I’m somewhat amused, and mildly dismayed, that it’s only now that the normies have discovered that, golly, buying in bulk saves money. Who knew? There is, of course, another alternative to dropping that much money at once and that is to actively pursue sales and bargains, which has generally been my strategy. There are plenty of cases, documented here on the blog, where I found a closeout or sale on some meat and swooped in on the whole batch.
But the notion that buying a freezer and half a beef is somehow newsworthy? Dude, one generation ago this was standard practice.
I’d say that its a pretty solid bet that 95% of the people reading this already have freezers, and keep them full all the time. And…thats not newsworthy.
Neighbor is headed over as I type to pick up his 100# portion of 360#’s of pork sausage. Splitting another pig next week. You’ll be able to spot the smart ones a few years into a collapse. Our clothes will still fit.
Yep, just topped it off again this week. 21 cubic feet of meat give me a warm feeling, even if the temperature in there is zero. Unfortunately, we have no one locally selling meat shares, so we go to a processor and buy it there.
1/2 beef late last year.1/2 pig last month. 1/2 beef next week. Deer and Elk season in 2 weeks, Antelope in 6 weeks. I think I’m good. I cant believe people are just thinking about doing this.
Our half beef (networked locally–they don’t bother to call it “organic”, but it is, and is grass finished) will be available this week, so I took advantage of another hot day last week to defrost the big freezer. It took six of my large styro boxes to hold its contents, but after defrost, I have one and a half shelves empty now (the ice blocks are space fillers and come out when the new beef gets here). The defrost was going fast with a box fan shoving warm air in, but in the middle of the project, we got another interesting wake-up call. A power outage. Went out about 1:00pm, and when it hadn’t come back on a couple hours later, I was able to check the power companies website on my phone. Cellphones still worked, and my inlaws in the outlying area still had power from their electric co-op, so I knew it was just local to us. The website said estimated return of power was 7:00pm, so just for practice I got my gennie out of storage, gassed it up, and was pleased to get both fridges, kitchen and garage, going on it. Power came back around 4:30, and the practice with preps was worth it, but now I have to drain the gennie and get it back into storage.
I also recycled two of the Jerry cans into the vehicles, and refilled with the expensive ($6.39!!!! grrrrr!) moonshine free stuff that I store with stabilizer for all my small engine needs. With intermittent use, I have enough stored gas to keep the fridges and freezers going for at least a couple months. In a long term grid down, I plan to get the Camp Chef stove up and running with the pressure canner to convert that frozen meat into room temp storage (yes, lots of propane in storage as well). One batch at a time will mean a several week project, but we’ve managed to score enough canning supplies to do it if it becomes necessary.
Yeah and gee whiz some of us actually have cows and pigs in these things called barns . . . Might want to stop the presses for this breaking news.
You’ll be able to spot the smart ones a few years into a collapse. Our clothes will still fit.
-that ain’t a good thing brother, go to the goodwill and get everyone some clothes that are a couple sizes larger than needed. For bonus points, and if you get lucky, get them in colors or patterns that break up your silhouette but aren’t actually a camo pattern. Lots of unwanted patterned shirts at the goodwill near me.
Alternatively , you might find you want something oversized when you go out in armor, or with some extra defenses tucked away under your shirt or jacket….
Get something that won’t stick out in your AO, maybe stained and rumpled Carhart… or maybe camo IS the best choice for where you live. Wouldn’t be for me, but I’m too close to a purple hive….
n
Again, purchased a whole beef. Grass fed, no hormones, no steroids. $4.50 a pound, hanging weight. Another freezer full. Buy local.
an old timer/rancher gave me a meat buying tip one time. When the county fair comes, bid on some 4H raised livestock, the 2nd and third place (and lower) finishers. They are well taken care of, fed well and generally produce the best meat.
Greg sure got a Wake-Up Call – Power Loss while Defrosting that Freezer may have been ‘lucky’ – What Happens when the Grid goes Dark for the last Time? I’ve given some consideration to a Freezer, but don’t have a good solution to run it fully ‘off-grid’ for as long as it takes to Eat what’s in it.
The $ Math of a Solar Grid, Batteries and Sine-Wave Inverter big enough to start a Compressor Motor will buy more groceries than ‘buying in bulk’ would save. As for what happens when the Lights go Out, the Ability to Produce (or know someone who does) Food will become much more important than how much do you have ‘stored’. 3AD Scout has the Plan – Hope he’s got Friends and Neighbors to Cover his Operations, and help out with the Critters.
Many of my neighbors are Mennonite and Amish. My Mennonite Neighbor who has provided me with a WEALTH of KNOWLEDGE and ADVICE produces 90% of his food on the homestead. What he doesn’t produce are things like sugar, salt, banking soda, gelatin, etc. I just bartered a bunch of “junk” (stuff I didn’t need nor want) for a very nice cast iron grain grinder. He is going to borrow it to try to grind his own Buck wheat. Hoping to have a litter of pigs in a week- . We can all process a whole cow if we all work together.
Something to think about along the lines of CZ’s stack of 50’s…
A few hundred dollar generator and several (or more) jerry cans of stabilized gas (pick your preferred version) will cover a couple freezers of food through the random power outages that are MASSIVELY more likely than the Long Dark.
Worst case, you go to a meat heavy diet while drying what you can and quickly building a network of useful people.
Remember that you don’t need (or want) to power that freezer or frig full time. You can easily cycle them to conserve fuel and reduce your noise signature.
We already have digital thermometers for every unit that can be read without opening the door. The most available one I’ve found is a simple indoor/outdoor thermometer, I prefer a wired one but that’s me. Put the probe part way down the freezer and route the wire out of the way. Then put the read-out where you can easily see it. For a normal frig we still put the probe in the freezer and simply wrapped the wire around the top hinge a couple times then set the read-out on top. Learn your temps now so you can cycle the units from a knowledgeable position.
And those random power outages can be caused by various issues. My small town ran into a power sub-station issue (we only have 1 feed from the main grid) at the same time one of the city generators (they have a few) was having issues… The city was on the edge of shutting off power to part of town due to the heavy AC usage across town while keeping the old folks home and the city water/sewer lift pumps going.
It didn’t quite get to that point but we were making plans to pull security on a smaller inverter generator that would have been required for the GF’s aunt who’s on oxygen 24/7. Plus they live at an apartment a few blocks from our house.
Steelheart
Something I forgot, a trick to organizing a chest freezer is to find some medium sized crates or plastic boxes, say a cubic foot or less. This will let you easily sort and rotate your food.
I have an assortment that I got from Dollar Tree a few years ago that work decent. They’d work better if they were all the same size… Solids seem to hold up better than the basket types.
Cardboard boxes will work too if nothing else is easily available. Just remember that the cardboard WILL fail if the unit warms up…
Note, this idea works better if you’re getting the meat etc. as you go vs buying a partial to full animal all at once. For that, I’d lean towards actual milk crates (which seem to be a stocked item at Home Depot).
Steelheart
I use plastic milk crates
One of the handiest things ever invented. The plastic dairy case. I worked at the company that invented them. They were an improvement over the wire crates. Paid my way through college from that job.
What you talking bout Willis? Everyone knows food comes from stores
Ditto on the milk crates, with 1″ X 1″ square sticks under and between. I went with three 7 cu ft chest freezers instead of one big one, if I have a Freezer Failure it will – probably – affect only one so only 1/3 of my frozen food is at risk (and there’s a spare “emergency” 5 cu ft unit still in the carton in the garage). I didn’t concentrate food type in one freezer, instead balanced it across all 3. Bulk out your “frozen thermal mass” with one liter water bottles that can be used as freeze packs, or buy freeze packs at Walmart.
Test your freezers for “maximum unpowered time.” Amazon sells wirless fridge/freezer thermometers (or use a standard wireless outdoor thermometer), get it down to -10F for a few days then unplug and see how long it takes to get to +10F, then how long to get back down to -10F and monitor how high the temp “coasts” before dropping. That’s your max off/min generator run time.
I’ve taken the same approach, I’ve got multiple smaller (7cuft) chest freezers vs one big one.
Most likely scenario is a freezer dies, second most likely is a local power issue (so no plugging all the freezers into the same power strip!) Local temp blackout (which we can ride thru for a long time if we don’t open the doors) is next, and I’ve got one quiet gennie, and one noisier but higher capacity, and stored fuel for short term blackouts like hurricanes. Last comes long term blackouts or long term grid failure, for which I’ve got a pallet of solar panels, several batteries, and several different inverters/ charge controllers. The solar is more than adequate for the freezers and recharging stuff, and small electrical appliances.
Modern freezers are very energy efficient and don’t have significant power draw.
n
The spec for the two newest of my freezers says they’ll keep food frozen for up to 36 hours if you keep it closed.
n
Harold, I like the stick idea between layer of crates. I’ll have to see what I can come up with for my collection of odd sized bins/crates.
And I realize that I don’t know how long it would take to chill one of our freezers back down to normal, which for me is around -15F or so.
Steelheart
I’m surprised the Socialist Government in England allows home freezers. About 6 years back the EU told the Brits that they had to toss their tea kettles. That’s what finally pushed the Brexit deal over the line. My British cousins have a thing about tea. It’s almost a religion.
I wonder what they will do now that the world’s major supplier of Tea is in total collapse. Cause? They bit hard on the green energy bullshit. Organic farming and total mismanagement are to blane. The world needs to take a look at Sri Lanka. If Sri Lankas government had looked at the near collapse of Spain in the early part of this century their fate might have been prevented. For every green energy job Spain created it killed two regular jobs. Soon they were in deep. And BTW. Bernie ” the nut job” Sanders can retake a flying leap off a mountain. Always pointing to Europe. Believe me. There is/ was many reasons my ancestors came here from Europe. The wars and the idiots who adopted Socialism were primarily to blame. They’re a mirror image of the Marxist idiots we have in charge here. They create policies that won’t work and when those blow up in their faces we are the ones that suffer.