The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: Susie on September 04, 2010, 10:42:45 pm
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Just wondering if any of you have a stash of food for emergencies or if you bulk buy things for cheaper prices? And where from?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11177346
After reading the news above about grain shortages and rising prices I was thinking about bulk buying grain or flour. Hubby has always complained about how much food I keep squirreled away in the larder but sometimes it comes in handy. We were stuck at home for 3 weeks at the start of the year due to the snow. Although the combinations of food were getting a bit strange towards the end we still had plenty of stuff to choose from :D. Never really gone as far as buying a whole load of flour or grain (do have my own manually operated grain mill though ::)), and was wondering if anyone else does this, and how you store it?
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Hiya,
There was a similar thread on here a while ago about stockpilling food and it had some great info on it. I can't find the exact post, but I'm sure someone will remember what it was - Rusty-me had loads of good advice ;D
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another good reason for stock piling is to avoid the vat increase, i have started already to help ease the vat increase next year, every penny helps
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most 'basic' food is VAT exempt at the moment . It is mainly sweets and ready made stuff that is VAT rated . So there would be little point in stockpiling for that reason ... unless they make ALL food VAT rated , which they are thinking of doing .
The best way to build up stock of basic food , is buy double what you normally buy . That way you don't cause some sort of wheat or sugar or whatever shortage, by buying huge amounts . It soon adds up , and you soon have cupboards full to the brim . Also when you do buy food for storage , buy the stuff from the back of the shelf , it has the longest sell by or best before date , but always check anyway . The shelf fillers go mad when they see you doing this , but there is no law against it YET .
Wheat is best to buy and store as grain rather than flour . Flour goes off more easily . Buy it as grain, and then just mill what you need as and when you need it .
cheers
Russ
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We routinely keep a large stockpile of food - partly because we freeze/bottle/can/dry a lot of our own produce to last through the year, but also we generally have a good 3 months supply of all the bought-in basics - rice, pasta, flour and grain, tinned goods etc (TEA!) and bottled gas, have water filters etc. Not as a reserve against any one specific thing, but has served us well in times of sudden economic hardship/bad weather and so on.
It has occurred to me recently how vulnerable we are with regards animal feed though - we have quite a lot of chickens and some pigs, ducks etc and get through several bags of feed a week, which we buy on a weekly basis as we have no large storage capacity. If there was, for the sake of argument, major snow and we couldn't get to the ag merchants for a couple of weeks or they couldn't get supplies, we would be in trouble. I would really like to have at least two weeks animal feed in reserve but on a rented field with no outbuildings it is a problem. Not allowed shipping containers, grain bins are prohibitively expensive...
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Would you be allowed a garden shed - you could get a lot of 20kg sacks of chicken food in my henhouse and that's 6' x 4' from Focus DIY
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Billy , how about getting an old van and putting it on your plot. Register it as off road and just use it for storage.Thats what they do up here, no planning needed!
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Billy , how about getting an old van and putting it on your plot. Register it as off road and just use it for storage.Thats what they do up here, no planning needed!
What a brilliant idea!!!