Here at Montague Commoners, we wish we felt silly for filling our basements with rice and beans a few years ago. Unfortunately, we seem to be stuck in the timeline where having some basement beans kinda feels like a good idea. And making sure that all of our neighbors have access to basement beans of their own feels like an even better one.
So we’re ordering a huge batch of dry bulk food, and we’re hosting a three day event at City Hall to get it all packed into mylar bags with oxygen absorbers to give it a 25+ year shelf life. Everyone who participates will take home a 2 week emergency food supply that you can basically ignore until you need to crack it open.
What’s in each bucket share?
- 4lbs of beans
- 6lbs of rice
- 2lbs of wheat
- 2lbs of corn
- 2lbs of rolled oats
- 1/2lb of powdered milk
- 1/2lb of salt
- 3lbs of sugar
- 3lbs of pasta
- 2lbs of potato flakes
How much does a share cost?
Each share takes about $50 in materials and about 2 hours to package up. So if you would like a bucket of your own, you’ve got three options:
- Sign up for one 2-hour work shift and give us $50
- Sign up for two 2-hour work shifts, and give us $0.
- Sign up for zero work shifts, and give us $120.
What about people with food allergies?
We do our best to avoid cross-contamination when we’re bagging food, but we aren’t experts and we can’t guarantee that our standard bagged food will be safe for people with severe food allergies.
However, we are 100% committed to making sure that local folks with food allergies have the emergency supplies that they need, and we’re happy to work with you to set up a special food-packing session that meets your needs. Reach out to us on social media or email us at info@montaguecommoners.org.
The first event will be at Montague City Council Chambers from Friday, Jan. 16th to Sunday, Jan 18th. You can sign up for a shift here. Buckets will be available for pickup and delivery after the 18th.
If you are interested in hosting a similar event for your church or civic organization, talk to Wiley! We would love to partner with you. It took a LOT of math and trial and error to figure out the logistics for this project, but now that we’ve got those details figured out, it’s really easy for us to do it a second time. We would love to get to the point where everybody in the White Lake area has their emergency food needs covered, and we’re going to need to work with a lot of different local organizations to get there.
Montague Commoners 