How to properly store pemmican

A NOTE ON PEMMICAN:

Proper processing of pemmican is *NOT* the "spray-and-pray" operation you have been led to believe, if you want to avoid food poisoning, or decomposition!!!

I have had it mold on me within a week. This is what I found works best:

Dig a nice, neat hole, square is best, where the top of your container is 3 feet underground at minimum, INSIDE OF A BARN, OR OTHER SHELTER! Make sure the hole is large enough to hold your container, with plenty of room around it, and above it.

What you're making here, is a primitive refrigerator, and it's not difficult to do.

Line the bottom of the hole with flat stones of the same thickness. Fill the joints with either mortar, or as I do, finely chopped straw, mixed with wet clay. You should be able to make a solid, damp ball with your mortar. You don't want it sopping. Pack mortar into joints with a small stone, bone, or stick. BTW, the "mortar", in the above process, is how the first bricks were made. You can do this also, if you want to go through the trouble.

Line the walls with flat stones, using the same type of stones and "mortar".

Build a low fire inside the hole to dry the joints.

Clean ash out of the hole.

Pour three inches of pea-gravel in bottom of pit, level it.

Place pemmican into a CURED, CLAY POT that has plenty of room, and a lid.

Pack straw in bottom of pot. Place packed in intestine pemmican in pot. Fill remaining space in pot with packed straw. Place lid on pot, seal with beeswax, regular wax, clay mud or whatever you like that will keep things out.

EVERYTHING must be CLEAN, and MATCH STICK DRY!!!

Place pot containing pemmican in hole. Fill around pot with fine pea-gravel up to the top of the pot. At that point, what ever space is left in the top of the hole, PACK it with wood shavings (Cedar, pine, sassafrass, sweet flag, anise, or any combination thereof is the best for natural vermin repellent), all the way to the top of the hole. Cover hole with heavy burlap (use LAYERS!), then a plastic tarp (Primitives used animal hides). Both of which are larger than the hole. Cover everything with at least 6 inches of dry, clay soil.

Check every couple months. After six months, check bi-annually.

I have kept pemmican a few years this way, although that may be pushing it.

This is how they stored food in ancient Egypt.
This is how the AmerIndians did it.
This is how African bushmen, and Aborigines, STILL do it.

It works.

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How to properly store pemmican