Freezer preference

[booker81]

A nifty trick I figured out a while ago is to get the big cloth bags for shopping (I like the big Aldi bags here, they are huge, well made, and cheap). Use those to fill up and sort goods in the freezer....whenever you need to get stuff out, you can just pick up the bag handles and pull them out, until you get where you want, then just put them back in. No frostbite, and you don't have to stack them perfect.

I have two chest freezers and an upright, I prefer chest freezers.

I also sort by type in my Aldi bags - venison, turkey, chicken, pork, veggies and "stuff".

 

[koonaone]

>Fill up any empty space with plastic milk jugs filled with water. Once that water freezes, it will stay cold much longer in an outage.....
>Just take out the frozen milk jugs when you need the space.


Hear, hear. Top of the line advice if you are in a place with regular power failures. They are also a source of water if the well pimp

needs power to provide water. Gnash gnash teeth. Our recent forest fires here in BC cut power for days.

douglas

 

[Baymule]

UPRIGHT!!! UPRIGHT!!!! Unless you enjoy head down, bottom up like a duck, scrounging for stuff at the bottom that turns out to be 5 years old. EEEWWWW!!! I have had my upright for 37 years and it is like the pink ever ready bunny--it's still going. For power outages due to hurricanes-think WEEKS- we run the generator and eat lots of stuff we hadn't planned to. LOL For sure, nobody in the neighborhood goes hungry haha. My upright is manual defrost and I don't have much problems with freezer burn.

 

[Kittymomma]

Chest freezer! We've gotten rid of both of our uprights and went to chest freezers only.

1. Much more energy efficient.
2. Frozen goods stay good much longer--no freezer burn when properly packaged
3. Food stays frozen longer when power goes out (as others have mentioned) we have a generator, but don't worry about it with a full freezer if the outage is under 48 hours.

The lack of shelves can be a downside, but with a bit of thought and the grid style dividers that come with most larger sized chest freezer I haven't found it to be a problem. When we butcher I loosley sort the meat into sections--burger in one (or two) roasts in another, "good" steaks in with the roasts, and stew meat goes in with the other steaks and ribs. I also keep the beef, pork, poultry, and wild game seperate so I don't spend a ton of time head down in the freezer letting the cold air escape.

We have a super large ("Hoffa") freezer and a med. large one. They are both full in the fall, but by early Spring I consolodate everything into the larger one, clean and power down the medium one. I'm getting ready to put everything in the med. one now so I can defrost and clean out the large one before we butcher next month.

 

[Buck Creek Chickens]

I've got 4 chests and use plastic milk crates to keep things organized, one is for beef (a full half) one for pig (a whole), one for veg. the last for everything else (chicken). since large amounts of the same gos in once a year or so all the old comes out the fresh in then old on top so it gets used first

 

[Ahab]

Another vote for a chest freezer. We had a large and comparatively energy-efficient upright for 15 years, but a remodeling project took its space, and new space opened up that a chest freezer used more efficiently. We noticed a big difference in our electric bills (around 20%) the first year, and the second year we had it, we had a 9-day power outage in the Great Ice Storm of 98; the chest freezer's contents stayed frozen, even when opening it every few days to transfer food to a cooler for immediate needs. The upright, in a two-day outage in the 1980s, half-thawed its entire contents.

The big downside of a chest freezer is enforced organization. If you're the sort of person who tosses everything into the back of the closet and then gets upset because you can't find anything, you don't want a chest freezer. But if you're willing to enforce a rigid order--in ours, we have four sliding baskets that came as original equipment which we use for miscellaneous catch-alls: leftovers, bits-bags for stock, and other difficult-to-categorizables; below that, everything is in stacking plastic bread-truck boxes of similar products: all the broccoli and other coles here; all the peas and beans there; all the lamb in those two; last year's deer in that one; the fish in the other one; miscellaneous birds in this one here. When boxes are emptied, they're refilled with gallon water jugs to retain the cold in case of power failure (and because a full freezer runs more efficiently than a half-empty one). For no other reason that it made sense at the time, all the meat lives to the right, and all the vegetation lives to the left.

Before we found the bread boxes, we used plastic grocery bags to pigeon-hole things. Now that grocery bags are becoming scarcer, cloth bags, as a poster mentioned above, would be a far more durable alternative.

 

[anthonyjames]

I am looking for a freezer as well and had the same questions. If you are looking to keep about 100 birds and 10 turkeys (hopefully no more) what size freezer would you be looking at?
Would 1 work or more than one. I currently have 150 birds (Rangers) on pastures for November processing with my 30 turkeys. I have sold about 40 of the birds already and 15 of the turkeys. So I am trying to think in advance. And possibly will have 10 - 15 rabbits to put in there as well.

Thanks

 

[stanglover2001]

Chest freezer is my vote, my grandmother owns one, and my mom owns one, and we just bought ours for the chickens. Both my grandmother and mom have had theirs for years. We need to put more food in ours the DH wanted it to be large so we bought one from Home Depot it was a GE and was $400 but it holds sooo much food!
But I'm hoping to start cattle and hunting deer, so that'll fill the freezer!!!

 

[al6517]

I vote chest !!!!! We have 2 chest and 1 upright alongside the fridge, The upright is used for small everyday type foods and ice but the chest freezers are the ole standby workhorses. I built some partitions for the chest freezers and it makes finding things really easy, and they defrost great.

AL

 

[Hillsvale]

I have three chest freezers.... but if I were to get an upright it would be the sears 22 cf manual defrost, on research auto defrost can actually cause your mean to have freezer burn.