ideas wanted

darrcow

hi, with the failed cereal crops around the world and some fruit and vegetables in short supply, prices have and will increase majorly over the winter months. what should i buy now and store for later. a bit of back ground info i have hens for eggs and meat, also ducks and geese for the same. i have a large vegetable plot so i have loads of vegetables growing . ive already pickled beetroot,onions and eggs. ive also made strawberry jam, raspberry jam,rhubarb jam,marmalade, onion marmalade. i have dried pasta and flour stored ive frozen my own peas,broad beans,runner beans,fine beans and blackberries. so what else should i buy now and how should i store it

thanks darrcow

bonniebede

anything cereal based will be expensive - flour, etc, animal feeds, beer and grain based alcohol.

All of the above store easily, if you are storing flour you might want to try sealing it with a plastic food wrapper, then freezing for 24 hours to kill little bugs that live in it, after that it will keep for a long long time.

lots of ideas on the net for storing cereals in food buckets with air excluded etc.

You might think of growing your own porridge oats? they do ok in ireland. Also your own nuts, like hazel, the can be ground to make a good flour.

Also spuds, as rising cereal prices will make all the starchy foods more in demand.

perhaps its worth noting that flour and porridge are still incredibly cheap in over all terms.

mawk

how about farmering equipment itself?

a supply of any required chemicals?
spare tools like shovels, pegs, wire?
maybe a seed bank?

Hibrion

If you are growing enough fruit at present, it is easy to dry and store for winter.

mawk

thats true. I built a dehydrator a while back. I put up a thread about how I did it. might be an idea

Conmaicne Mara

bonniebede wrote: »

You might think of growing your own porridge oats?

Are the oats themselves not quite hard to process into actual porridge oats?

bonniebede

Conmaicne Mara wrote: »

Are the oats themselves not quite hard to process into actual porridge oats?

Well, processing them into porridge oats maybe, but they can be cooked from raw. Processing just squashes the oat, to make it thinner and easier to cook, then lightly steams it so it is slightly precooked, so less cooking time for the consumer.
Pinhead or steel cut oatmeal just chops the whole grain. you can still cook it for porridge, and some people prefer it. It takes about 20 mins instead of 5.

If you grew your own you could invest in some processing equipment of just cook the raw whole grain.