My Freezer & Pantry Challenge

[meganjane]

Alas, not in summer as we don't have a cool room.
Not very often in winter, either as that's DH's busiest time.
No, I buy pretty much all our meat. Crazy, isn't it? 2500 sheep, and I buy our lamb.

[cookie1]

Fair enough. A cool room is sort of needed as then you can do several at a time.

[meganjane]

Even for one sheep carcass, you need a coolroom. They're big and need to hang for at least 3 days.
I'd love a cool room...

[andiesenji]

One of my friends who lives in the Sierra foothills and doesn't have room for a big freezer(or enough electricity) constructed a cool room by building a concrete block shed, leaving little openings on two walls and inside stacked flue tiles that he had cut in half crosswise.
He rigged up a system to drip water on the top of the flue tiles that trickles down and the evaporation really chills the interior.
It has a heavy galvanized iron roof and door to keep out the bears and coyotes and the occasional mountain lion.  He uses it to hang game, as well as beef he is aging, curing hams, and also wine on the shelves above where the water is dripping. 
I thought this was extremely clever but he said he learned about it from an old timer who had lived in the area from the turn of the last century. 
His house sits on bedrock (granite) so the digging of a cellar was not an option.   

[cookie1]

Gosh MJ we should have sold you the one from the family farm. Too late now though.

[meganjane]

Yes, cookie, you should have!

andie, that sounds ingenious. I can't get my DH to change a light bulb, so I think a cleverly constructed shed is out of the question. He'll fix a tractor, truck, ute, sprayer or anything that he uses, but is absolutely useless around the house and yard. I do it all.

[Shiraz49]

I think it is a farmer thing MJ. If I ask my DH to do anything in the garden his reply is "I've got 50 acres of garden". However he is in the backyard now building a woodfired oven that we have been "planning" for the last 12 years. I think I finally got him to move when I asked for it never to be mentioned again because it would never happen. The dome is being started today. 

[judydawn]

Photo please when it is finished Shiraz49.  Lucky you even if you did have to wait 12 years

[Miranda]

Well done, Megan Jane. 
Something I should try and do with my freezer and some of the extensive collection in the pantry,

Read this somewhere on a site about decluttering when a woman was also doing the freezer thing:


After debating for some days as to what I might do with a couple of beef (lamb? who could tell... the inside of the bag was covered in frost) bones, I just pulled them out of the freezer to make some stock.

They're foam paint rollers.

[cookie1]

My DH puts fish bait in the freezer and also scraps to freeze so they won't make the bin smell. (He intends to put them in the bin on bin day). I have been known to defrost one of these wondering what it was. We would then eat baked beans for dinner.

[meganjane]

After debating for some days as to what I might do with a couple of beef (lamb? who could tell... the inside of the bag was covered in frost) bones, I just pulled them out of the freezer to make some stock.

They're foam paint rollers.

    Classic!!

I've done a similar thing recently, but it was dog food that I'd cooked up for Rambo! He wouldn't eat it, either.