How To Make a Tin Can Storage Rotator

A few years ago I made a Tin can storage rotator for our old pantry. 

This worked great but when I built the extension and built a new pantry we just didn't have the wall space for it. I cut the door into two and sold the separate halves and decided to build some modular units instead. When I built them I built them with the idea to make a jig to make the job easy to repeat and with the aim of selling them. 

Since then I've built dozens of the units. I have them in my pantry, my brother has them in his kitchen and I've sold them all over the country and had great feedback from everyone that uses them. 

Downside is that since the timber price increases due to Covid and other issues they've not become very viable to make, or not at a price that would sell. They're also not the most fun thing in the work to make either! So in the spirit of being nice I've made a video showing how I came about the design and how to make the jigs to make them. 

Even if someone makes something completely different I hope that the video will help someone overcome a problem or see a different way of solving a food storage issue. 

Also if you could do me a favour - Could you subscribe to my YouTube channel if you haven't already, I could do with crossing the 1000 follower threshold that YouTube has in place, it would be much appreciated. 

How do you store your tin cans in your pantry?

Recycled Shelves For Canning

Because I've been doing some canning I decided I needed a few more shelves for our produce and had just the space left in the pantry for some. Not huge but enough to really increase the storage a little bit and keep it organised. 

Luckily when I had just the right wood in mind for this project. 

This wood has had a few lives already - many years ago - when I lived on the family farm and worked in site management (briefly) I was working on a site where two carpenters had come up with a problem. They were cladding a communal stairwell and had worked out they were massively short of timber - the manager ordered a load more  and pretty much none of it was needed (they were rubbish carpenters).

New Shelves For The Pantry

I've started to kit out my dream pantry.

First job is to make up some shelves. These need to be heavy duty and look nice. I decided against buying adjustable shelves as I've never been that impressed and they don't have the right look for what I'm going for.

I made these from 3x2 cls which is about the cheapest timber you can buy but still looks okay when you rub the sander over it a few times. The base of the shelves is 18mm ply which sits in a rebate. Hopefully this should never move or flex no matter how much I store on it!

The video above shows what I made and how I did it. If you watch it please let me know what you think. I've made a few more bits since then and I'm pleased with how the room is shaping up!

Apple Storage Rack

I made a load of fruit crates a while ago that stack together to store our apple harvest. 

These have been great in some ways. It gives a good airy store place and allows apples to sit for a long time. The downside is that because they stack you can only access the top tray. I wanted something a bit different, more like drawer unit. I'd seen many online but wanted something a bit bigger to fit the space I had.

£3 For 15kg Of Carrots

Now as many of you know I'm never one to pass up on a bargain!

And the other day I picked up a huge 15kg bag of carrots for £3. Bargain!

Now I must confess this isn't at the supermarket, instead I got these from the animal feed store local to us.

Prepping On A Budget - 7 Days Of Food

This is the second part of my Prepping On A Budget series. After last weeks post on showing how easy it is to store three days worth of drinking water, this post should show how easy it is to store an extra seven days worth of food.

Food should be another big consideration when you think about preparedness.

Now for the purpose of this post I'm not talking about going out and spending thousands on freeze dried food or hundreds on MRE's that you can put in your bunker for 20 years. More about how small changes in shopping and storage habits can make a big difference to the amount of food you have in case of an emergency.

What Does One Years Food Supply Cost?

Well if you ever wondered what a years worth of food accually looked like then here's the picture for you:

Imagine from Costo 

Costo Wholesale in the USA are selling a years worth of food for $5,999 (about £4,300) containing 600 cans of food.
It looks like it has a great selection and budgets on 36,000 servings with 2,000 calories on average per day. Click on the link above and you can see what it contains, but everything from grains, freeze dried fruits and vegetables, dairy and more.

What do you think to kits like this?

I'm afraid it's out of my budget for now though and I think the shipping would kill it for me!

Milk Carton Storage Dispenser

So we're still happily trapped at home. I could get the truck out quite easily but feel little need to leave the homestead! 

Looking at our food supplies the only thing that we're going to be short of (besides potatoes - but that's my own stupid fault) is milk. 

The kids drink 26 pints of milk a week on average, and there's no way we could store a huge amount, not much more than a week or so worth, unless I dedicated a freezer to it! We had a few stored in the the freezer anyhow but we're getting down it now. Maybe we need a cow...

We also keep a fair bit of soya milk in the house as well. I can't drink milk (but can have cheese and yogurt) so the soya is mainly for me. I do cook with it and use it on our porridge in the morning so it's useful to have around. Looking at our stock though we're down to the last three cartons. This is mainly because they get shoved on the floor in the pantry and we're never sure how many we've got as it's always so full of stuff. 

Well I decided it was time to get them organised. 

I love my tin can storage door and we use it daily, it makes everything easy to find and to see how much we've got of everything, so I decided something similar was in order. 

Measuring the space I had I could see I could make something to hold ten cartons of milk and ten tins of tuna (that sized tin isn't on my storage door). Whatever you do though, don't cook with the tuna and the milk, that wouldn't be nice! 

Knocking this up took me about three quarter of an hour with some scrap ply from the doors I'm making. I just glued and pinned everything together, nothing fancy. Slots cut on the front let you see what you've got and to slow down the speed that you drop things in there.
You could easily make this with hand tools but it might take you a bit longer, I used a jig saw, circular saw and a compressor with nail gun. All the measurements are just to suite the size of the carton and tin can.

There's a little ramp at the bottom to catch the tuna tins, check out this post to see what I made last time. 

Setting out the spacing for the carton and the tuna tins

Cutting the top, having slots in it means you can see how much of everything you've got. 

The completed rack

The rack in place in the pantry - just need to fill it now! 

I'm quite pleased with this little project, it doesn't take long to get organised, even if it doesn't look that pretty.

That's ten litres of soya milk that can be seen, checked and stored easily, with the oldest being used first every time, same with the tuna. I use a couple of litres of soya a week, so that's roughly five weeks worth.

This would also work great for UHT milk, or anything in a carton.

If you've any other food storage ideas then please let me know, I might end up building it!

What do you think?

Have you got anything like this in your house to keep you organised? I'd love to see it if you have! Send me a picture!

2022 - Edit - This unit never worked very well. Just too much weight on the cartons I think. Not one I'd recommend copying. 

Vacuum Packer

I was gutted tonight.

I got two beautiful steaks out the freezer, from a whole cow I home butchered last year (the cow wasn't from my land - it's a long story I might tell you about one day - but lets just say I ended up with a lot of beef!).

I let them defrost and thought about the homemade wedges, fresh sweetcorn and fried onions I was going to cook with it. 

Thumb not included...

Trouble was after I popped the oven on and started to prepare everything else I could smell something not quite right. It wasn't strong, just a little whiff when you held your nose to it.

Damn it.

Freezer burn on my steaks.

I wasn't willing to risk it, time to cook something else. 

My wife got in from work and excitedly asked about the beautiful steaks on the counter, only to be told she was having a veggie curry instead! 

Now the meat has been in there 18 months and we're getting very near to the end of it, but it's a shame that some has been wasted like this. I hate food waste and I don't want to make these mistakes again. 

I frequently butcher animals for our own consumption and have three freezers with meat and veggies in to make sure we are eating as much of our own produce as possible. I tend to separate the meat into different freezers so I know what to use and what each is (at the moment one has mutton and one has lamb, etc).

With 19 chickens to process soon , they're going onto pasture tomorrow hopefully,  I want to package them in the best way possible so there won't be anything wasted due to storage. and I'm thinking of something better than just a freezer bag like I've been using. 

I was looking at vacuum packers and thought that this might be great way to improve my long term storage, I could use it for packing my chickens before they go in the freezer and for storing my dehydrated fruit and veg. I've also been told it's great for just keeping things in the fridge fresher for longer, then there's the possibility of Souve cooking or marinading meat overnight. 

So does anyone out there use a vacuum packer before they freeze meat?

What one would you recommend? And do you use it for anything else?

Scotch Bridget Apple Still Good To Eat On The 10th Of June!

I've just been cleaning out my fruit store and found a apple that's still good to eat on the 10th of June! 

In fact it tastes amazing and has only been stored in a frost free shed with no real special care except plenty of air flow.

Scotch Bridget is a duel purpose apple and one I've planted everywhere I've lived, a great apple to have growing if you're aiming for self sufficiency or living a preparedness lifestyle or even just wanting to cut your food bill and know where your food is coming from. 

The ability to store fruit like this would have been key to survival in the past and finding the right varieties combined with using storage methods of the past is an important skill to practice. 

I've written about it before on this blog here and here. 

What's the longest you've kept apples for?

A Cool, Frost Free Place

How often do you see this with gardening tubers that you buy or want to store? 

"Store in a cool, frost free place".

Finding one isn't always as easy as it should be. I have a shed here that is well insulated but it still can go below freezing if we have a long spell of cold weather. Last week I was worried that with temperatures going below -6 Degrees Celsius that the shed would also dip below freezing.

I'd planned for this and the shed has some power in there, as well as this I had a little fan heater that I was planning to use. 

A cheap fan heater

I never trust the thermostat on these cheap heaters so instead I bought a thermostatically controlled switch. It cost £35 and the idea behind it is really simple, if the temperature you set it to dips a degree below, it switches on what ever you have plugged in until the temperature gets to where you want it to be (if that's makes sense).

The new switch

I've also got a digital thermometer in there as well so I'm not just relying on the one on the plug. It also records the maximum and minimum temperature so I can see the range of temperatures that the shed is giving my produce. 

Just to double check and to see the range of temperatures. 

I was really pleased with it, with all that cold weather the shed stayed at around 5 degrees, only dipping to 4 degrees before the heater would kick in a for a minute or so (very infrequently as the shed holds it's temperature really well).

So although it's not a root cellar I have got a frost free place to keep my things overwinter. That way crops like my yacon and oca can be stored and planted again for next year without having to buy them again. Kind of like having a big fridge! 

The switch will also work in reverse if you had a air con unit you wanted to set up to keep temperatures cool in the summer. 

Do you have a cool, frost free place to store tubers?

Can Storage Door Revisited

One of my favourite projects I've made has been my Tin Can Storage Door. 

I made this a couple of winters ago and we use it most days. 

It makes the small space I've got set aside for food storage so much more useful, it clearly displays all the tinned food, rotates stock and takes up very little room. 

I know I posted about this when I made it but I thought I'd do a little video of it in action.

Sorry I'm so full of cold in it! I sound quite bunged up! 

My little girl is super cute at the end though - what a little star!

Has anyone else made anything similar?

Let me know what you think and share the idea with friends so they can increase their food storage as well!

Shallots & Garlic Ready For Storage

This year I hadn't gone mad with alliums, instead I'd concentrated on the higher price tag veg like garlic and shallots, in fact I hadn't grown any onions but I do have a full bed of leeks looking like they're ready for winter and going to taste amazing! 

Lovely shallots

So on Tuesday I sat down and actually sorted through what I'd grown and got it ready for storage. Something I should do straight away, not months after, but didn't have the time to when I harvested. 

I was really annoyed at myself while I was doing it, there was some garlic that had gone mouldy because it was left at the bottom of the stack, that's wasted food that I'd spent time, space and effort growing.

garlic sorted ready for storage. 

I also sorted through and cleaned up my shallots as well. I grew two different types and you don't need to be a horticulturist to tell them apart!

 The one batch were amazing, not a bad one in there and all looked beautiful (and they taste amazing as well, with a delicate flavour), whereas the other batch all looked dehydrated (I'm guessing from being dried in the greenhouse) and although still usable they just don't appeal in the same way. 

The somewhat obligatory picture of one of my children at work

Not such great shallots

Stored ready for use over winter - although i know they won't last long! 

I need to make a real effort to spend more time looking after what I've grown, my main trouble is I'm always far too busy with my own paying work in the summer, something I need to take measures to alter in someway, working from home more and on site less I think. 

I've often said that the most important part of self sufficiency is food storage, because there's little point in growing it all if you can't store it to use when you need it. 

Alliums are a prime example of this, treat them right and you can have a supply all year round, take you eye off the ball, like I have here, and you'll be left with very little when you need it most. 

I'm now planning my harvest for next year and I'm going to order in all new stock for my garlic and shallots (although I might grow the shallots from seed instead) so that I'm not breeding on from a harvest I wasn't happy with. The rust problem I had alone has put me off using my own stock of garlic blubs/cloves let alone the storage problems.

What alliums do you grow for storage over winter?  

What is your favourite type of shallot and garlic to grow?

Any tips for good storage with these crops?

Germany Stockpilling

Sol sent me a link yesterday about Germany recommendation to stockpile food and to be honest I hadn't been at my computer much so I would have missed it otherwise.

There are some news articles from the BBC here and the Independent here.

In short  the German Government has advised it's citizens to stockpile food and water for the first time since the Cold War.

This has resulted in what the Germans call "Hamsterkaeufe"  or panic buying. Shelves in some supermarkets have been stripped bare in a few hours with Germans trying to get enough food for the recommended 10 days and water for the recommended 5 days in case of terror attacks.

Another wake up call to keep household essentials in stock, if you lived week to week with your food then a simple news item like this could leave you without food for that week without anything even happening.

Do you have what the German Government is recommending in your store?

What would be the thing you'd have to rush out and buy?

Apples From Storage

I've shown pictures of the apple store I built for my mother before but I thought I'd show you all a picture for what some of the apples look like in it now.

Scotch Bridgett - one of our favourite keepers. 

Although they're not going to win the village show it does prove that we can keep apples with no pumped in gases or artificial cooling well into April and May. 
Careful picking, storage and selection of variety is all that is needed. You need to be vigilant with checking them and remove any that go bad. Sadly keeping food in this way is a skill we're slowly loosing and one day we might all need it again. Best to practice with food storage now I think, when the results aren't quite so important! 

Fruit trays

I got given some old fruit crates the other day by a guy who lives near to where I've been working. 

 They're lovely old crates but have seen better days. they have some woodworm that needs treating although I don't think I'll be able to keep apples in them if I do. 

I have started to make some new ones up in the workshop, some for myself and maybe some to sell. I want to make practical things that people will use to aid with food storage and keeping fruit and veg longer is a great thing. 

The old guys who made these in the past knew what they were doing and these were the best way to store certain produce before the invention of refrigeration.

Shelves For Flour

I added a little more food storage last weekend. 

The under stairs cupboard has been much better since I added my can rotator door but there was still a lot of wasted space. I decided to add some shelves one side and a board the other to hang things on.

Shelves added alongside my can rotator door

 The shelves were made out of some plywood off cuts, so nothing fancy again, but they do the job and the sheet of ply the other side just makes it easier for me to put up hooks and things when I want.

A board added to the other side to easily fix hooks and hang things on.

I know it's not huge amount of extra food storage but every little helps especially as this will be easy to keep organised. The plan being to keep just flour and sugar on these shelves, the flour can then be easily  rotated so the oldest is used up first. Having flour here will also save space in the freezer as hopefully when we get a bread maker we'll be making bread daily(ish) rather than buying it once a week and freezing it all.

Also if I ever get a grain mill then the bags of flour will be replaced with kilner jars to keep it in and stored in the same place. Keeping it all in one place means that I can see when we're running low and buy more in - I hate running out of anything!

Anyone else been putting more food storage in? No matter how small!

Mouldy Squash

I hate food waste, that's one of the reasons I'm trying to be more organised with our food storage (the other being I'm tight). So I was a little annoyed the other day when I could see some our our squash harvest going bad.

It happens so quick and before you know it the mould has spread.

Squash normally keep really well, but they need the right environment to keep for a long time. Normally we store them in a box in the dining room, and we find that at room temperature they keep well into May and last year we even had them store into August.

Where mouldy squashes have touched, I'll have to use these fairly soon or they'll go off as well.

 Last seasons crop was so big that we didn't have the space to keep them all in the dinning room, so I stored some in the shed and workshop. The conditions in there are much colder and we're beginning to see the affects from that. Some squash are starting to go mouldy and because I've got them packed in tight together (which I know I shouldn't, be needs must) this mould spreads really fast. The other day I chucked out half a dozen squash and a large one went to the chickens (it was on the turn but they didn't complain). 

Wasted food - only good for the compost bin now.

It goes to show the importance of good food storage and the importance of checking your stored food. I knew I'd have problems storing them where I had them but I had no other choice. My long term plan is to build a "food storage shed" built out of block with different areas to store the different produce that I grow; there's no point in growing it if you can't use it before it goes off. The shed will ideally be thermostatically controlled and heavily insulated with adjustable ventilation and completely rodent proof - I'm hoping to start building it this year so watch this space!

I think that food storage is one of the key points on the road to self sufficiency. In the past how good you were at it would have directly dictated your families future, especially at this time of year when you'd see your food reserves start to diminish. 

Anyone else lost food this season due to poor storage? Time for some confessions!

List Of A Years Worth Of Food?

I've just finished reading a book called "Our Year In The Wilderness" by Michael & Susan Cusack. I brought it from a second hand bookshop in the summer, and although it looked dated (from the 80's) I thought it looked up my street and for £1 it was worth a shot.

The book was brilliant, it's about a couple being sponsored by Australian Geographic to spend a year in the wilderness in the Australian outback, in the North west of the Kimberley. They were chosen out of 500 other couples, but they kept a secret from National Geographic - they'd been separated for the last 4 years out of their 14 year marriage and saw the experience as a chance to reconcile their marriage! 

The area they stayed is well known for for being an inhospitable and difficult to live place, with long dry spells and temperatures reaching up to 45 degrees C and high humidity.

I was captivated by this book and found their constant struggle for water and relief from the flies and mosquitoes really interesting. It's written by both of them and luckily they both write really well and their are hundreds of beautiful pictures with captions so you really get a feel for what's going on. On Google maps I think their location and it was roughly here, you can see it's pretty remote! But although they know it was hard to survive where they did for a year, they had the up most respect for aborigines who had lived here for centuries before the settlers relocated them and took them from their own land, supposedly for their own good!

Below is a few pages I've pulled from the appendix of the book detailing what food supplies they took with them for their year in the wild. They supplemented their food with some meat they shot (although not much) and fish they caught, plus they grew some vegetables, although they understandably struggled growing them with the lack of water and the high heat!

These pictures should enlarge if you click on them.

There's a few things in the list I was shocked at. One was the amount of sugar they took with them, just one 1kg bag of sugar. Although they had honey and drink powder that wouldn't be enough sugar to keep me going for a month let alone a year! Also you'd think they'd be better off taking grain and a small mill rather than all the flour which could (and did) go bad in the heat. I also understand the need to keep the weight down but dried food without much water can be difficult, I do like all the herbs and spices they took with them though, a great way to change boring meals.

What do you think to their years worth of food for living in a hot and inhospitable place? 

What major changes would you make to the list?

Storage Barrels

We went to a car boot sale at the weekend and there was a guy selling these 30 litre barrels in good condition for £3 each or 4 for £10. I brought 8 which was as many as I could fit in the car. I've got his number so I might go and buy some more yet. 

They have the metal band lids that snap shut and are a food grade plastic (they've been used for shipping sweets from Barcelona apparently). They're really clean inside and out and perfect for hundreds of uses. 

I was thinking that this year I could brew my cider in them, make some elder flower wine in them next spring, store bulk quantities of sugar and salt in them, store water in them, corn and other animal feed in them (although they're not that big) - even store rat poison in one to stop the rats and mice getting in my poison bags. You can even make chicken spring feeders with this type of barrel as well, just add some legs and fit a spring feeder to a hole in the bottom. 

What other uses can you think of for them? How many do you think I should get?