Well, tell us the best things to free dry for long term storage. I have enough dry food to last over a year. But I have often thought about buying one of these things.
When I say to last over a year, I mean that I don't have to go to the store to buy food for over a year. If the shit hits the fan (you know, like next week) then I can shut my door and not have to participate in the shutdown. House and cars are paid off. Shelter, Food, Water, Guns, Bullets. We're good over here.
We're largely set as well. We could have SHTF tomorrow and we'd be better off than 95% of the folks out there. Do you have any solar panels?
7000 watts. 60 amp controller
The principle reason we bought one is to freeze dry stuff we grow/produce on our land. At the height of summer, our hens produce way more eggs than we can consume or sell. We freeze dry the surplus eggs and they are shelf stable for ~25 years. Fruit is very popular to freeze dry and tastes great.
In a prepping mindset, there are 3 major food preservation methods: dehydrate, canning, and freeze drying. Different foodstuffs respond differently to different preservation methods. For example, you can freeze dry shredded cheese and it turns out great, but you really can't dehydrate shredded cheese.