"New" (?) Freeze Dryer...

They are nice and can preserve any type of food including ice-cream.  Good if you have lots of left over food that you want to preserve. 
They run for a long time and use some electrical power. 

My limited experience, for the cost of a freeze dryer one could purchase a year supply of food.   I think it is a multiple family investment where persons can share the use...  I think hard to justify for a small family.   

I've been in a freeze dry group for Harvest Right for a few months, and the folks who've gotten machines from Stay Fresh seem to be largely unimpressed. That being said it could only be that they're HR fanbois and they'd just have a sook regardless.
Looks like their prices are pretty comparable to HR and given that I'm paying half the price for shipping to Aus for a machine as the cost of the machine itself, that'd be where they'd get a good market from Aussie buyers.


In regards to whether or not FD'ers are valuable/viable in general, I'm buying ours to cover the usage of three families. And to be honest probably family elsewhere in the country if we need to because FD food ships extremely cheaply if required simply because it's so light! But it's definitely not something I'd invest in unless you're utilizing it pretty regularly. They're expensive to buy and expensive to run compared to traditional food storage methods.

But that being said a year's supply of freeze dried food for my family alone would be nearly $12k if I were to invest in Readywise buckets, and that wouldn't even realistically be a full year as it'd only be two meals a day for each of us. No one's getting a variety of diet or food preference/dietary requirements from those bulk purchases either.
The machine is costing (with shipping, but extras like an impulse sealer and good quality bags) just over $6k and we can FD anything that we like within reason. We also know what's going into the food because it's either coming from known gardens or we at least will be making the meals ourselves.

So the plan is to tell the inlaws that we're happy to FD for them for a cut of whatever produce is brought in. They trade well in their local farmer's market and we'll have access to a really great and really cheap market ourselves very close by where they regularly have sales on quick-use produce that'll freeze dry like a dream.
It'll probably end up close to the same price at the end of the day but we'll have FAR more control of what goes into our food, and the ability to take advantage of quick-use produce. If it works out well we'll be able to provide more people with food for about the same long term cost as it would have cost us to just buy buckets etc.

Soooo without actually having the HR in my possession yet I don't know whether or not it'll work out as my grand plans are made. But I'll definitely be posting my thoughts and impressions when we do. Good thing that anyone selling into Australia has to accept Australian consumer law to ship into the country lmao.