A few things Dogs left out. He and I were late... I made a checklist of what to take, I neglected to check on what Dogs was putting in the car before we left. He left our box of bags and O2 absorbers, so halfway to our location we had to turn around to retrieve them.
So double check that you have everything you need with you before you leave for the day. In our case the facility were using for the food "festival" was 45 to 60 minute drive for most.
The day before the group effort, several members of the community got together at the facility and unloaded the pallets. They also did a test run with a bag of rice.
I walked around with another person and we made sure each bucket was labeled, had a bag and desiccant. Then we moved the buckets into the staging area a little bit at a time. This really didn't take that long because the bucket fillers were moving very fast.
The sealing took a little bit longer than Dogs' explanation. We had two sealers and a helper for each sealer. You can't see this in the picture because at the point the picture was taken, the helpers were doing other task. After the O2 absorbers were placed in the bag, the bag was then folder over. The sealer had to make three or four different clamps to seal across the entire bag. The sealer left an open on one end, and the helper pushed out the excess air, folder the bag into the bucket and then the sealer made one final clamp.
I would say each bucket took two to four minutes to completely seal. Once the bag was sealed, someone else moved the bucket to the vehicle of its owner. We had a few orders go on to pallets because their order was too large to fit into their personal vehicles. The large truck owner was kind enough to transport those orders of a few individual families to their homes.
Once we were finished with the initial order and every family made sure their order was correct, we divided up the remaining food. Each family received two or three additional buckets of food. So it is a good idea to order extra buckets and bags and have them with you.
I will admit, we were all pleasantly please with how quickly the process worked. We were most fortunate to have a nice facility and just about perfect weather for the process.
Cat
Sunrise from the Hampton Roads Bridge/Tunnel on the journey to the facility.
Okay folks - today we finished our 9 family, 8600 pound food storage day.
Here's a link back to the planning meeting thread outlining where we were back in May. Lots of good info, questions and answers from other forum members.
http://www.peakprosperity.com/forum/food-storage-lessons-learned-and-recomendations/19518
Here is a detailed description of what we did today with lessons learned and observations.
Preparations/Set-up:
One of our participant families graciously offered the use of their family owned business for staging. This is almost a must since you will need a lot of space for set up. There was a warehouse we could have used in case of rain - we were fortunate to have perfect weather - mid 70s, humidity in the 40% range. We actually had to move the bag sealers in out of the sun at one point. Make arrangements for the ability to do this in a covered area in case of rain, like I said, we were lucky.
We had a master spreadsheet that calculated out the number of buckets of what type of grain/bean each family wanted to order. We built the spreadsheet to also calculate the number of buckets, lids, mylar bags, O2 absorbers and desiccant packs each family needed to order. We had to order more absorbers, desiccant packs and mylar bags than the number of buckets because of package contents sizes but we just pooled everything together anyway so it didn't matter. In this case more is better.
I would recommend that each family order their own buckets, lids and absorbers, etc. The logistics required to collect money and everyone's specific order requirements isn't worth it. In most cases, shipping was between $30-$50. We also arranged for a drop shipment to the business address - several members of our group had large enough orders that they were palletized and we needed a forklift to unload them.
Order all of your grain and beans from one place. What you might save in price you will lose in shipping. We were fortunate to have a vendor in western Virginia (Yoder's Country Market in Pratt, VA) that assembled our entire order. We had to go pick it up since they don't ship, but one of our group members had a large truck and we got the whole load in one trip. We price checked with Honeyville Grains and Walton Feed but the shipping was expensive compared to the cost of gas for the trip out and back.
Buckets: www.usplastic.com/catalog/product.asp
You can get either the HDPE Premium or Standard Food Grade 5 gallon buckets. The Premium is .090" thick, the Standard is .075" thick and the dimensions are the same. Both are FDA approved. Don't use LDPE buckets - the interstitial space between the molecules will allow gases to leak into the bucket - not that much of an issue since the contents are in a sealed mylar bag, but could be a problem once the bag was opened and you were using the contents.
Most of us ordered white buckets - we staged all the buckets and marked each one with a permanent marker with the family name and contents. Then we staged the buckets in groups by contents - this made filling easy, more on that later.
One recommendation - consider having each family order a specific color bucket. This makes for easy identification of who gets what bucket, but it's not essential. This would be polishing the cannonball.
O2 Absorbers, Desiccant Packs and Mylar Bags: www.sorbentsystems.com
- Mylar Bags - You can get either 4.3 mil (Part # 20MFS30) or 7.5 mil (Part # P75C2030) bags, but you MUST use food grade bags. We used 20" x 30" bags ordered from Sorbent Systems. Fold each bag into an 'S' shape to stage in the buckets. See the pictures below.
4.3 mil or 7.5 mil is a personal preference - the 4.3 mil is much easier to work with. The 7.5 mil bags ended up being the limiting factor as far as how much of each grain or bean you could get in each bag/bucket combo because the bag was much stiffer and didn't fill out into the edges of the bag as readily as the 4.3 mil.
- Desiccant Packs: http://www.sorbentsystems.com/order_desiccants.html (P/N 205050PK01)
One or two packs to a bucket depending on what was in each bag. If the air volume of what is being packaged is 40% or higher, use 2 packs. A quick way to check is to fill a measuring cup with the "stuff" to check. Take another measuring cup and add another cup of water. If you can add a full cup of water to the cup of beans/wheat/rice/whatever, then you have at least 50% air volume and need two desiccant packs. We used 1 pack per bucket for wheat, oats, rice, Red beans, Black beans, Pinto beans and Great Northern beans as they all had an air volume of 33% or less. The Navy beans, Kidney beans and Lima beans needed 2 packs.
- O2 Absorbers: http://www.sorbentsystems.com/order_O2.html (P/N OAP100020)
Two to a bucket, 1000 cc absorbers recommended. We used two per bag for everything.
These come in packs of 20 which will do ten buckets. This is the time critical step so once the absorbers are opened, we put two in each bucket and started sealing. Order enough to cover the number of buckets you need filled - there will be extras (unless you all have bucket totals in multiples of 10, but they are relatively inexpensive - about $0.48 each so we won't be wasting too many. Like I said earlier, we just pooled all of our stuff together.
IMPORTANT STEP: The desiccant packs and O2 absorbers MUST be physically as far apart as possible or they will interfere with each other. We put our desiccant packs in the bags before we filled and put the O2 absorbers on top of the grain just before we sealed the bags.
Staging:
Empty buckets, with mylar bags, arranged by contents.
Buckets arranged by contents
Bucket staging, hard to see the 'S' shape we folded the bags into, but you get the idea.
Loading:
Once everything was staged and we had people at their stations we started filling bags. At any given time we had 3-5 guys doing the filling. Use a good scale so each bag gets the correct amount. As I mentioned above, the 7.5 mil bags were the limiting factor as far as how much grain/bean we could load since the bag didn't fill out as much as the 4.3 mil bags. Grab each mylar bag by the edges and shake the contents down to settle it into the bag/bucket as tightly packed as possible. Use gloves because the 7.5 mil bags will put a nasty slice in your finger if you aren't careful.
Here's is how our bucket loads broke out by contents:
Rice and Wheat - 35 pounds/bucket; Oats - 20 pounds/bucket; Pinto beans - 31 pounds/bucket; Great Northern and Navy beans - 33 pounds/bucket; Kidney, Black and Red beans - 32 pounds/bucket; Lima beans - 30 pounds/bucket; Quinoa - 25 pounds/bucket.
As each bag got filled, we moved them to the sealing area. We had 14 people total: 3-5 doing the bag/bucket loading, 2 moving full bags from the loading area to the sealing area and 3-4 moving sealed bags/buckets from the sealing area back out to the parking lot where they were rearranged by family.
Sealing:
We had two people using clam shell heat sealers. Don't use an iron, buy a clamshell sealer. Trust me. The 4.3 mil bags took about 5-6 seconds, the 7.5 mil bags took about 10 seconds. Sealing is the critical step since this is where you add the O2 absorbers. The O2 absorbers come 20 to a pack so each pack does 10 buckets. We had one person who was responsible for the O2 absorbers and nothing else. We would bring 5 buckets out to each sealer, add the absorbers and start sealing. Seal all but one corner, then fold the bag over getting out as much air as possible before sealing the last couple of inches. Make sure to seal as close to the top as possible so you have enough bag left over to reseal if necessary. Another thing to watch for is to make sure no pieces of grain or bean are stuck in the area you are sealing. Sealing is the slowest part of all of this - you need to have sealers in multiples of two, so you start sealing right away and don't have O2 absorbers sitting open. We were pushing sealed bags out at about 20-30 seconds each. At one point we were doing 70 buckets per hour. Use gloves, the mylar gets very hot (or so I'm told as I did not burn my right thumb).
Follow-up: Don't put the lids on the buckets for at least a day. Check to make sure you have a good seal. The O2 absorbers will suck the bags down pretty tight. By the time we finished, the O2 absorbers in the first batch of buckets we sealed up had sucked the bags down to a near vacuum and they were sealed up tight. If the bag isn't snugged down tight after 24 hours, check for a good heat seal. If the seal looks good, take the bag out fo the bucket and check for a hole. You will need to transfer the contents to a new bag, replace the O2 absorbers and reseal.
All of these buckets are full and waiting to be moved to the sealers in groups of 10 ( 5 per sealer) for addition of O2 absorbers sealing.
The buckets to the left of the open bay are staged, waiting to be moved into the bay for loading. The buckets in the bay door are full and staged for sealing.
Going Home Loadout (or just another reason to play with a forklift)
Almost finished....
Odds and Ends: (Some material repeated)
We started at around 7 AM and were done by noon. Close to 270 buckets and 8600 pounds of wheat, rice, oats and beans.
Have one or two helicopters - people who can just float from station to station and help when and where needed.
Bring food, snacks, water, coffee.
Rotate people in between stations to avoid burnout.
Label the buckets by Family AND Contents for easy auditing.
Stage buckets by contents, fill buckets one item at a time.
Unless you are extremely lucky, you will have extra stuff. Make sure you have extra buckets, bags, absorbers, desiccant to seal it up. We just split it up pretty much evenly depending on who wanted what.
Have fun.
I'm sure I left something out - if anyone has any questions don't hesitate to PM or email.