Building a Year-Long Food Supply: Step-by-Step Guide

To build a year's supply of long-term food storage, I recommend starting with the inexpensive, high-calorie, dry foods. Good basic, frugal foods to store are rolled oats, plain white rice, dry spaghetti pasta, dry macaroni pasta, dry shredded potatoes, plain potato flakes, plain hominy grits, dry lentils, dry beans and dry peas. Only store the types of basic foods your family is willing to eat -- if they do not like dried black-eyed peas then do not store this food. Buy these foods in 5, 10, 20, 25 or 50-lb. bags from wholesalers, wholesale clubs or employee-owned discount grocery stores. Pay attention to the price per ounce or price per serving because prices will vary widely. Dollar stores are NOT the best place to buy these dry foods because their price per ounce or per serving is usually quite high. When you do buy a big bag of a dry grain/starch product or dry legume food, repackage that food for long-term storage so you do not have the added expense of rotating/replacing that food or the bother of keeping track of what food needs to be rotated by a certain date. Soon after purchase, repackage the dry food in one-gallon, heat-sealed Mylar pouches along with oxygen absorbers and label each pouch so you will know what food is inside (use painter's tape and a Sharpie marker). This will also prevent weevils or maggots from hatching out in the dry food. Store those food pouches in clean (sealed) cardboard boxes or five-gallon plastic buckets or plastic totes with tight-fitting lids, so the Mylar does not get accidentally punctured. Packaged this way, most of the plain, raw, dry foods can store for 20 years. Lable the contents of each box, bucket or tote and stack them so the labels face towards you. This makes finding the food you want to use much easier when you need to use those foods in an emergency. Place the heaviest boxes or buckets or totes on the floor or the lowest shelves. Put light containers up higher. Make sure your heavy-duty shelving units are leashed to wall studs just in case there is an earthquake or other event that shakes your storage room. You will also want to have plenty of culinary salt, granulated white cane sugar, ascorbic acid powder (generic Vitamin C) and raw honey in your survival food stockpile (these foods are heavy). These foods can store for generations in moisture-proof, food safe containers. No oxygen absorbers needed for these four foods. You can also package nonfat powdered milk for long-term storage in Mylar plus oxygen absorbers, but be advised that powdered milk typically will only store for about 10 years. Store your survival food in a cool, dry, vermin-free location. Freezing temperatures will not harm dry foods, but heat will shorten the storage length and speed up decay. Never store your long-term food storage in an attic, garage or an outdoor shed because these places get too hot during the summer. Check your long-term food stockpile at least monthly to make sure everything is alright. Shelving could have collapsed, or the roof could have developed a leak, or racoons could be trying to gnaw their way in... Keep some kind of updated, written record of your food storage so that you have a running tally of how many pounds of each kind of food you have. If you keep your inventory in a computer file, print off a paper copy periodically. Use that inventory to decide what to buy next when you plan a shopping trip. Once you have built of a sufficient supply of basic, high-calorie, dry foods, then you can start buying the more expensive or luxurious foods. These would include such items as Mt. House instant meals or Mylar pouches of freeze-dried sirloin steaks or #10 cans of scrambled egg mix, freeze dried meat, dry Bell peppers, dry sliced peaches, butter powder and freeze-dried shredded cheese. If you have a dehydrator machine, you can use it to dehydrate vegetables and fruit until the food has shrunken and is crispy dry and then package in heat-sealed Mylar plus oxygen absorbers. This costs way less than buying #10 cans of dry vegetables and fruit. Those large bags of frozen mixed vegetables that you find at Sam's Club or Costco are good choices for home dehydrating. Just cover the drying racks with a single layer of frozen veggies, load the racks into the dehydrator and then WAIT until the food has completely thawed (this step is essential) and then start the dehydrator. Dehydrate until the largest pieces of food are very shrunken and hard before packaging for long-term storage. Do remember that most of these dry foods must first be cooked in water before they can be eaten. Make sure you have plenty of stored water or a way to filter water from rain barrels, lakes or streams. Make sure you have multiple ways of doing grid down cooking. One-burner butane stoves are safe to use indoors when it is too cold, too hot, too wet, too windy or too dangerous to cook outdoors. Have at least one of these butane stoves along with cylinders of butane fuel. Solar ovens are a good way for slow cooking dried beans during daytime and do not produce any smoke or much odor. Every adult or teen in your household should learn how to cook these basic dry foods and practice cooking enough to be able to prepare basic meals without a cookbook or written recipe. You never know when the main cook in your household may become too ill or too injured to cook. Or when you will be cooking roadside meals during an evacuation. Make sure everyone in your household capable of learning to cook, does learn to cook. Cooking is an important survival skill. Food storage is insurance against hunger and starvation during hard times. If the time comes when your food storage is the only food available to your household, it will be vitally important to measure and ration that food carefully so that there is no food waste and so that no one gets over-fed. Be prepared to measure the dry foods carefully and only prepare the correct number of servings so each person will have the right size meal. On a 2000 calories per day ration, that would mean each person gets about 667 calories per meal, three times daily. Expect that overweight persons in your household will need to lose excess weight to become more fit to do their share of survival tasks. If they are willing to go on a weight-loss diet of about 1200 calories per day, this will help stretch your food supply and add days of nutrition for your household. If you over-feed people and run out of food, then they will have to starve for days or weeks until you can harvest home-grown food or find/gather wild foods, etc. Better to ration food and have modest size meals than to have no food at all.

Excellent video! Going by your standards, we're aces! We have a combination of everything you covered here. However, as Preppers, you're really never finished. 😉

Thank you for the information. I've written it DOWN before, but lost it.

Appreciate the content as always.

Really helpful info, thanks

Please remember any acidic foods (in cans will not keep as long) rotate and check monthly. Thank you for the very informative video.

I look at it this way. When we run out of something, we go to the store, except the store is in the other room. As things get taken from the "the store" in the other room, we replace them from the actual store. That being said, can you prepare all your meals without gas, electricity, utilities, looking up recipes online etc. Have you tried and practiced it?

Nice one Reliable 👊

Another one of your great videos brother and i build my food storgage slowly i believe i have at least for 1month worth of food. But i will build on it even further i will try to get to 3 months' worth of food. I have also shared your video out as usual and a 👍 as well.

I'm a big guy, 6'4"/250. For me, I should target 1,000,000 calories or 2740 per day. Ad another 800K-1M calories for my wife. We are going to have a hard time storing that much food. Of course 1 month's food is better than 2 weeks and 2 months is better than 1 month. Gotta start somewhere.

After the fire now we have flood in Ruidoso. One crisis after another. Have your bag ready.

I don’t eat anywhere near this much per year.

Don’t forget your pets too.

And these amounts are for 1 person for a year 803,000 calories Imagine a household of 5 or 6 people With the average person consuming most of their calories outside the home today How do you provide for and where the hell do you store it all without it being so damn obvious to outsiders who will do everything to take it from you It almost seems like a daunting task 🤦‍♂️ In all my years of experience, I have never met anyone with that much food stores in their home 3 months yes, pushing 6 months yeah occasionally Never a year unless they complimented it with being self sustaining ie livestock, chickens, planting etc. However, in the worst case scenarios particularly a year without food, these areas that provide will be affected as well thereby diminishing if not eliminating their contributions to the overall stores of food✌️

Hi ya.😊 Question. Is this per person. Nevermind you just answered it. Lmbo

Hey dude, i heard 90 cans of fruits and vegetables. There are 365 days a year. Fruit and vegetables atr half the plate. Dont you really mean NINEHUNDRED CANS OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES. that would make more sense.