Spices

[Windyhillfarms]

Thank you so much for the explanation of tools needs to store stuff! Now I have my "research list" and my "shopping list" going I can figure out what I need to buy to store and what to store it in! The amount of knowledge I have gained in just a few months here is probably more than I gained in a year haphazardly trying to find information when a problem presented itself. Thank you all again so much!

 

[moolie]

I am by no means any kind of expert in long-term food storage as I have only been working on it for just over a year. A great resource for me has been www.foodstoragemadeeasy.net

When we started collecting buckets we nabbed about 12 free buckets (that used to hold muffin mix) from our local Co-op grocery store bakery. They are about half the size of a 6 gallon bucket (see photo below), although I have never measured the actual volume in gallons, and hold 10-11kg/~25lbs of rice or wheat. We also have 3 square 4 gallon buckets from Tim Horton's that used to hold fondant, but the lids on these aren't very tight--they open and close quite easily--so we only use them for short term storage or items that are individually packaged like pasta.

The muffin mix buckets do not take the standard Gamma lids like the standard 5 and 6 gallon buckets do, and we use a rubber mallet to close them and a gentle easing-around-the-bucket method of getting the lids off (these lids are more flexible and it is not nearly as difficult to remove these lids as the standard 5 or 6 gallon bucket lids).

muffin mix bucket

8 kg bag of jasmine rice in muffin mix bucket

(stored in original bag folded over inside the bucket because we go into this bucket on a regular basis)

side-by-side comparison of muffin mix bucket and 6 gallon standard bucket

The standard 6 gallon buckets hold almost a full 22.5 kg/50 lb bag of wheat or rice, a little less with a Gamma seal lid because the lid needs room to spin. I get my 6 gallon buckets and Gamma seal lids (and organic grains, rice, beans, oats) from local preparedness stores www.incaseof.ca and www.bridensolutions.ca