The Food Bank is finally complete and filling up.

LOL things here tend to get named and the Shipping container for food has been dubbed the Food Bank. I got tied up with other project like the pole house and lake construction and the Food Bank got moved to the back burner. That is not all bad as the DIY Mr Cool Mini Split heat pump got a good work out and trial run that went through a couple HOT Months cooling the entire container insulated end and not insulated end. Kept it at 60 degrees consistently the entire time at very low electric use. So real happy with the results of it trial run!

I ended up going with a 4" layer of pink panther insulation board attached to the container walls with liquid nails and then a 3" layer of foam aluminum side tacked to the pink boards and then three rows of 2x4s on top of it drilled through and bolted to the walls top/middle/bottom. Did the same on the dividing partition. Ultimately I am going to insulate the other half as well and put wall vents either side of the door to heat and cool that end.

Started moving shelving and the crates of food in last Friday onto the done side of the room. Still need to bolt a few 2x4s onto the front wall and side wall.


Filling up nicely. Going to get the boards on the wall this evening and move more shelving in tonight after its not 110 heat indexes outside Then steal shelves from those units and put them on the shelving already there for more shorter jar and can storage. Going to use the opposite side for the Nitro packed LTS (Long Term Storage) Totes. I put air fittings on those totes to push N gas in and the air out and make airtight seals for the tops between tote and lid. Simple but effective and is the difference between 3-4 year shelf stable and 30-40 years shelf stable.


Can't stress enough Stock Pile what you like and will eat! NOT what everyone else tells you to stock and what is good to eat. Personally I love Rice and Red Beans with some pork or chicken in it with some sauce and a pan of corn bread to make it right. If you HATE Rice and Red Beans and Loathe Corn Bread........ Would you really enjoy eating Rice and Red Beans with Cornbread every day for 6 Months or more? A few general rules. Stock what you like to eat. Stock the things you like to eat that have track records of 1-3 year shelf stability in your climate control situation. Eat your preps and rotate! We used to run on a 3 year stock pile and rotation. New to the back and oldest to the front. We started increasing that in 2020 to a 6 year rotating stock pile. over the next year it will be enough food for 6 people for 6 years ( remember I still run 6 big freezers in addition to the shelves)

I stock a lot of canned fruits and vegetables I have had no problem keeping them 7-8 years in testing the longevity in the warehouse at 75 degrees. Should have no problem keeping them even better in the totally dark, 60 degree low humidity Food Bank.


I am not overly fond of spam LOL but fry it and put some butter and garlic salt on it or splash of Uncle Joe's Sauce and it is tolerable good Just not a fan of canned meats in general but they do have their place in my set up. Tuna and Chicken salad are fast easy high protein meals. I do Like salmon and mackeral fish cakes and I must admit I am a bit of a corned beef hash addict.

SAUCES I loves my sauces and seasonings and I also love my Pina Coladas!


Started moving the totes from the warehouse this morning until it got so hot outside the paint started melting off the tractor! LOL Guess I snapped the picture as I was tripping backwards over the air hose for the nail gun.


The all black totes have lids that are very rigid and lock down hard on the tote. These are the ones I use for Nitro Packing, I put a ring of rubber weather stripping around rim sticky side down and a bead of wax around the top. Then the air fittings, before opening the air exhaust valve the N tank will pressurize the tote enough to bubble test the seal with a spray bottle and soapy water. Once Seal is confirmed open the exhaust valve and let the N push the air out. You know you have it right when the exhaust puts a lit match out due to lack of O.

Save yourself a lot of headaches and inventory each tote and put a list of what is in it on the outside of the tote! The LTS Totes are 25 and 50 pound bags of flour, sugar, rice, beans, cornmeal heavy bulky stuff. The Yellow tops are mostly boxed dry stuff like oatmeal, cream of wheat, grits and a lot of little single non bulk things. Might be overkill but one black tote (not all the blacks are big bulk stuff) has nothing but bottles of Chili Powder, Garlic Salt, ground Curry, and Italian seasoning in it. Another has a 50 pound bag of table salt and 50 one pound cannisters of table salt.

Still have 6-7 totes in the warehouse to move over and then another 10-12 crates of stuff from the commercial kitchen. Going to pull the small items out of the totes to free them up for more bulk stuff. Can make the yellow tops air tight but only when they have some weight in them and are stacked on top of each other. Going to stack all of the totes on the next round of shelving to move in. Thus I don't need the two middle shelves on those units and can add them to the small stuff shelving. Just want the totes up off the floor.

I was going to put FRP on the walls but after multiple attempts using multiple adhesives and non of them bonding well to the foil or pulling the foil off of the foam and falling........ I said to hell with the FRP. The foil ain't purdy but it ain't ugly either and the bumper boards protect it from rubbing damage.

I left a foot gap between the ceiling and the container roof. I was going to stuff it with fiberglass insulation but had 10 cases of Super size great stuff cans. So I poked the great stuff spouts through the ceiling insulation boards and completely filled the gap between ceiling and container roof with it. The Heat pump works a lot less with a foot thick barrier of expanded great stuff between it and the metal roof. LOL I get things for a project and then lose them in a barn and can't find them so I buy more and then lose it.......... and that is how I ended up with 240 super size cans of great stuff. Also why I have like 300 half inch and 9/16ths wrenches once they have all been found and are in one place

 

,,,, looking good ,,,

 

Amazing T5R! I lucked out when purchasing the house as it has a 5-foot (maybe a bit more) crawl space and with the concrete and insulation it never gets above 65F or below 45F so we make good use of it but it's not as slick as your walk-in grocery store. LOL!

 

We do our storage a lot like this. The funny thing is that we practically lived on beans and rice our first year of marriage. I will never forget a nice old guy from our church who brought us two t-bone steaks, I get a bit teary even thinking about it now. It's surprising how far a tiny bit of spice goes!

 

The psychological and emotional value of food is very often just as or even more important than the nutritional value. One thing you will never find in my stock pile are Ramen Noodles! I got a box of them in 2020, open a packet of them cooked it sat down and between the smell and visual found myself back in the hard times when a 10 cent package of Ramen was a Luxury. A pot of Chicken and dumplings on the other takes me back to being a kid and at Grandmas, where more often than not there was a pot of chicken and dumplings on the stove and probably cost less per equal serving than the Ramen

Gets crazy with myself and Mrs T5R, we have very different taste in foods. Like to the point I would rather eat a Skunk Road Pizza than most of what she cooks and the same applies to her and what I cook. LOL I am usually done eating my steak and washing the plate before she is done burning hers into beef jerky......... and then drowning it in ketchup. But we do have some common ground like Chili. So we go real heavy on Chili Beans and there is always a very large amount of plain ground pork and beef. (Ground Pork makes great Chili )

I wish we could go down here but other than a very few places we hit water at 2' to 4 feet down. The Bunker as Mrs T5R (Burried 20' container) calls it went into one of the few dry under ground spots and would be great for food storage if it was not so out of the way and easier to get in and out of. 15 years ago crawling through the side entry tube or down the top hatch ladder was no big deal. LOL I am older 15 years later and zipping through 36" tubes and up and down ladders is losing its luster. If I had thought that through a little better back then I would have put a ramp going down to a door on the end instead of a buried galvanized tube going at a angle down to the end hatch. Easy to get stuff down into it. Just back the truck up to the side tube and let it slide down the tube. Not so easy to get stuff back out. Thought about making it the food bank because of its natural climate control which is about the same as your crawl space and it is very low humidity and bone dry down there. but decided against it be cause I am not getting any younger and the access to it is not getting any easier. And then I would have to do something else for a armory/Storm Shelter/Doomsday Bunker LOL.

Bunker is behind and to the right of the big dirt mound about 20 feet out from the tree line. Air intake and exhaust ports come up and out 20 feet into the woods. You could be standing on top of it and not know you are standing on top of a 8'x20' under ground structure. Unless you happened to move the corn and stick debris off of the top hatch. LOL when the contractor was building the lake he was going to put the big mound of dirt on top of the Bunker. Luckily I caught him before the dozer pushed the first pule onto it. Flagged off a area around it and told him no piles/dozers/track hoes inside of those flags!!! LOL that mound is 25' tall at peak and a couple hundred feet across the base, and it almost ended up on top of my bunker! Would have never saw the top hatch again and a fair amount of digging to get to the side tube hatch.


Anyway if not for the distance from the dwellings and the less than friendly access the bunker would have made a great food storage place with natural climate control. When that was a hay field, I would slide down the tube and take a break with a cold beer and listen to the radio in the cool. 100 degrees on the surface and 60 degrees in the hole made for a nice break room. Even nicer when I flipped the switch to turn the air intake/exhaust fans on and got it circulating. Friend with the helicopter tells me I should flatten that mound off and compact it and make it his landing pad. Hehe seems like a waste of good dirt for someone that lands here once or twice per year at most.