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NJ Election Advisor's avatar

Good call!

They say it's only good 6-12 months but in simpler machinery I've seen gas work good for much longer.

Diesel is stable longer, so, another option.

It's always good to be prepared for dry spells. Freeze-dry food keeps a long time and beats starving!

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Gavin Mounsey's avatar

I own a freeze dryer (and have freeze dried several times worth the cost of the machine worth of superfoods and homegrown medicines since purchasing it).

I see the huge practical benefits of freeze dryers but I feel I would be remiss if I did not also caution about the risks of depending (solely) on technology such as that for preserving food.

Unless one is capable of gathering all the electricity they need to run their home (and their freeze drying machine) off grid and unless one has back up components for both the energy generation/accumulation systems and the freeze dryer itself stored in some kind of Faraday cage, situations could arise where that technology could become totally unusable. (see: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/preparing-for-the-100-year-storms for more information on one such inevitability that will render such technologies useless)

This is one of the reasons that I am in the process of publishing some material ( see: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/my-book-is-finally-done-recipes-for for more info) that can help empower individuals to preserve seasonal abundances of food (whether foraged or cultivated) using low tech methods without the need for specialized equipment. Lacto-fermentation is one versatile method that any gardener or forager should become accustomed with as you do not need anything other than salt, water and random containers (such as mason jars etc) to be able to preserve food for up to a year.

Now that being said, as I also own a freeze dryer I advocate for prioritizing low tech off grid food cultivation/preservation tools, skills and experience and then freeze drying as a supplementary way to be even better prepared for a wide range of ewmergencies. Getting a freeze dryer was no small decision as they are very expensive machines and I am not financially wealthy. The motivating factor for my wanting a freeze dryer can be boiled down to a combination of how I want to treat this vehicle (my body) and the amount of land I have to grow food. For the time being, we have an urban suburban lot and so I have carefully selected some of the most nutrient dense (and antioxidant/polyphenol diverse) crops so that we can give our bodies the absolute best quality food and medicine we can trust . Sometimes we have large seasonal abundances where even through lactic acid fermentation I reach my capacity for storage (or have crops that do not ferment well or easily) meaning I have to freeze, dehydrate or pickle (cook with vinegar). The last three methods of crop preservation mean significant losses in the nutritional content (and often flavor) of food. One of the reasons I got a freeze dryer is because of the technology's uncanny ability to preserve the nutritional content (as well as the flavor, texture and color) of food. Tests show that (aside from some very minor vitamin c loss in certain crops) freeze drying retains around 97% of the nutrients of the fresh / raw food for at least 20 years! Dehydration on the other hand, (while much more energy efficient and still very useful) tends to result in the loss of Vitamins A and C, thiamine, riboflavin and niacin (averaging around 50% – 60% of the original nutrients being left over from the raw / fresh item).

While that is still a significant amount and I still plan on dehydrating a fair bit, I can't ignore the impressive differences in shelf life, nutrition retention, and texture retention of freeze drying vs dehydrating. So for us (and our priorities) getting a freeze drying unit that can preserve food which can be be relied upon for years to come was imperative.

If I had more land I might have considered just coping with the inevitable nutrient loss and go 100% "back to basics" for my crop preservation, but for now we do not have a lot of growing space, so every Goji berry, medicinal herb/fungi, Purple sweet potato, Black tomato, Golden beet, Moringa leaf, Tumeric rhizome, Ginger rhizome and Blueberry we grow counts and I need to keep all their goodness intact in order to feel I am properly caring for our bodies (and utilizing the growing space we have to its greatest potential).

With regards to emergency preparedness side of this device, in the event of a total collapse of modern civilization I am capable of using a combination of available conventionally stored garden crops, foraging, and improvising (even if it were to happen in the dead of winter) to survive (and care for my loved ones at home). So, for us, a freeze dryer is not about survival in the case of extreme emergencies, and more about comfort, wanting to be in optimal health in any situation, having portable/versatile food stores that can be grabbed on the go (should the need arise to leave in a hurry) and it is about my want to maximize my ability to preserve our most nutrient dense crops in peak condition (considering how much time and love I put into growing top quality.) So that is my take on freeze dryers in relation to emergency preparedness.

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