Sustainable Living – How to Buy and Store Affordable Organic Food
Being self-sufficient has many facets, I live in an energy efficient dome house and eat good organic food, I am also on a budget while working to be self-sufficient. Many years ago while working as a cook at a logging camp, I discovered the cost savings and convenience of buying in bulk. As you know, we overpay for our food in grocery stores and are by no means sure of the quality of freshness. Although the price of organic products has been going down, most organic products are priced higher. When we buy our beans, rice, and grains at the grocery store, not only do we pay a premium for small amounts, but we have no idea how they were stored, their age, or the quality of the source.
What if I told you that there is a much better way to buy organic food? it is possible to get the best, freshest product for much less. Start by registering a wholesale buying club of six to eight members and approach a local organic and bulk food wholesaler. The next step is to find a reputable wholesaler that deals in bulk organics and get their catalogue, which is often available online. We use Dandy Foods in Richmond, BC. Check what your minimum order is and be prepared to rent a big truck to pick it up. They will deliver to a wholesaler near you if they have a warehouse in the area they supply, but you still need to be prepared to pick it up when it arrives. The dry goods come in 10 to 50 kilo sacks arranged on skids, they will load them onto their truck at the place of origin, but be prepared to load them if you pick them up elsewhere.
When placing an order, you can agree with others in the group to split the quantities, storing your supplies to ensure freshness and longevity is simple using a method developed by the Hutterites. The Hutterites have long had a tradition of buying and storing goods in bulk to share in the community. The process requires a number of 5-gallon buckets with rubber gasket lids, and a supply of waxed paper, birthday candles, and ice. A fifty-pound bag of beans will fill three buckets, while a fifty-pound bag. The bag of rice will fill two. Depending on what you ask for, $1500.00 will fill 30 to 35 buckets. Wash all buckets and lids in a hot bath with detergent and half a cup of bleach, rinse and dry. To line the trays with wax paper, use three long sheets that run from edge to edge across the bottom of the tray. Pour or scoop dry goods into the bucket leaving enough room at the top to create a concavity (a cone-shaped depression in the center of the contents). Place a birthday candle in the center of the sauce, light it and secure the lid, immediately place ice in the center of the top of the lid to prevent the candle from melting. The birthday consumes the oxygen candles in the bucket leaving only nitric oxide and burns out surprisingly quickly, your food is now in stasis for up to ten years. I like to fill a large jar of pickles for immediate use, filling and labeling each jar with whatever I’m storing, giving me a two-month supply on hand.
When the pickle jar is empty I simply open the bucket, refill and reseal it, I can often use the same birthday candle two or three times so it burns very little. I am amazed at how fresh and vital food stays using this simple method, I have easily sprouted mung beans that have been stored this way for over five years! With the increasing price of foods like rice, beans, and cereals, this strategy allows you to purchase good organic produce at a reasonable cost and helps hedge against rising prices. In 2008 I went to my local organic market to buy their organic quinoa in bulk; they sold it by the pound for $2.69 which according to my research was a good price. They were shipped in 10 kilo sacks from Bolivia and I ordered a sack of red and white quinoa. When I went to pick up my order, the market sold it to me for $1.69 a pound, an excellent deal. The ten kilo sacks filled my buckets a little more than half full, as it’s a tight little bean, I didn’t want to mix the red and white so I decided to order another sack of each. The second order was perfect as it filled both buckets and a large pickle jar of each. The quinoa in the pickle jars lasted me almost two years and within those two years the quinoa had gone from $2.69 to $5.69 per pound. Last year when I refilled my jars the price for quinoa was $7.69 per pound. I’ll be able to refill my jars another three or four times with these cubes, it’s convenient for me to always have a supply on hand, and the savings are obvious.
Whole foods store beautifully with this method and can provide a high degree of food safety for your family. A five-gallon bucket of rice and beans (which make up a complete protein) can sustain a family of five for months. The power of group buying allows you to save money and you can also expand your diet to include such delicious cereals as millet, spelt and wheat that I have sprouted, it is excellent. Get inspired, this method offers a practical and inexpensive way to store good organic food at a reasonable cost. Get together with your friends, treat yourself to a weekend, sure it works, but you’ll love the quality, price, and convenience of having your supplies on hand. Stretch beyond market conditioning, save your family’s future while enjoying future savings.
You may not have plans to build a dome house, but with the rapid advance of GMO-ready-for-harvest seeds and the ongoing environmental crisis, it may be time to secure your food supply.
