I was able to pick up over 400 cases of freezedried food canned in #10 cans. Packed dates ranged from 1973 thru 1999.

I know MountainHouse says 25 year shelf life. I also know of a freeze dried food guy who opened up a 40 year old can and it tasted fine.

Does anyone have any experience with older canned freezedried food?

Thanks

The mountainhouse canned food has the long shelf life. The bag stuff is not rated to go much longer than MREs. The only difference I know of is the packaging. The cans are more secure.

The cheese/broccoli/potato soup is a pretty standard item among any of the freeze dry food companies. I have had the stuff at ten years and it seemed "old" but definitely not bad. I personally never leave it as-is, but will add some butter, sour cream and olive oil when I make it. Often some fatty ham too.

Given the stuff is way the hell past date, I would hope you got it super-cheap. My suggestion would be to start eating the stuff bigtime, and then buy brand new Mountainhouse or Augason Farms stuff to replace it.

I was just doing inventory on my long term storage food this afternoon and figured out the investment is well over $1K for a true six month supply (at a realistic working man diet, not 1500 calorie per day starvation). Don't be at all surprised if you get closer to $1500-$1800 when you consider lunches away from the kitchen, meaning MREs and other ready to go stuff which costs more per serving. The thing is, I think it could a definitely be stretched. 400 cans sounds like one of those one year family supply deals.

You would likely find yourself still adding a lot of fresh foods to the diet, but I would consider advising you to make a video project of eating through the survival food for a month at a time then maybe a couple months at a time, show people how it is done. Very few people, even among those who buy the stuff have actually tried to live on it for a while.

While you are living on the stuff, use half your ordinary food budget to supplement it (you will likely still want to hit restaurants and convenience stores every once in a while) while you use the rest of your normal food budget to buy brand new replacement long term storage food.

I have been doing exactly that in recent months as I eat through my "older" stored food and am phasing my food storage program in to using primarily the long term storage stuff, but there is still a pretty big portion of it that can't work on the same shelf life program.

Meats- no way you can get them to last more than a couple years. Expect to obtain/hunt/farm meat if you really want it during SHTF. The driest home made beef jerky I have made only goes about a year when not refrigerated. I think I could get several years out of it if I freeze it though.

Oils - Nearly all of the long term storage stuff has to be low oil foods in order to prevent it from going rancid, which also means the food is low in oils and while it is not mandatory to ad oil when you cook the food, it makes a huge difference in nutrition and palatability. It also adds much needed calories to those low calorie diet "portions". The oils you are likely to want to use have a varied shelf life, and some can go a very long time, just not as long as the freeze dried food, so expect to need to keep a lot on hand to work with the food supply. Think everything from lard to olive oils. The types you want to store the most would probably reflect your cooking style. I think individuals would have a lot of waste trying to deal with five gallon buckets, but that makes sense for larger groups.

Spices - A major help for raw unprocessed food, but not all that necessary for the survival foods except certain dishes. Spices also don't always have the same shelf life mainly due to the packaging styles.

Vinegar - a major old school old world preservative and flavor agent. You can make it in SHTF, but it is cheap and easy to store. Another major enhancement for storage food which usually means various soups and stews. Vinegar usually has indefinite shelf life though depends again, a lot on the packaging.

Sugars - also often separated out of storage food for a few reasons, sometimes left in. The issue is that sugars can attract moisture right back out of any possible air and turn the stuff to goo, which in turn will start to make stuff go bad. You can store it separatetly, but indefinitely if it has been packaged right.

Salt - it is a mineral anyway, so you can store it indefinitely, just watch the packaging since it too can absorb moisture and then become more difficult to use.

Don't forget the toilet paper...

soap, laundry detergent, dish detergent, tampons, maxi-pads, shampoo, toothpaste, tooth brushes. Fortunately that stuff all can last indefinitely. You buy it once, put it in the storage and that's it.

Mountain house says the bag meals have a 7 year shelf life now. They've upped it from 5 years.

$500 worth of resellable survival books plus 420 cases of food for 18 ounces of silver I bought at $5 an ounce.

60 cases of the food was wheat so I am not a bit concerned abut that shelflife.
180 cases are the mid90s Mountain House.

Oh wheat, yeah that can go indefinitely. I re-read that, 400 cases at six cans per case, that's a pretty serious truckload.

2/3rd of a 20 foot cattle trailer.

I am going back this week to do some more trading, 2 automatic colloidal silver generators, 2 10x20 camo nets, water distiller, a tote of raditaion detactors, and a Deep Rock well drilling machine. All new, never used. 20 ounces of silver. can't eat the coins, but can use the gear...

Deep rock well driling machine? I actually need one of those for a project but was under the impression that is something that would be a truck mounted thing. Got any pictures of it?

Its been over 12 years since I ran one. The model I used and the one I am getting have 5HP Honda motors, mounted on a tripod and have a water pump. Add a shoe box full of bits, anothew box of couplers, and a stack of drill stem pipes... all you would need is the PVC for the well liner and whatever the screen thing is called that goes in the bottom of the well.

The whole setup would fit in the back of a small pickup truck.

I learned how to drill on the 2 hour drive up to where I used it many years ago. took us 12 hours to drill a 2 inch well, ream it to 3 inch, then ream it to 4 inch. That was a 33 foot well thru granite.

Back when I was gun-heavy in my preps I never would have cared about the utility of owning a well machine, but then I had property which had previously been owned by a string of other survivalists who had already put in a well and multiple water tanks, with one water tank pulling water from a spring/drain pipe in the side of a mountain so that it could fill on its own.

Now I realize the cheap available land for the small to medium scale autonomous zones is in a lot of areas where discreet well drilling is going to be required, and you don't want local contractors getting very clued in to the locations and capacities of those wells or else some prick somewhere is going to decide to have a problem with it. That means running a compact rig that can be taken in discreetly, probably with the motor modified with a bigger muffler to run quieter, the well put in and then the equipment re-hidden so that the owners can claim the well had been there all along and probably installed by a previous owner. That is not to mention sinking wells out on TAZ sites which are great for temporary use except for having no water.

Some of the best sites for defense can't be lived in full time, so the best you can do is discreetly put in some facilities, maybe ammo caches, scope out the lanes of fire and lines of defense, but pre-dug latrine pits and wells would be a big bonus factor when it comes to some canyon or butte being converted to a base of operations by a mobile force. It is a big deal to be able to travel without hauling large water supplies around to places where you know that you can fill the water bladders on site.

A recon team / quartering party can move in early, make sure the wells and latrines are operational, then report back to the TAZ organizers that all is good to go. They secure the area, then the latrines get built (can be more effective to build plywood outhouses than haul porta potties around) and water bladder systems (they can go up to 500 gallons) put down and filled up with pumps to provide water for the encampment when more people start showing up.