and alert. The noise level continued to rise to a peak at around 3:30 or 4:00am. It was incredible. Each burst of wind seemed to intensify as it hit the boarded up windows. My home seemed to be doing very well with its brick veneer. Even though we were on a water well, there was enough pressure in the air bladder tank that we had water for toilets and the sinks though the storm. With the power off, I had multiple electric lanterns in each room, and everyone had a flashlight. It was too warm to even think of using a gas lantern, so I kept them in their cabinets.

Around 7am the next morning (Saturday), the wind was still blowing steadily at around 40mph but low enough to peak out at the neighborhood. It was ugly! One neighbor has lost his entire roof down to the plywood. (It had rained about twelve to fourteen inches by this point.) One neighbor had several tree branches and a couple of 2×4’s sticking out of the windward side of his windows. My next door neighbor’s metal storage building was in my front yard, and I had lost a willow tree in the front yard as well. My wood panel fence was down in the back yard as well as every other neighbor’s, so I now had a great view into many of the yards surrounding mine.

At 9am the wind had died down enough that we could go out and remove the plywood off of the windows to start letting light in. My front door was recessed about five feet and had also been covered to protect the glass panels in it. As we removed this I went back out into the front yard. I immediately noticed an unfamiliar car parked in the middle of the street between the first two homes on our street. (We lived on a dead end street.) I saw two of the occupants get out, and one each go to the first two neighbor’s homes. I ducked back into my front door alcove and had my step-son hand me my lever action .444 rifle. As I came back out of the alcove, the driver saw me and started leaving with his two buddies running hard to catch up. I did not shoot either in the back; I never saw them again. I waited two hours on the side of our main road for a deputy sheriff to drive by. When they did, both deputies stated that the sheriff wanted all looters shot! Our 911 service and most cell service was still down at this point. It was weird. Verizon was out as well as AT&T, but Sprint could get calls in but not out.

The day after impact, I started checking with neighbors to my rear and several streets over. We started hearing about multiple generator thefts. I had already locked mine up with a long cable with swaged (looped) ends and a very large padlock that I had. I locked it to a brick post at my shop in the back yard. We later heard that the thieves would start your lawn mower and leave it running, so you wouldn’t notice the generator shut off. Since there were no fences anymore, we lost a bit of security and privacy. You could easily see three blocks over in most cases.

Maintenance: The generator required three oil changes in the one week (every 100 hours plus the initial break in period) that we had to run it. I had purchased oil filters, 30 SAE oil, and two extra spark plugs that Thursday before the hurricane hit, so oil changes were not a problem. My generator has a 4.5 gallon tank, but that is only good for 7.5 hours of run time at a heavy load. For refueling, you had to shut it off, as you cannot chance any accident during a crisis, and it’s prudent to avoid one at anytime. (The gasoline can instantly ignite if dropped onto a hot exhaust manifold.) I would check the oil, refill the tank, and look over the generator for any faults during refueling. After using 130 gallons of gasoline, I decided on the spot that I would convert my generator to propane. There are good quality kits on the Internet for propane conversions. I went with pure propane instead of tri-fuel and never looked back. The kit was easy to install, and I have not had any problems. The best thing is that I never have to preserve gasoline again. I can never go back to gasoline though, which is a consideration. In this day of food fuel, aka ethanol, most small engines are not designed to burn ethanol. They do not have the correct materials to resist the ethanol. This may not be a short-term problem, but long term (I still have the same generator) you may experience carburetor and fuel line problems. Another concern during our post-hurricane experience was gasoline storage. I had twenty 5-gallon jugs of gasoline in my back yard. Locking the generator up was easy, but I did not have another cable to lock the gas cans up. I did not want to store them in my shop, nor could I just leave them outside. I ended up erecting a lean-to with sections of my downed fence. Propane does not have this problem if you have an in-ground tank. I now have a 500 gallon in-ground tank, and I have plumbed off a line just for my generator. I have had zero starting or storage issues with this setup.

After action review: One act that really helped us out immensely was taking in a boarder. After Hurricane Katrina we took in a friend of my step-daughter from the affected New Orleans area; she had to attend school somewhere for her scholarship eligibility to not falter. We took her in to help her out. After Hurricane Rita hit, her father was able to bring in another 100 gallons of gasoline and a couple of other essential items. Remember how hot it was– 97 degrees in the shade? Cold drinks on ice really were refreshing.

Caring for your generator-post disaster: Rather than run my generator weekly, I have properly stored it. I had previously drained the gas (pre-propane days), then added Marvel Mystery Oil to the tank (just a few ounces), and then run the generator dry. After that, I removed the spark plug and then misted the piston chamber with Marvel Mystery Oil. (I used Mercury outboard storage oil once too with good effect.) I then turned the motor over a couple of cranks to work the oil in, put the spark plug back in, and reconnected it. I purchased and hooked up a trickle charger and plugged that in. Now I run the generator about every three to six months (on propane) and put a load on the generator. This keeps the generator in good order. I then re-mist the piston cylinder. I don’t have to re-do the carb with Marvel as I am using the propane now.

I have since replaced the tires with solid rubber wheels. Unless you have a permanent mount, there are times when it is really convenient to roll your generator around, for example to the shop for repairs. It is much cheaper to bring a generator to someone than have them come to you. I have also used mine for my camper (using a small propane cylinder) and to reach jobs that were too far for an extension cord.

Another tip I learned for security is to paint my generator bright orange and put my name and phone number in several places. I also recorded the serial number. It might not keep it from getting stolen, but it makes it harder to pass on in quasi legitimate transactions. Right after Rita passed, quite a few characters showed up in shopping mall parking lots with generators for sale. Our local police and sheriff department shut them down for moving stolen property. The generators all looked “nearly new”, so were probably stolen from other areas and moved in just for the occasion.

Whole house generators: A friend of mine purchased a whole house generator after Rita. Her mom stayed in her home while my friend went on vacation for a week. Right after my friend left there was a thunderstorm that knocked out some power lines. Her mother thought everything was great as the generator kicked on and was large enough (17 KW) to run the A/C units for four days! When my friend got her propane bill at the end of the month, she almost passed out; it was $1000 for four full days! If you use a whole house generator, the key is to run the generator at night to run ceiling fans and lights, tankless water heater, 110 volt A/C’s, et cetera. This keeps your refrigerator (if you lower its thermostat as well) cold enough to keep your food stored at a safe temperature during the day. Also, mind to keep people from opening the refrigerator door frequently for snacks.

Tactically, generators are a non starter. My generator now has a muffler from Tractor Supply on it. It is still LOUD. In my U.S. Army days the 10 and 40 KW generators were deafening. It will be like a flame for the moths if you are the only one with a generator. Either use a solar power/battery setup or my suggestion in this case is to buy a small one, like a Honda 1000 watt generator, since they are very quiet; they’re not silent but good enough if you live out in the country, like I do. Honda and other brands also have propane-powered generators, so you can keep it on the same fuel. My home has a tankless water heater and a new refrigerator, so a 1000 watt generator can run all night and do the very few things I need it to do. If I need to run an A/C (Louisiana is hot during the summer/fall hurricane season!), then I have to run the larger generator. If you have a regular water heater then now is a good time to go tankless, since the big electric ones use a lot of electricity and pull a heavy amp load to heat water. The tankless propane heaters only use a very tiny amount of electricity to run the igniter (12 VDC). I also do not recommend the combination welder-generators as one friend got one (it was all he could find at that point). His drank even more gas than mine and was even louder.

More safety reminders: Do not run your generator in the garage or in your home! Between Katrina and Rita, several people died from carbon monoxide poisoning. In each case people did not want their generators stolen but got more than they bargained for. I also keep a 40lb fire extinguisher with my generator. When I am using the generator, I place the fire extinguisher near the generator. I can use it for the generator if need be.

Other considerations: Right now heavy extension cords are not cheap, but they are essential and easy to find. Figure out where you will post your generator, and then get at least a 10-gauge cord of the appropriate length to connect to the house. Unless you understand electricity perfectly, you need an electrician to wire up a 220 volt outlet on the outside of your home near where the generator will be placed. Why 220? Well, most large generators can produce 220 volts. Send this to your home electric panel and let your breaker panel decide what is and is not energized. There may be a reason why you need to run your 220 volt dryer. (I have a propane dryer that runs off of 110 volts.) You may have a 220 volt well pump. Whatever, it gives you flexibility. If not, make sure there is a 110 volt outlet near your generator location. Then take an extension cord and cut off the female end and attach a male/pronged end to it. This will allow you to plug one end into the outlet on the outside of your home and one end to the output outlet on your generator. This is the safest method I have seen of hooking a generator to your home in a temporary manner. A whole-house generator permanently wired in with automatic switches is the safest method. Don’t forget to buy heavy locks and cables with swaged (looped) ends for securing your generator. Now they are cheap, but if your generator is stolen your whole game plan must change. Lastly, have fuel cans or propane bottles/an in-ground tank. Get them and fill them on a dollar-cost average basis. Rather than fuel up at once (both propane or gasoline), take the long look and space it out. You can order 25-35 gallons of propane a month as part of a route pricing with your local company. Pretty soon that 500 gallon tank will be full, regardless of the pricing of propane; the same goes with gasoline. Use Pri-G to preserve all of your gasoline and rotate it. I used to put the oldest in my suburban and then refill the empty gas can and re-preserve it. Where I am at now (North Carolina), I do not have the option to buy non-ethanol gasoline (another good reason to convert to propane). Make sure your preservative can handle ethanol gasoline (as well as your generator) or get a preservative that can.

Generator quality: You get what you pay for! Honda, Briggs and Stratton, Koheler, Genset, and Generac are but a few of the quality manufacturers out there. Right now is the time to research and find a quality generator that will fit your needs. On a Field Training Exercise (FTX) I was walking near a 5KW commercial generator that blew the head off as I walked by. It had the gasoline tank mounted across the top of it (so the evidence of what a hunk of junk it was would burn up). Most of the popular brands are or have multi-fuel capabilities. Whatever you buy, make sure you buy the proper consumables: filters (air and fuel), oil, spark plugs, et cetera. Do not forget these items. Also, remember that “one is none and two is one!” If you do not have the repair parts and skill, then once your generator stops you can be in trouble and have to change your whole game plan! Plan accordingly.

Lastly: SAFETY ALWAYS! Hearing protection! Wear it when you are around your generator. They are loud, and your home’s walls reflect the sound which can make it worse. GASOLINE AND PROPANE ARE FLAMMABLE. Act accordingly!

I hope this helps. Get ready now before bad weather or bad events happens to prevent making costly mistakes.

Letter: .22 Training Ammo Availability

Hello Hugh,

Just wanted to offer this information about the availability of .22LR ammo for training purposes for youth under 18. As many readers of the blog are aware, the Appleseed Project is a leader in rifle marksmanship education and telling the story of the history, choices, and sacrifices made by the men and women of the founding generation on April 19th, 1775 (first battle of the Revolutionary War). The value of the knowledge gained, both in practical skill gain using a rifle and in increased knowledge of our shared heritage, cannot be overstated, with the price for a weekend of instruction at only $60 for adults , $20 for youth, and free for active military, law enforcement, and elected officials.

For the last year or so, however, attendance at Appleseed shoots nationwide has plateaued to some extent, due in large part to the difficulty in obtaining .22LR ammo. (For time’s sake most of the shooting takes place at 25 meters using scaled down targets representing ranges out to 400 meters.) This year thanks to grants from Federal and CCI ammunition makers, many state Appleseed chapters now have access to .22 ammo for use by youth (under 18) shooters at Appleseed events. If you know any young people who would benefit from hearing the stories of the founding of this country and learning the safe and effective use of a rifle, there has never been a better time, since with their ammo more available, it is that much less you need to scrounge for your own use! Just make sure you contact your local state Appleseed coordinator prior to signing up to make sure there will be ammo for you at the shoot you wish to attend.

The Appleseed Project is the primary focus of the Revolutionary War Veteran’s Association, a 501(c)3 education non-profit. – J.S.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Prepper comms goes mainstream? My New Favorite Social Network Is Ham Radio. – B.C.

o o o

City plans to attack economic segregation by moving poor into middle-class neighborhoods, richer into poverty spots. No point in fleeing a high crime area when the city will simply be moving the high crime area right back into your formerly “nice” neighborhood. Middle class and upper class flight from the state of New York will simply accelerate… even more. – T.P.

o o o

A chilling message from the cartels: Billboards with hanging mannequins warning cops to choose ‘silver over lead’ appear in Texas. – G.P.

o o o

Seen on Craigslist: Beekeeper/Apiary Technician (Milton Freewater, OR) – RBS

o o o

Feds Force Oklahoma to Overturn Anti-Sharia Law & Pay Islamists $303,333. – H.L.

Product Review: Harvest Right Freeze Dryer, by HJL – Part 2

1

Why It Works

I spent quite a bit of time, over the last three years, researching how freeze drying is accomplished. I wanted to know why and how it worked and ultimately, if I could do it at home. Earlier, I alluded to some pretty bad information I had run across, and I think a short primer of what makes freeze drying successful is in order, so that the user can understand just how useful this appliance actually is.

It is well understood by any high school student who has taken a physics or physical science course that there are three basic forms that matter can take– solid, liquid, and gas. (Yes, I know. Plasma counts there too, but we aren’t going to talk about it.) We can force matter into any of those states by varying the temperature or pressure. Usually, we do so by varying the temperature. You do this every time you put water in your freezer to make ice. We happen to know that water turns to a gas at 212 degrees Fahrenheit (boiling) and turns to a solid at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (ice). A little lesser known but just as important is that those numbers change as the pressure changes. If you are a mountain climber, the water boils at roughly 193 degrees Fahrenheit (F) when you are at 10,000 feet elevation. For the survivor, this change can be critical, as the lowered boiling point means you may not be killing all the bad stuff in your water that you are trying to purify, but that’s another story for another time.

There is one more property of water that we need to know about in order to take advantage of it. Water can exist in all three states at the same time, within a certain temperature range. At 32 degree F, you can have some of the water as liquid, some of it as a solid, and some of it will actually be water vapor (gas). We are all familiar with the concept of ice thawing into water on the ground during a spring thaw, and if the sun is gently warming the air, you can actually see the water turning to vapor or mist. What you may not be aware of is that not all of the water goes through that cycle. Some of it turns directly from the solid ice into water vapor in a process we call sublimation. This is the process that we want to enhance to create a freeze dryer. When we freeze a cellular-based object, like food, we damage the cells because the water expands as it freezes, thus bursting the cell walls. When it begins to thaw out, it usually turns into a sloppy mess, just like a spring thaw. If you are cooking the food as that process happens, you usually don’t notice the texture change, because your cooking will do much the same damage to the cellular structure. However, the loss of integrity of those cellular walls means that the object will degrade much quicker than normal. If you’ve ever found lettuce in your refrigerator crisper that has now turned slimy and dark while parts of it are still crisp and green, you’ve probably seen this kind of behavior.

This is why when we loose power to our freezers, we generally loose all of the food contained in them. Once the cellular damage has occurred and the thawing has started, you can’t repair it. If you catch it in time, you can stop further degradation, but you can’t reverse it. However, what if you could keep the cellular structure intact despite the thawing? By removing all of the water from the food without letting it thaw, we essentially “stop” any degradation of the product when it warms up. You are also generally capable of keeping the vitamins intact, though you still need to protect them from oxidation– the interaction with oxygen that destroys flavor and vitamins and makes oils go rancid. An added benefit of freeze drying is that bacteria can’t really survive in a perfectly dry environment, so we essentially stop the bacterial action that would normally occur outside of freezing temperatures and cause your food to rot. There are a few draw backs to be sure. Without the full cellular integrity and the water to fill the cells, the food becomes brittle and easily broken into pieces. You also need to replace all of the water for your body to be able to utilize it as an energy source. If you are not re-hydrating the food before you eat it, you will need to re-hydrate your body, as the food will simply steal the water from you. Both dehydrators and freeze dryers remove the water, but the difference is that if the water is removed in a liquid state, the cell walls collapse, shrinking the food and making it take longer to re-hydrate it. Freeze drying, on the other hand, freezes the food and then removes the water keeping the cellular structure from collapsing, despite its damaged state. It is also tremendously easier to re-hydrate the freeze dried food because the water can easily penetrate the entire structure.

How It Works

The concept is very easy. Once you figure out that you can manipulate that temperature/pressure boundary, you simply have to create the right “atmosphere”, or lack thereof, to encourage the process. The very small pressures involved in manipulating that boundary requires some special tools and measurement abilities. Most people in the prepping community have heard of the Tilia FoodSaver. It’s a very useful vacuum sealing machine that will produce about 29 inches of mercury (Hg). At 29 inches of Hg, we can make water boil at about 75F, but that is still above the freezing point and where we don’t want it. The water can exist as a liquid there, which defeats the whole purpose. Don’t even try that route. What you need is a vacuum pump that uses rotating vanes or gears in an oil bath to create a really good vacuum. We need to be able to make water boil at well below freezing in order to accomplish what we want. The pump supplied with the Harvest Right can reach vacuum levels that we can no longer effectively read in inches of mercury, so we have to switch to a smaller scale, which we will call millitorr (mTorr or 1/25400 of an inch). At one Torr (1000 mTorr), water will boil at about 3 degrees F, making it perfect.

In our freeze dryer, we can freeze the food to roughly -30F. We can then turn on the vacuum pump and reduce the pressure to below 1000mTorr. Then all we have to do is gently warm the food until it begins to reach the temperature at which the ice will sublimate into gas without ever turning to liquid. If the gas starts to overwhelm our vacuum pump, we simply turn the heaters off and allow the system to cool back down until the water ceases to sublimate. Then we start the cycle again. That’s it. In a nutshell, we have just described how the system works.

We still have to do something with that water vapor tough, because if we let it get pulled through the pump oil, some of it gets trapped in the oil and the oil becomes less effective. Eventually, enough of it gets into the oil that the system can no longer pull a low enough vacuum and we have to stop and change or clean the oil to continue. Harvest Right’s solution is simply to keep the freezer part running through the whole process. As the water sublimates out of the food, the vapor eventually comes in contact with the wall of the vessel, which is near -30F. Since water vapor would take less than 150mTorr to exist, it simply refreezes on the wall of the vessel, which you allow to defrost once you are through with the batch. It is an elegantly simple process that is capable of running itself with very little intervention, if any at all.

Alright, Already! What About The Bananas?

Those who have run dehydrators for your food preps usually understand that bananas and chives are not really two things that you want to run in the same batch. The chives, while yummy, are especially odoriferous and nobody likes chive-flavored bananas. Do it once in a dehydrator, and you’ll probably never do it again. We started the bananas at 0900, and I let the cooling process run for four hours. I knew I was pushing it, but most users of this machine will end up pushing the times sooner or later, so I figured we would simply use this as a learning experience. In essence, I expected some failures. At the four hour mark, I opened the freezer and felt the bananas. They were cold and hard, so I decided to push the process on. The top knob on the right side controls the timer for the cooling process, the bottom knob controls the timer for the drying process. I rotated the top knob until the cooling timer reached zero. The vacuum pump sprang to life, and the door began to compress against the chamber seal. I carefully watched the door, knowing that there was nearly 1,800 pounds of pressure there. The door snugged against the chamber, showing about a 1/2 wide contact ring with the seal. If you step away from the machine and eyeball it, you can see a slight bow to the door, but it’s obvious the system is built to take the pressures involved. I had expected the system to immediately start the drying timer, but it did not. The vacuum pump ran until the pressure reached 480 mTorr. Then the heaters kicked in, and the drying timer started. I watched the pressure begin to climb. When it reached 580 mTorr, the heaters turned off, and the timer disappeared until the pressure had dropped again to 480 mTorr. This cycle continued for about 10 hours. Finally, the timer came on and stayed on. As the pressure began to drop, I unilaterally decided that the time was up after the timer had run two hours (leaving four on the clock), and I shut the machine down. When I opened it up, the chives were done, and the bananas looked good but were still cold in the middle. There was no hint of chive flavor on the bananas either. I put the bananas back in the machine, forced it into the drying mode, and let the timer run out. Qualified as a partial success, my fiddling with the timers was obviously the problem. On thicker foods, you must let the timer run the full six hours (or longer, depending on the food).

Performance

Over the course of a month, I ran the Harvest Right Freeze Dryer 24/7, with a variety of foods. I played around with the timer settings, attempting to get better performance than just the standard programming, but it was hard to do. The standard program is a great place to start and stay. Where you will find some leeway is in how you prepare the foods for the freeze dryer. If you pre-freeze foods, you can cut the cooling time down by several hours. If you keep the prepared foods to less than 1/2” thick with no skins and good surface contact on the trays, you can cut the drying timer down to three or four hours. If you just want to come home from the grocery store and put freshly prepared foods in the freeze dryer, leave the standard controls where they are.

Several times we ran liquids through the machine, such as milk and scrambled eggs, and our first attempt involved pre-freezing the liquids in ice cube trays. The unit comes with only four trays, and to keep it running efficiently, you really need to prepare foods and pre-freeze them. Good luck finding quality ice-cube trays though. Some liquids, such as milk, contain sugar and create a sticky hard cube that just doesn’t want to release from the tray. I broke six trays before I found that I could soak the bottom of the tray in hot water to help it release the frozen product. In the end, I discarded the ice cube tray idea, because it created chunks that were thicker than 1/2”, which didn’t work very well under the standard programming. The product creates a light and airy structure that also works as a great insulator. Harvest Right is correct when they list 1/2” as the working size of product, because even after eight hours of drying cycle time, the center of the cubes still contained frozen product.

Oil-based products do not work well at all. I attempted to freeze dry butter, figuring that since butter will freeze hard it has at least some water content in it. As the heaters kicked on to begin the process of drying the butter, it seemed to work as I watched for about 10 minutes. Then the butter melted into a liquid product and proceeded to boil violently, spraying melted butter over the entire interior. That was a spectacular failure that required about an hour of cleanup. Do you have any idea how much soap is required to clean up 1.5 pounds of butter? I do. It isn’t pretty. As messy as that was, it provided valuable insight into just how easy the unit is to clean. The vacuum port, along with the measurement ports, are on the upper half of the chamber, so they rarely get dirty. In this case, I was able to wipe out any melted (then congealed) butter with a hot soapy cloth. The drain, on the other hand, presented a problem; it is on the bottom of the unit. Several repeated applications of boiling soapy water had to be sent down the drain, followed by cleaning with a nylon brush (from my camel-back cleaning kit) to remove the butter from it. In the end, we were able to clean the entire unit up in a little less than an hour, though there were two people working on it– one cleaning trays and the tray holder while the other was cleaning the unit itself.

Irritants

There were some things about the unit that bothered me. This unit is retailing for about $3899.00, which is an incredible price considering what it does. However, I was annoyed with the riveting of the tray holder assembly. As we used the unit, and especially as we had to remove the tray holder to deal with the failures and cleanup, the rivets loosened up and the tray would eventually rock back and forth nearly 1.5 inches. It doesn’t affect the operation of the unit in any way, but I expect an assembly to be sturdy enough that there is no movement unless it is intended. In my case, it irritated me enough that I drilled out four of the aluminum rivets and replaced them with 1/4” #4 stainless machine screws and nuts. It’s an easy fix.

The second worst irritant is the exit of the drain tube. The tube attached to the drain port of the chamber is re-enforced vacuum hose, which is rather stiff. You have to route that hose out from under the unit in the rear (because it isn’t long enough to exit anywhere else). The hose then connects to a 1/4 turn valve, which you open to drain the unit and close to operate. The valve assembly is too close to the unit, and if you do not have the rear feet lengthened enough, the weight of the unit will mash the valve assembly into your counter marring its surface and possible damaging the valve. The tubing supplied on the other end of the valve is too short to reach the ground if you are setting on a counter, necessitating the use of a stool to place the bucket to catch the melted water when you drain it. Also, if you are setting the tube in a bucket, you need to make sure that the end is above the water line of any water left in the bucket. If you forget to close the valve when you are cycling the machine, it will suck up anything in the bucket back into the chamber and spray it all over your product. Don’t ask me how I know this. It was a painful loss of food.

Another item that bothered me was that the system simply shuts the vacuum motor down by shutting off the power to the pump. The pump manufacturer recommends against that type of shutdown, as the pump is still under a vacuum, and the loss of power means that the oil gets sucked back into the cartridge, making for a hard start the next time. The pump never failed due to this, but you could hear the pump work hard to spit the oil out of the mechanism before starting to pull a vacuum. In some cases, the pump will stall several times before running due to the oil. The manufacture also states that this is hard on the plastic coupler between the motor and the pump. You can, however, mitigate this with some simple oversight in the operation, but that removes the “push the button and go” feature of the freeze dryer.

I also had a failure of the electronic display on the unit I received, but the company was very responsive in getting it fixed. They sent the replacement directly to me with the instructions of having a refrigerator repair man install it and bill them. However, it was a simple matter to replace the display, so I did the work myself.

I had the unit apart to repair the shipping damage and then again when I replaced the display. While most electrical connections are made by crimp connectors, I was disappointed to find the power connectors soldered and then simply wrapped in electrical tape. I would expect nothing less than heat-shrink wrapped solder connections in a unit that I am paying several thousand dollars for.

It wouldn’t be hard for Harvest Right to fix any of these irritants, though some, such as the vacuum motor, might affect the cost of the unit. The drain tube would have been better with the valve mounted to the unit and the hose exiting through the casing rather than under it.

Benefits

Did I mention that you can freeze dry your own products? Let me list the top three benefits of owning this machine in order of importance:

  1. You can freeze dry your own products (determining your family’s preferred quality and content).
  2. You can freeze dry your own products!
  3. You can freeze dry your own products!!

Seriously, I can’t think of a more compelling reason to own this unit. You can freeze dry ingredients (carrots, meat, potatoes, fruit, et cetera) or you can freeze dry meals (your favorite stew and casseroles), including only the ingredients that your family prefers or needs for dietary purposes. You need less salt; no problem! You have a gluten, onion, or dairy intolerance; no problem! You despise celery; no problem! You can have complete control, even to the point of growing your own organic food and freeze drying it to preserve the nutrients and fiber better than if canned. Plus, my family reminds me that this is the only way they can get their “ice cream fix” when there is no electricity. My wife says she cannot be sweet without her daily sweet intake. So, I am freeze drying ice cream sandwiches simply for her “sweet” disposition.

The irritants were small in comparison to the benefit derived by having this unit. You also have some serious flexibility in what you can use it for. I found that there were very few foods that couldn’t be freeze dried (most being those that have a high oil content, such as butter or peanut butter). You can produce about a gallon of food every 24 hours. If you have a family of six and freeze dry only those things that require refrigeration or freezing (or canning) for long term storage, you can actually make this a part of your long-term food storage and be able to freeze dry your larder as fast as you use it. This, of course, means that products like wheat, pasta, rice, and beans are not freeze dried, but meats, fruits, and vegetables are.

With only one of these units, the freezer becomes a short-term preparation and holding area as you feed the freeze dryer. My calculations show that if you have a one-year larder for a family of six and you freeze dry all foods that you would normally can, dehydrate, or freeze, you would be running it about six months out of the year. If you supplement by dehydrating foods that don’t need to be freeze dried, you may even be able to run it three to four months out of the year. Of course, to get in that position, you will end up running it 24/7 until you have attained that position. In addition, if you calculate in the cost of running the freezers and canning equipment for a normal larder, you come very close to break even expenses. Three freezers are not cheap to run year round.

Cost Factors

One of the most common questions I received as I reviewed this unit was about the cost of owning and running it. For the purposes of these calculations, I will use current food prices at Costco (2014) and a 10-year lifetime on the unit. In addition, we had previously purchased many Honeyville freeze-dried products because of their reputation of having high quality product, so I compared my product from the Harvest Right freeze dryer to the Honeyville products I had on hand.

  1. First, we have to calculate the ownership cost of the unit. If you purchase at $4000.00 and use it for 10 years (the standard lifetime of kitchen appliances), your cost is $400/yr or $1.09/day.
  2. The unit uses oil in the vacuum pump. You don’t change it because it breaks down, but you must change it due to contamination issues. The more contaminated the oil is, the harder it is to pull a vacuum. For our purposes, I’ll assume you do not have the ability to recycle and clean the oil. Locally, O’Reilly Autoparts store sells the oil for $22/gallon. On average, you will use one gallon/month if you routinely change the oil once a week. (See the tips and tricks on the next post to find out how to extend the life of the oil.) That makes the cost of the oil $0.73/day.
  3. It also requires electricity to run the unit. There is a compressor and a one HP motor on the vacuum pump. (The electronics use a negligible amount, so we will ignore them.) The unit states that it uses 10 amps, but that is a worst case number. The vacuum pump will not require the full 1hp when the high level of vacuum is reached and will also only run about 2/3 of the time, unless you pre-freeze your food. My current electricity is $0.09/kWh, so if the 10 amp figure is used (worst case) I use $2.60/day, though the real amount is probably closer to $1/day.

That means the unit costs $4.42/day to operate, including cost of ownership, worst-case oil usage costs, and worst case electricity usage costs. In 24 hours, the unit will produce roughly one gallon of food. One of the first foods that we produced was freeze-dried egg crystals, similar to Honeyville’s whole egg crystals. We were able to produce a #10 can with 96 purchased eggs for $13.87 compared to Honeyville’s $36.99. In addition, you can use your own chicken eggs to further reduce the cost. You also have total control over the quality of the product, and the resulting product shows it.

I produced a #10 can of freeze-dried cheddar cheese for $19.93 compared to Honeyville’s $43.89, and my product was considerably better in both texture and taste. A #10 can of sour cream cost me $10.89 versus Honeyville’s $22.49, and the product was indistinguishable from the fresh product whereas Honeyville’s product was merely edible. Berries on the other hand, were just about break even on the cost with Honeyville’s product, but my end product was superior in taste and texture. (On both accounts the superior results were probably because we used a higher quality fresh product than Honeyville.)

Have you ever made a large meal and then had to throw the leftovers out a week later? I admit that is a rarity with two teenage boys around here, but it has happened. You can only refrigerate the leftovers for a few days. However, you can extend the storage time by moving it to a freezer, but then you take up valuable space there. This unit will allow you to simply freeze dry the leftovers and use them off your pantry shelf at your leisure.

Would I Purchase This Freeze Drier?

In a heartbeat! After having played around with it for a month, I can see that in both cost of food storage and quality of food storage, this is the way to go. I will be purchasing one of these units, despite some of the rough edges. I am confident that the company will work out the minor issues that bothered me, and those issues that would affect the bottom line price of the unit can be dealt with by simply managing the unit rather than letting it run as intended. Of course, if you don’t want to bother with it, it will run just fine by loading it and pushing the button.

You can check this unit out at Harvest Rights web page along with several other nifty products they produce.

Index

This is a three part review: