Freezer Tetris

Some of you may remember our bad experience with U-Haul when we moved from our temporary rental home here to our new homestead.

The bottom line from this experience is it would be a cold day in hell before we ever rented a U-Haul again.

But we had one problem: Most of our shop tools, farm equipment, and a good portion of our household goods (notably books) are still in our old place, either stored in the barn thanks to the kindness of the new owners, or stacked in a storage unit in town. How to get them up to our new place without a rental truck?

So Don did a little digging and found a big box truck for sale. Not just any truck, either. It's a 26-foot monster that was being sold in a distant town by a furniture company so they could upgrade to a newer model. The price was right, and we had a mechanic friend check it out for soundness. Another friend (a retired professional truck driver) picked it up for us and deposited it at our old place (with the permission of the new owners, of course). Once we're finished using the truck, we'll sell it (doubtless to another person disgusted with U-Haul) and recoup our costs.

So there was the truck, parked at our old house while we transferred title, got insurance, got it registered, paid the taxes, got new license plates, and waited for the weather to cooperate.

Last Sunday, everything came together. We made arrangements with some neighbors to hire their strong teenage children. We left our house at 7 am, drove to Older Daughter's place to drop off Mr. Darcy for the day (where she took him on not one, but two day hikes!), and went down to move some items out of the barn. We were so busy, it didn't even dawn on me to pull out my camera and document the action until we were finished. (As you can see, we'll have to make another trip.)

With the help of so many willing hands -- boy, it was wonderful seeing some of our friends again -- we were actually back on the road sooner than anticipated, which was fine with us. We had a long drive ahead of us and knew the last part of the journey would be in the dark. Don was driving an unfamiliar vehicle. We had a lot on our plate.

The last thing we loaded in the very back of the truck (so they could be unloaded first) were two of our three chest freezers (one mostly empty, one very full). The third (full) freezer will have to wait until the next trip.

We stopped in town to gas up before hitting the highway. I called Older Daughter to let her know we were on our way. As I pulled out of the gas station and tried to roll up the passenger-side window, I heard a horrible grinding noise -- and the window went dead. Oh joy. (Give me old-fashioned hand-crank roll-down windows any day.)

Remember our mantra for moving to a new home: "It's an Adventure." This is just part of the Adventure, right?

So I had to drive for four hours -- stopping to pick up Mr. Darcy -- with the window wide open. In winter. It's an Adventure, yay! Besides, "Could be worse. Could be raining."

After many long and cold hours on the road, we pulled into our driveway. We were exhausted and (in my case) chilled to the bone. The only thing we did before calling it a night was to plug in the freezers.

An advantage of owning this box truck is we're not in a hurry to unload it (except the freezers, of course). Since it's not a rental, we don't have a deadline to return it and can unload it at our leisure.

The next morning, we dealt with the freezers. We removed the contents of the mostly empty one into totes, then moved the empty unit into the barn. Then it was time to tackle the contents of the very full freezer. It took many totes to empty the contents before we were able to move the freezer itself.

This box truck has a lift gate -- and oh what a joy not to have to shove and push and pull heavy items up and down a ramp! We slid the freezer onto the lift gate, and hey presto, it was lowered to the ground. Yeah, I could get used to this.

We put the freezer on a flatbed cart Don made a few months ago, and pulled it around to the back porch.

Then I started sorting the contents. Most of it is beef from the animals we butchered a couple years ago. It's nice to have beef again -- we haven't had any since leaving our old house.

But we had lots of totes filled with meat -- far more, it seemed, than would fit into the porch freezer. Did things multiply on the way home? Time to play Freezer Tetris.

I sorted the meats into rough categories -- ground beef, roasts, steaks. Ground beef was the biggest pile, so I got some boxes and began packing them as tight as I could.

Each box held two layers of meat, and I was able to stack the boxes three deep. Four boxes of ground beef, two boxes of miscellaneous steaks, random roasts as well as a turkey and some pork shoehorned in wherever there was room, and voilà: the freezer was packed to the brim, but in a logical order. I had one small box left over that we put in the freezer in the house refrigerator.

Oddly enough, though we're brand new to this property and nowhere near ready to have farm animals yet, having a freezer full of beef makes us feel less like city slickers.

After all, what farm doesn't play Freezer Tetris once in a while?

Cleaning out the freezers

Apparently it's become a national pastime to clean out corners during the lock downs. Goodwill and other charities have seen donations skyrocket as people examine the contents of closets they haven't seen in years.

We, too, have been cleaning out corners, more because of our imminent move than for any other reason. But one neglected place we hadn't touched was the freezers.

As often happens, our chest freezers had become chaotic and disorganized. You know how it is with chest freezers. They're more efficient (energy-wise) than upright freezers, but it's easy to pile things on top and lose track of the fossils at the bottom. So Don and I decided to disembowel the appliances, inventory the contents, reorganize as needed, and discard the unneeded.

After a great deal of effort, we sorted the freezers so that one is dedicated to meats...

...and the other to everything else.

I also took out a large number of random bags of...stuff. Fossils. I have a baaaad habit of frugally bagging something up for future use, but not labeling it because of course I'll remember what it is. If I'm so clever, why the bleep don't I just label things?

With a few items, I actually did identify what it was. Wasn't this clever of me? Why can't I remember to do this all the time?

After defrosting the items just enough to identify the contents, I sorted everything for canning. For fruits, I had a bit of peach purée, some juice from our cherry bushes, and miscellaneous raspberries.

I had enough raspberries that I thought about making jam. I'm a highly experienced canner, but jams and jellies are beyond me. Why? Because I don't like them (too sweet). But what else could I do with the raspberries? So I bought some low-sugar pectin and prepared to make raspberry jam.

But after reading the intimidating instructions...

...I changed my mind. Why should I go through so much effort to make something we wouldn't eat anyway? But I didn't want to waste the wonderful raspberries. In the end, I simply packed the berries in jars and canned them in a water bath, along with the peach purée and cherry juice. I like fruit purée in yogurt, and raspberry purée is perfect. Easy peasy, problem solved.

For meats, I had beef gravy, sweet and sour meatballs, and teriyaki pot roast. I divvied everything into jars and pressure-canned the lot. Meats are always pressure-canned for the same amount of time, so I could mix-and-match jars without a problem.

Now our freezers are better organized, and I have a few more jars of preserved food in the pantry. Not a bad project.

Fall FELL hard

There has been a great reversing of the celestial weather machine. A week ago we were sweltering in 90F temps and bone-dry. Now it's windy, rainy, and cold. Fall has fallen.

Knowing we had a change in season coming, we've been embarking on a variety of projects with an aim toward buttoning up our farm for the winter.

Last week I harvested the peaches. These are the first fruits from our young newly planted orchard, and I couldn't be more thrilled to be picking my hands-down all-time favorite fruit from our own trees at last.

Altogether I got about 20 lbs. of fruit.

I won't bother canning them -- I have plenty of canned peaches -- but will instead happily eat them fresh. For a few days, I let them finish ripening on top our cookstove...

...until the fruit flies discovered them. Then I covered them with mosquito netting.

You can see the flies, pounding their little fists on the netting, wanting in. Tough patooties, guys.

Meanwhile Don embarked on cleaning out the bull pen sheds. Right now we don't have a bull, so we're going to get two piglets from a neighbor and raise our own pork. The sheds are the perfect place to put them (with a few modifications, of course) and the bull pen is spacious and well-fenced (I'll be aproning the perimeter to sabotage their rooting efforts).

He's also been transporting our enormous manure compost pile into the pasture where we'll be growing wheat next spring. The manure will be tilled into the soil this fall so it can decompose over winter.

The chickens think this is just a spiffy plan. There is nothing better for chickens than a manure pile.

I also started cleaning out the back of the barn. We have plans for this area -- moving the old chest freezer in place for grain storage, and putting in a new milking stall. But first, the mess. Before:

And after. The milking stall will go in the section where the florescent-orange reflector is; and we manhandled the chest freezer into position.

By the way, this will be my milking stall. We got this squeeze chute back in 2013 for an incredibly good price, but never used it. I have some cows I'd like to train to milk (notably Amy and Pixie, both half-Jerseys), and a squeeze chute will work perfectly for this purpose.

Next, the chest freezer.

It was filthy inside. But it's also mouse-proof, moisture-proof, and holds 25 cubic feet of material. In short, the perfect place to store bulk chicken feed.

So I scrubbed it out as best I could (without actually climbing inside) with a mop, then gave it a washover with bleach water. It will do for grain storage.

A couple mornings ago, the temperature dropped to 29F.

First frost on the windshield. Oh well, there goes the garden.

We also had rain moving in, the first appreciable rain in almost three months.

Time to harvest -- fast -- the garden. Everything got nipped by the frost. Tomatoes...

Red bell peppers...

Watermelons...

And beans, among much else.

The chipmunks are voracious this year. Sometimes, standing still among the corn tires, I could see as many as a dozen, diligently harvesting my harvest.

This past weekend was a frantic couple of days of harvest, trying to get things under cover before the rain hit. Potatoes:

Beans (the corn is pretty much done). Here's a "before" photo:

And an "after" shot.

Lots of beans.

I ended up piling them in the wheelbarrow...

...and dumping them in the barn.

I'll have to hasten and pick the pods off the plants, but that will happen after the rain starts when I can't work outside.

The chickens enjoyed the stripped-out beds...

...and ate any leftover corn they could find.

I saw an occasional tiny frog.

Chipmunks were everywhere, harvesting whatever they could.

Not just chipmunks. We've had chickarees around here too. This one was in an old bird's nest in the pear tree, munching on a pear.

The weather was definitely thickening up as we worked.

Younger Daughter started in on the green tomatoes.

We didn't have a whole lot of ripe tomatoes, but we had lots of green ones. I'll put these in a box with apples and bananas to supply ethylene, and run them through the food strainer as they come ripe.

The red bell peppers were still green, so I picked them all and will ripen them in the house.

The chickens got most of my watermelons, but this baby was growing so well I netted it so they couldn't eat it. With the vine dead after the frost, I went ahead and picked it.

It weighed in at 20 lbs.

The pear trees are massively loaded with fruit.

I started by picking the low-hanging fruit...

...which nearly filled the wheelbarrow.

But I still have two or three times as much fruit in the upper branches. Holy cow, the Magic Pear Fairy is soon gonna have to wax up her wings and once again fly around the neighborhood, bestowing the blessings of pears on anyone she can catch.

But I had to put aside the rest of the pears until later. We had other stuff to do.

Don cut up a bunch of rounds of firewood, which I split.

Then we stacked it on the porch. First firewood of the year!

The last step of the day was to bring in the cattle from the neighboring property we lease for grazing each year. The beasties were all peacefully browsing...

...until they heard the universal cattle call: "Bossy bossy bossy bossy BOSSY!!!!!"

Instant response! They all threw up their heads and came galloping.

Here comes Brit, always first through the gate.

The rest thundered after her.

Except Matilda, of course. Matilda doesn't "thunder." She walks. Sedately.

Don had little Mr. Darcy on a leash to watch this twice-a-year "two-minute cattle roundup," as we call it.

The cattle came through the gate in no time...

...with elderly Matilda bringing up the rear in a stately fashion.

The cattle will stay on the wooded side of the pasture for the winter, where they have shelter under the barn awning when they need it.

It's a good thing we did all this harvesting and battening down, because today has been windy, rainy, and cold.

The fire in the cookstove feels good.

Winter is on its way. You can never forget that in north Idaho