Tuesday, 5 January 2016

Winter Freezer

Ice Maker
Years ago, well before we "modernized" and built the second half of our house (installed solar electricity, dug a well, added running water, an indoor bathroom, a septic tank) we depended on our root cellar for cooling and the great outdoors was our winter freezer. Warmer winters have altered the reliability of our outdoor freezer, but even back then we almost always had to contend with a January thaw. Then we'd pack snow around our frozen meat and make sure it was in an insulated box (old fridge, freezer or cooler) on the north side of a building, or we'd borrow freezer space from a friend till the thermometer dropped once again.

Nowadays we have a 5 cubic foot super insulated freezer from Denmark which uses only 540 watts per 24 hours, a 7 cubic foot propane fridge with a tiny freezer, and a dumbwaiter into our root cellar under the house...plus...the great outdoors. Back in the day we drank room temperature beer like the Brits, now we're spoiled and want cold beer or drinks with ICE CUBES!

By the beginning of winter (by temperature, not by calendar) my wee freezer is full to the brim with garden produce and lamb. I'm lucky to find an extra inch for ice cream. So I make ice cubes outdoors and put a cooler on my balcony for stuff I can't squeeze in. By the time the January thaw arrives the freezer has usually been emptied enough to rescue anything I've frozen outside. The dumbwaiter keeps our beer (and our wine, spuds, carrots, canned goods) and anything else that won't fit in the fridge at a few degrees above freezing in winter and at about 50F in summer.

This may all seem a bit complicating to those who live on the grid. Most of the country folks we know have 2 large freezers and a big fridge or two and think nothing of the power they use, unless, of course, the power goes off for an extended period of time. But years of energy conservation have made all this jiggling of foodstuffs from one place to another seem perfectly normal. It all fits into our "Small Country Solar Home Manual of Combinations", the one in our heads we should write down but never have - a manual of maintenance combinations that keeps us on top of all the systems we have in place so our farm will clip along at a reasonably smooth pace. Guess we should write that manual down pretty soon. They tell me old people can get quite forgetful.....something about memory banks getting clogged with years and years of information.

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