We Turned a 12x20 Shed into Our Grocery Store ｜ Pantry Tour

Hey there, darlings. Welcome back to Roots and Refuge Farm. I'm Jess. I'm Maya. We are standing outside of our personal grocery store, our pantry building. This is probably one of the highest requested videos we've had to make over the last few years, and we're finally going to give you guys a tour of our pantry. So this is a 12 by 20 building? Yes. You'll notice none of our little sheds match because we just buy whatever one's cheapest whenever we go. They usually have options on the lot and that's what this is. One that someone ordered and didn't want it or whatever so we just find I'm like literally hey I need about this size what you got. What's the discount? So when we went this was the best deal. It had the two doors on the front. We were not picky on that. We just knew we wanted to insulate it. And cool it because it's hot here and this had to be temperature controlled. So I built up, I beefed up this door. It's got insulation on the inside. We ran insulation through the ceiling and all the walls. It really is well insulated. It holds its temperature pretty well. So what about power? So to bring power, instead of getting like its own meter, we just ran it straight off the house. I think it's a 60 amp breaker that runs the sub panel. We had some friends come and help us do the wiring on the inside of the building. that we're electricians and that covers the air conditioning. We have a special plug-in for the freeze dryer because it needs its own dedicated plug and all the other plugs for the lighting and things like that. So one of the big things we were solving for in food storage was we had to address the temperatures. We live where the summers are very hot and very humid and both of those things hinder storing food. Long term. Also our winters are pretty mild but we did have to consider the fact that we can have hard freezes. We can have multiple nights where it gets well below freezing and barely gets above it during the day which means we have to be mindful in storing food in that because obviously if you've got for instance food in jars and stuff like that and it freezes they can crack. So we needed to make this climate controlled specifically be able to make it cool enough during the summer That it would... like a root cellar ish I'm not gonna sell this as if no it really works like a root cellar it doesn't but our goal was to try to keep it as close to like under 60 in there as possible so the first solution that we attempted to accomplish that was a mini split I did one of the do-it-yourself ones and we got it working and honestly it just I don't know that I would do it again I've I've spent more trying to fix it and keep it running than I did to buy it. and had i just bought one that was installed by a professional i would have had a 10-year warranty on all the parts that i had to fix and replace so right now we have the trusty old window unit the hundred dollar window unit from Lowe's which is actually doing a pretty good job and eventually we'll replace this with a professionally installed mini split that is warranted I will say when the mini split was working it kept this with the insulation Way cooler. Yes. And it was very nice. It was. But when it stopped working in the middle of the summer and all the jars started sweating and all that stuff. That was not good. That was not great. Thankfully this building had a window because had we gotten one of the discount ones without a window. We'd have been in trouble. So rescue the old window unit. That's actually just been the solution this summer. The mini split finally went kaput this summer and the window unit came in clutch. Eventually we will address that. So we're going to come in here, take a look around. So how did you insulate this? We just used like a standard fiberglass like that pink panther type insulation and just ran it between all the two by four studs. And then did the shiplap over it. Of course we have the lights. We did a floor. This is a vinyl plank but locked together simple Lowe's floor. Affordable. And down here these are just ready-made Lowe's cabinets and a little bit of Lowe's butcher block that we stained and of course this looks nice but it is serving a real purpose. These shelves are all from Uline. Um, what size are those? I guess they have all different sizes, so it really depends on like, I've got a 30 inch deep one in the milk room. These are 24. You can get them in all kinds of configurations. And we started with just some random shelves and we eventually added in all the Uline shelves. This took a I mean honestly we have been like tweaking this building and adding to it since we started so it's been about four years and I would say now it's nice enough that I'm willing to do a tour of it. One of the things I really wanted in here was a little table because I needed this to be food storage space but I also needed this to be a little bit of an extension of my kitchen workspace. I have my Harvest Rite freeze dryer out here. We use that thing a lot, but it's loud, and we have our, you know, double-wide manufactured home. We love our home. It has no closets and I mean truly like there's not a single linen closet. There's so little storage and so little workspace. So by having the freeze dryer out here we can run it whenever it's not going to be messing with anything but then it's also convenient because we also have this freezer right here and right now it's just got a lot of odds and ends in it with just some different, this is all onions and stuff. Actually I have all these I intend to freeze dry these to make space. There's some odds and ends stuff, some tomatoes, some different veggies, some frozen broth. Here I've got like stocked extra yeast. I keep extra of this in the freezer. But you'll see this extra space here because when you freeze dry, you want to pre-freeze your trays. And so by having that freezer there, I can bring trays out and go ahead and get them prepped and in there. And the other reason why we have extra space is because when you buy Bulk grains, like I do from Azure Standard, before you put them in buckets and in mylar for long-term storage, it's best to put them in the freezer and let them be frozen for like two or three days. Then you take them out, let them come back up to room temperature before you put them in mylar with an oxygen absorber and put them in a bucket. The reason why, and I know this is gonna freak people out who are not used to food storage, but most bulk grains that you buy do have insect eggs in them by freezing them first and make sure it kills anything that's in there. It's not absolutely necessary, a lot of people skip that step, but it is ideal to go ahead. And by having this freezer handy right here, maintaining space in it, all of this stuff can happen right here in this space. Another thing that happens at this table. We've recorded many podcasts at this table. Yeah, I have recorded a lot of podcasts. I'm actually getting ready to bring my podcast stuff back home, and this is where it's going to be. The only thing is... And still, even with needing to keep the freeze dryer operating, this is probably the quietest place on this farm that I have to actually film and not be interrupted. And also being surrounded by all your food is inspiring. I do come out here and just sit. It does make me feel really good. But every day, like the boys come in. After gathering the eggs and we go ahead and like put a date label, like these are the fresh eggs from our chickens, and we store these, you know, they're fine at room temperature for at least a couple of weeks. So we store them right here with the dates, grabbing the oldest ones first when we use them. Obviously, I keep all of my excess stuff out here, so like canning jars that aren't being used, stuff like wine bottles for homemaking wine, my roaster ovens, which these are a staple in my kitchen. I use these a lot for making broths and cooking large batches of things. And then stuff that only gets used periodically, like the ice cream machine, just all of that's here, which gives me extra space in the kitchen, my extra canning supplies. Kept my big pressure canner. Out here some, but honestly I use it so much it mostly stays in the kitchen. Back to my buckets. So this is gonna be like wild to a lot of you. For our family size, I actually would love to be able to add to this. I've just been plugging away, adding a little bit at a time. So when you actually start putting up food where you're thinking I'd like to have three months or six months or a year's worth of food for a family, what you need to do is you actually need to figure out the caloric needs for your family. So basically figure out what does a Adult male and adult female, children, your children's age, how many calories do they need a day? And once you get that, you've got the number. And for my household... It's a lot. Like, it's over, especially if I'm considering, like, right now my brother-in-law and his family are living with us. And, of course, they're also participating in preparation for our family. They're getting into that space. But I'm considering, you know, we need somewhere in the ballpark of, like, 12,000 to 14,000 calories a day, ideally, for our family. And I think preparing for that number is beneficial because you know if you've actually gotten into an emergency situation, you could ration all that stuff. And also, we're not just prepping for some crazy... apocalyptic emergency situation. In most cases it's stuff like Hurricane Helene which happened two years ago almost exactly and we were able to lean into a lot of what we had prepared. But with dry goods like this if all if all you were going to eat like a family of five if all you were going to eat was dry beans which granted if something crazy happened I don't think that everybody would be like gotta eat 2,000 calories of dry beans every day but let's say you did. Okay, just for the sake of doing the math, if you figure out caloric needs and you just look at dry beans, one 50 pound bag of dry beans covers the caloric needs of a family of five for eight days. Now, realistically, if it's a very serious situation, you're probably not gonna eat that full caloric amount. You would obviously be trying to add to that with other things there would be other sources and you wouldn't be just eating dry beans but it's good to have that number in mind. So you may look at this mountain of buckets and be like oh my gosh that's crazy or whatever but again keep in mind we have a really large family and calorically that's actually not that much food for us. As it is we go through Over 50 pounds of wheat berries every month right now because we're we're grinding our own grains to make all of our bread. And one 50-pound bag of wheat berries is actually two buckets. It's not like one bucket is one 50 pound bag. It doesn't fit in one bucket. Right. And I'm using some of these buckets of grain that I bought when they were 25% cheaper. Now as it is, I'm still buying grain. I'm still adding it to this collection so that if prices were to double or triple and I came to a place that I was like, oh I really can't do this. I really need to slow down buying grain. That doesn't mean we have to slow down eating those things because we have some stores that we can lean into. I've actually considered you know potentially adding a little more shelving or something where we can make these a little more accessible. I have looked into some bins and stuff that we could have to use our bulk stuff but this is what it is right now. On these shelves we've got fats and oils. I've got lots of tallow and coconut oil. There are a couple places. Things are in different places like there's more down here that I've got and of course these are all the things that I have canned. I've got some things here I need to put in some bottles and jars. These are all just herbs I got that are good for medicinal purposes. I turn the air off so it's It's not hindering where I've got. these are just like plastic things like deli containers and storage stuff that uh broth in in the freezer yeah that's what i like freeze broth in or if i need to take somebody dinner i'm taking them like some soups and stuff i'll use those there's our failed mini split up there uh things like plastic cups this is not something we regularly use but anytime some get left over from a party i throw them out here and like over here i've got all my bulk cleaning supplies i buy the stuff from Azure you can see here like the Things of paper towels. This shelf, this shelf right here is mostly from post-traumatic stress from COVID where we ran. We almost ran out of toilet paper. We had a long discussion about what was it called? Family cloth? We did not. Listen, we are investing in a pantry to store some paper materials. Things that did not happen for 500 Alex. No, actually, we did buy a bidet. We need to go to bed. That's about the same thing. We did not almost run out of toilet paper because we were already buying stuff like this. We had this stuff stored. So, I don't use a lot of paper towels. But what I do is, for instance, like, when I'm stocking up my pantry, I'll buy paper towels, like, in my budget, like, once every four months, let's say. Yeah, or six. A big, four or six, like, a big pack like this. So, what I do is I buy the pack of paper towels. Consecutive Consecutively, not only am I buying them, I am also trying to use them less. So, I'm using rags for paper towels. We did veto the family cloth, though it's viable, and if you do that, I commend you. That's fine. Good for you. I love you. But! So I'm trying to use them less while I have them. So if I get to the end of the six months where it's time to buy another pack and I conserved and I didn't use them as much, I still buy the next pack because it's in the budget, it's in the plan. So now I have extra and I'm still using them less. Now, when it gets to the point that I've got, you know, three packs of paper towels, which is essentially What, over a year's worth with how we use them? Sure. I'll stop buying them. I'll be like, okay, I've got enough. There comes a point that I'm like, okay. For the most part, we have like a bin of like hand towels and washcloths. Yeah, we just use rags. Now, if... It's gross. If Cush has an accident... Yeah. If it's gross, it gets a paper towel. That's what it's for. And grease. That's the other thing. Gross and grease. That's what paper towels are for. But I'm trying to stock up... to a certain point but then there does come a point that you say okay i've got enough of this now things like these plastic cups those are left over from parties but Some of those I purchase because I'm in Costco and they have the big thing of plastic cups for super cheap or I find a closeout and I'm like, okay, we obviously aren't going to use those very much, but I'll throw a package up there so that if a party comes along or something comes along that we need them, we have them. You've also pulled from that for the garden. Yeah, I've pulled from that for the garden. Same thing with cleaners. Sometimes I'll have something that I got for really cheap. Mostly it's bulk buying, and this is just space that allows me to... you know, have extra of things so that I don't have to pay a premium when the need arises because when the need arises I have a backup. Um over here of course my canned goods, which I am very proud of that shelf. I like to just sit and look at it. So here are my Azure shopping shelves. You can see all of this is just like stuff that I bought bulk that I keep here or things that I get on clearance. Like we have a Costco outlet. And if I buy convenience foods, it's usually because it was a really good deal. And like this whole case of macaroni was like $10 at the Costco clearance outlet. So I'll buy stuff like that. Things like It was like these little snack bars they were on close out at the Costco clearance outlet for a few bucks. So, you know, I appease my kids desire for things like that whenever it doesn't cost very much. Otherwise, you know, I'm buying things from Azure standard or Azure standard, uh, where I've got my vinegar. Actually this entire shelf is vinegar because in my mind, if there were an emergency situation where I wasn't able to get what I needed, having the ability to preserve food would be pretty important. So I've got lots Lots of vinegar. All of this is just stuff that I buy by the case. I buy it periodically, you know, I might only buy coconut cream one time of year, but I buy the whole case worth, so I've got it the rest of the year. Same thing with things like peanut butter and mustard and ketchup. Over here, I've got all of the pastas. Again, I only really buy pasta maybe once every nine months or so, but when I do, I buy a case of everything. And stock it up and we just come out here and treat this like a grocery store. I actually have space here. We have recently been really organizing this and, you know, finishing up with our shelving, you know, getting our freezer out here and just really streamlining it all. This all will be even more organized in coming months, you know, going into winter. We just did the overhaul. It ends up getting to be kind of a mess. at the end of summer. we're busy outside we're doing the garden. this has a ton of tomatoes in it that we need to process that we're gonna can and then you know the onions are gonna freeze dry. onions i forgot to show you down in this here's where all of my potatoes and onions are. i actually usually leave these open just so that there can be some airflow in here um but you can see all this is down here. oh there we have a nice pig leg a prosciutto ham that's been aging for A couple years but yeah they there's there's some room for consolidation here. One of my goals in coming months is to prepare more shelf stable like meats and ready-made meals. I've been doing some of that with my canning and I've got more space here. Once I consolidate my my plan is by the end of the next couple months for this entire shelf to also be filled with canned goods and I mean we're also going to be using this stuff because we're in winter now and we don't have So yeah, this is our pantry. This is Jessica's food clubhouse. Yeah. This is my food clubhouse. That's actually what we call it, is my food clubhouse. Because when we first built it, and it wasn't as cool then, because I didn't have all the shelving. I had, I think, two shelves that we brought from our old house, and I used to come, and I mean, I've recorded my podcast out here, so I spent a lot of time just sitting out here, and if I needed a quiet place, this is where I would come. I think I covered everything. I don't know. It feels so weird to, like, give a tour of a space like this. This is why I've never done it. Hmm. Because... I don't know like letting somebody in your pantry feels kind of private. Yeah no I'm like what are we doing next? Touring our bedroom? This is where we sleep? No I do think that this could be really beneficial for people to see. I love seeing the videos where people have these gorgeous basements in their 200 year old farmhouse or whatever you know like they've got these really inspiring food storage places and for a while because I lived in you know A double wide in South Carolina. I felt like, well, I, you know, I had all my totes under my bed and I just felt like, I don't know that I can create like an inspiring food space. We'll do a little bit of a much different video, but like, all right guys, here's our long-term food storage and we'll go under the bed. Pulling all the totes out. We did that for a long time. And I think, honestly, if you're going to get into trying to build up a pantry, you may have to get creative. You know, we had buckets in the corner of our room and, you know, the tops of the closets had cases of food and my canned stuff was underneath all the beds. We did that for a long time. This has definitely streamlined the way that we eat, the way that we shop. It has made it a lot easier to... Put things up where I can see them and remember they exist and therefore use them. Yeah, that's specifically where we got this like width of shelf is because it's not so deep that you can bury stuff and forget about it. Yeah, because I need to be able to see things to remember that they exist. So yeah, this has definitely been a game changer. I would have I would build this over and over again. And it is very inspiring to me like coming out here. It feels... I mean, it just feels like the reward for a lot of hard work. This represents a ton of work, not just in what it takes to put things up, but what it takes to make it, to grow it. And keep it organized. And to keep it organized. And cook from it. Yeah, and keep everything fresh. Make sure you're not letting things spoil. It's just, overall, this is a space that makes me feel really proud. Good job. I'm proud of you. Good job, Sauer. It's a pleasure doing business with you. Alright. Thank you guys for hanging out. Let us know if you have any questions. We'll try to answer them. We bless you. Until next time.