Vacuum packing your own food supply
by Mike Rostov
When I went to put food away prior to Y2K I tried several methods. I bought nitrogen packed freeze dried food, and a variety of other items. I really like Mountain House and Alpine Aire freeze dried entrees, and food like that has it's place, since it's easy to fix in a hurry and under adverse conditions. But, for an extended period of time, you will need a LOT of food for you and your family and any relatives and friends that show up. Unless you're seriously wealthy, this means a large supply of bulk, dry food. In many ways, the bulk dry food is healthier over the long term than the pre-prepared freeze dried entrees.
The reality was I wanted to stockpile, quickly, efficiently, and economically enough food to last five people for one to two years. By economical, I mean that I wanted to spend less than $2000. All totaled, this project wound up costing about $1400. My experience in using this stockpile later would indicate that we actually did have enough food for 5 people for 2 years, and probably much more than that with hunting, fishing, and gardening added in. That comes out to $140 per year per person, or about $11.67 per month per person. In a separate project we stockpiled a large amount of seed, much of it heirloom, and much of the stored food could be sprouted for vitamin C and other nutrients, or planted for garden crops.
The food needed to last for an extended period of time in storage. The food should also be relatively portable so one man could load the stockpile into a truck and/or removing parts of the stockpile for relocation or trade.
The most economical way to acquire food is dry bulk. You need a complete protein and a good spectrum of nutrition so you need a variety of different foods. You should also store things to help preserve and prepare other types of food, notably hunted and trapped animal protein. In taking a tip from long distance ocean voyagers, it's also a good idea to store some 'comfort' food to improve morale and break the monotony.
So, what I did was I developed a vacuum packing system where I packed away a total of 108, five and six gallon buckets of dry, bulk food. This vacuum packing is easy to put together and use. It's also fast, and you can pack a huge amount of food relatively quickly. I usually get a factory quality vacuum seal on my stuff using my homemade system.
I eventually packed away 108 buckets of food using this system with a content weight, not counting packaging (buckets, bags, lids, etc) of around two metric tons of dry food.
Dry food vacuum stored included:
Wheat, Hard Red Winter
Wheat, Hard White
Rice, Enriched Long Grain
Rice, Himalayan Basmati
Green Peas, Whole
Green Peas, Split
Baby Lima Beans
Great Northern Beans
Pinto Beans
Pink Beans
Anasazi Beans
Soybeans
Lentils, Brown
Lentils, Red
Popcorn, Gourmet
Sugar, Turbinando
Sugar, White Crystal
Carrots, Dried, Diced
Apples, Sliced, Dried
Onions, Chopped, Dried
Milk, Non-Fat, Dry
Egg Noodles
Spaghetti
Tortellini Pasta, Cheese Filled, Dried
Oats, Rolled
Salt, Iodized
Salt, Sea
I highly recommend getting some 'gamma seal' lids for when you start opening buckets. One sealed 5 gallon bucket will usually hold about 42 pounds (19 kilos), plus or minus a bit, of beans, rice, wheat, etc. These are just the vacuum packed items. I have a lot of other items stored, such as large, five pound cans of aluminum-free Rumsford baking powder.
Here is the procedure for the vacuum packing method. It's something that most people can do. Your main pieces of hardware needed are a household vacuum cleaner with a hose attachment or a shop-vac, a heat sealer like an old Seal-A-Meal or a Titlia Foodsaver, and a heavy rubber mallet.
First, get a length of aquarium tubing (6 or 7') and cut one end in an angle and stick about a foot or so of the other end into the flexible hose attachment of a large, strong vacuum cleaner. Then, with the tubing in the hose attachment, duct tape close the end of the hose attachment.
Next, get a heat sealer like an old Seal-A-Meal or something similar. I use an old Titlia Foodsaver vacuum food sealer that doesn't get a good vacuum anymore. The Foodsaver is great because you dont need to modify it for my system. You need to be able to run the tubing through the back of the heat sealer so some models, like the Seal-A-Meal will need to be modified slightly. The Seal-A-Meal also has these little posts designed to hold Seal-A-Meal bags. I would remove them. The last used but still functional Seal-A-Meal I found at the Salvation Army was $4.
I got my heat sealable foodgrade polybags in bulk at . I usually get 3 mil or 4 mil bags that are at least 20" in diameter. A pack of 250, 3mil, 20"x30" bags runs about $49 if you buy 1 to 4 packs. With some food items, like dried egg noodles or spaghetti, you may need to double or triple bag them because of the sharp edges of the dried food can poke tiny holes in the bag.
I usually get my buckets at Home Depot or Walmart where they were running me about $2.50 but the prices may have changed. The lids are another story. Sometimes Home Depot has the right lids and sometimes they don't. You need the lids with the rubber seal in them. Be sure that the buckets and lids are HDPE (High Density Poly-Ethylene). It's too bad that the 6 gallon buckets are so much more expensive and harder to find. The 6 gallon buckets hold a full 50lbs of wheat like they were made for it.
While the 6 gallon buckets are more convenient for food storage as this size is almost perfect for storing an entire 50lb bag of wheat, they are normally extremely hard to find for sale over the counter at a store. For economy, it's often better to just go with the 5 gallon buckets. They are also lighter to move around.
My advice, as one who has stored over 2 metric tons of food, get all, or as many as possible of your buckets the same size if you are storing a lot. They stack, stow, and transport a lot easier. I used mostly the 5 gallon, but I also had quite a few 6 gallon and some 3 gallon. The 3 gallon units are nice in that you only open a smaller amount at one time. However, after you start using your food supply you'll find that having a bunch of 5 gallon buckets around is extremely handy at times.
If you have a hard time getting any sort of plastic container and lid, one outfit you can often order them from is United States Plastics. They have a variety of colors and they also sell square buckets, though I haven't used the square ones yet.
The next two consumable items to get are oxygen absorber packs and bay (laurel) leaves.
I usually buy the oxygen absorber packs at the LDS (Mormon) cannery for about $8 per 100. There are other places to find them, such as Walton Feed () and Interteck A/S (.
When dry canning with regular #10 cans you toss one in just before you seal on the lid and it will absorb all of the oxygen out of the can usually producing a small vacuum. I usually toss about 5 or 6 in each bucket as added insurance, with at least 2 or 3 of three of them in the bag to be vacuumed. In some of my later buckets I used 8 per bucket, with 3 in the bag and 5 tossed on top of the bag before the lid was hammered on. I actually found one of my stored buckets with the sides dramatically squeezed in from the internal vacuum, like it was being grabbed in three places by a giant hand.
The bay leaves you can buy in bulk from a number of places, such as Walmart, Sam's Club, and Costco. They are more added insurance. Bay leaves are a natural insect repellent. I usually toss three to five of them in the top of the bucket before the lid is sealed. With grains, such as wheat, I also usually toss in a few with the grain before the vacuum bag is sealed.
Put your stuff in your bag with a fair amount of flap space to spare at the top of the bag.
Heat seal the bag. If the bag is wider than the heat sealer, two or more heat seams will be necessary. I use two seals at an angle so they cross in the center (forming a 'V') without needing careful alignment.
Run the small tubing through the back of the sealer unit.
Cut one small corner of the sealed end of the bag, just small enough to allow the angle-cut end of the tubing in. Run the tubing up near the contents. Turn on the vacuum cleaner.
As the vacuum draws down hard, draw the tubing further up the 'flap' area of the bag so it can get out of the way of the new heat seam you are about to make. The flap will become tightly flat as the vacuum cleaner keeps the bag sealed with the excess flap material.
With the vacuum cleaner still running and the tube still in the flap, stick the end of the flap into the heat sealer and create a new heat seam to seal the bag under a vacuum.
After that, I often toss in some more bay leaves and three more oxy-absorber packs before I put on the lid and whack it tight with a mallet.
It takes some practice, but you can get the hang of it pretty quick. It works extremely well on dry food, ammo, etc. You have to be a bit careful on powdered stuff, like dry milk, otherwise the vacuum cleaner can suck it out through the tubing if the tubing gets too close. I just use a regular, household vacuum cleaner with a hose attachment. A shop vac should work pretty good also. I've been opening food vacuum packed in 1998. The vacuum is good and the dried food is still fresh.
These photos were taken in late 2001 and early 2002. The food had been in vacuum storage for over 5 years and it was in perfect condition when I opened it. I've opened food from that lot as recently as late 2006 and it was still in perfect condition after 8 years of storage.

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