so many people have been coming to my channel who are really serious about
going off grid in starting their own homestead
but one of the things that I haven't addressed yet is the importance
of any successful homestead is having a pantry
when you talk about being self sufficient and controlling your own food
be it if you're hunting and fishing or using food from your garden
or even buying things in bulk storing them in a pantry is really going to be
homestead in really really important
When we started preparing for the pantry many many years before we
even move of great here
home and we did a lot to research and we learned a lot of things
do's and don'ts so I will take you into my pantry today
and show you what works for us and hopefully
I hope you get a couple tips that you could take home with you
before you start your off-grid homestead setup
come along and in well see. So in my pantry the number one thing you're
probably going to see is
a lot of these I'm food grade containers and I've got a lotta beans
and I also store alot rice now we choose beans because we love bean
low in fat their low-cost
and dried beans actually do last indefinitely we did a lot a research on
this
and we store them most to them in their regular
containers that they came in which is the bags, and we don't put them
in from any type of mylar bags
but what I do do is when I start getting a lot a bulk beans
you know probably about a hundred pounds a whatever beans I have
then I'll go to my "canning a lot of it and you've seen my videos before I've
got whit beans Ive got kidney beans
I've got my black beans I just did a whole buncha
pinto beans to so that way its easily
access to my pantry and when I wanna do a real quick meal you know when its
garden season
I I throw those beans in and its a good source of protein
so for storage long-term beans really are awesome
the other thing a store in the pantry is rice the some the rice are in my
five gallon buckets when we started off
we start doing our research we bought Mylar bags
we just threw in the oxygen absorbers and we sucked the air out with
our shop vac and we seal that with our own iron
and back to Wisconsin um we did a lot of her flour and rice
dried potatoes in the Myler bags they are great
they're cheap they're economical for longs terms storage
they really do work but after we did more research we started to learn that
rice actaully to can store
a long time in their own containers anywhere for white rice five years
rice can be good in their original package
and rice also in and airtight
container will last will twenty to twenty-five years so
the one thing you can do is buy those oxygen absorbers
and I believe like in a five-gallon pail you throw in
a I think it's a 1500 to 2000 cubic centimeter
oxygen absorber in your pail put your lid on
the rice is going to last a long long time
so five-gallon pails they
keep a lotta your stuff you can keep in in their original containers
I'm you know about our canning and then the other thing I want to point out my
pantry to
is when we first started out getting prepared
to to come off-grid we did buy a lot of these augason farms
cans they're really nice
but they're really really expensive and
as we learned I'm kinda regretting
buying them now because you see we have long grain
um brown rice i buy this stuff in Bulk you twenty-five to fifty pounds
and it doesn't need to be sealed in little cans like this this was kind of a
waste to buy because
I'm as you can see now I just got my rice
in the five gallon buckets if I'm concerned about it not lasting
and the other stuff I just keep in its original package
never had a problem with my rice going bad but again
your pantry has to be cool and that moisture
no moisture in your pantry is very very important for long-term storage
so do you really need to buy all these prepping type of cans
well if you're on a budget I'd say NO
you know we bought some specialty items like the scramble egg mix
probably not bad to have the margine powder I'm actually canning in my own
so I you don't need it anymore honey Powder, we actually found a local source
when we moved out here
love our honey local source great source so
we really don't need um the honey powder anymore
a but it's nice to have , like I said
if you're starting a pantry forget about those products go buy yourself
some BULK rice
white brown wild whatever your lentil your beans
white brown what ever that'll be the basis for your pantry and those items really do stay
a good for EVER! Dehydrated foods, when we did live in Wisconsin we had full
electricity
I dehydrated a lot of stuff for it have apples in my banana chips used to do a lot a
banana chips and my mushrooms
um onions I you name it and I would throw it
in the Excalibur if you do live on grid and you've got
arm a lotta stuff that you can get cheap at the store or you grow yourself
dehydrated and you can store in a
a canning jar which really works good or Myler bags
also works good i've seen that jars are really getting expensive
really expensive like pint jars now between ten and twelve dollars in there
and at least here on the offseason they're getting harder to find I have been
hitting
the Goodwill stores and Buying in our local grocery store
which has the smallmouth ones but they don't have the big ones
so before we moved buy the things you might wanna
stock up on canning jars if you know that you're going to be going off
grid
and you want to start up preparing now and that's what we did
many many years ago I'd go and i'd watch for sales
and I would just go wipe out the canning jars I would come home with the
with you know carload
um so we we've pre bought a lot of stuff before we started our
our pantry we pre bought a lot of the mylar bags pre brought
canning jars we tried to get as many food great containers as possible we had
a friend
who actually worked for company that on hold food
so we used him as a resource find a resource or go to a restaurant
or use a supermarket that make some you know these are
these are cake and donut icing containers
try to find those resources before you move
you can stock up and bring the stuff with you
it's a long process you don't wanna be moving
onto your homestead without any supplies so make sure
your stock up okay one last thing
as you can see I don't have a lot of store-bought canned goods and
we started buying a lot a store boughten canned goods many many years ago and
this is kind of the living and learning thing
store bought canned goods are great to have
but since I do my own canning I really don't
have a need for them anymore but just know
that when you buy your canned goods you know they all have an expiration date
and this one is actually from 2011
these last for ever don't pay attention to the expiration dates
in you know maybe some of you are gonna freak out when I say that
but this is from 2011 I open up those green beans and they're fine
so I use go to on outlet store
and buy outdated food nothing wrong with outdated food I'm sure a lot of you
already know that
so if you do if you are going with with store-bought canned goods
don't worry about the dates you're probably get a a good buy
and the ones that are outdated because once they are canned
they really are gonna last for a long okay the other
thing about storing your foods is
when you talk about the setup of your pantry you gonna have to remember
moisture is really bad
for food items so make sure your pantry is moisture free
the other thing is the temperature now it's cool in here
on this is part of our house the wall here is cemented
I don't know if you can see it but its a cement wall
and back here because we have our a house that is butted
up to the the mountain and dirt it's nice and cool in here so even though
this is part of our house
we just keep that door shut and
it gets it gets its cool in here ! Alright that was it in a nutshell
and I hope you enjoyed the tour the pantry
I may have missed some things but I just want to get you guys in overview quickly
and some other things that you need to be looking for so hopefully
you will start stocking up on all these things before you move
and really getting a plan before you really
unplug yourself or take the leap and go off grid
and start your own homestead alright I thank you guys for watching and
subscribing
and I hope this little tutorial on my pantry
i helped