Some recent personal observations on Long Term Food Storage

[erudne]

http://www.foodreference.com/html/tcannedfoodshelflife.html
how to read production dates

 

[chemist]

I read all the time about folks who hunt down and eradicate "varmints" which might be helping to control the mouse population. I don't disturb the animals on my property, be they skunks, 'coons, or even feral cats. None of them has ever harmed one of my egg hens.

I think monoculture is all too often a byproduct of humans efforts at controlling the environment, and that goes for the animal kingdom as well as for the plants - or "weeds" - in our domains. The more diverse the environment, the more resilient it is, and the better able to cope with the occasional excursion like a mouse population explosion.

Mice are a headache because they're too small to keep out, and breed too fast to control by killing individuals. I'd much rather deal with rats than mice. Heck, rats eat roaches! So if I can make the yard as hostile a place as possible, those native mice will look elsewhere.

Last year we had a bad yellowjacket problem, and I never thought I'd be so glad to see bald-faced hornets in the yard. I can't say they kept the yellowjackets in check, but at least they posed a threat that limited their spread. That's the way I feel about the other critters in my yard - the ones big enough for me to spot aren't the problem.

 

[Hook686]

"Why the hell would you want to eat 10 year old food anyway ?"

Because I'm hungry.

 

[Brutus57]

We rotate our canned food....and that means the stuff we preserve in mason jars. We also canned a lot of non traditional food types as part f m wife's getting a Master Food Preservationist Certificate. We've canned bacon, we've done canned potatoes. We recently opened and consumed a jar of canned potatoes over several meals. They were 3 years old and taste lke they were put up yesterday.good chance we hit 40x 10 items put up this summer and fall. At over 300 feet we don't fret the tsunami but in the islands we will be the last to get any help so we plan/ act accordingly.

Brutus out