My Frost Proof Winter Food Storage

[MountainDon]

Things not included (missed) on those lists: oatmeal, cream of wheat cereal, grits, egg powder for bread, flour, salt, brown sugar, dried apple slices, apricots..... These all proved to suffer no discernible harm when frozen.

Dang, there was something else I forgot and now I forget what it was. 

Oh yeah! Milk. My tests have shown no harm if milk in the aseptic containers (Horizon organic and/or Rice Dream rice milk) is frozen and thawed, even repeatedly. So we have a stock of the 8 ounce sizes in the cabin, in addition to a couple of quart sizes for our planned Christmas break week stay.

Once we shut the fridge down I load all those into the fridge. It seems to keep slightly warmer in there than in the cupboards.


Note: Once there is snow or it's just cold enough to freeze quart bottles of water overnight if left ourside, we use jars of snow or frozen quarts of water to keep fresh foods, milk, cool in the freezer compartment. The first winter we used a snow bank, but its more convenient to use the freezer as a fridge and replenish the snow/ice once or so a day.

[considerations]

It's a very clever idea.  I think I'd have to bury something like that in a berm.  There's a fair amount of water close to the surface around here.   I've built up my long term stores again, but not taken steps to seriously hide them, just critter proofed and locked up.

[MountainDon]

Added a home made pulley to make the lifting out of a tube easier



Three plywood layers; 1/2, 3/4, 1/2   

[CjAl]

Its a good idea. Thats the same principle as was used for our outdoor horse waterer to keep the supply line from freezing in wi. Water line was 6' deep, at the elbow where it turned up to the fountain it traveled up the center of a 6" pipe. The heat from the bottom of the hole traveles up to keep it from freezing. It worked untill temps got to about -10. When id have to drop a light bulb down the hole.

[MountainDon]

So far, so good!!  Over the two weeks since our last visit to the cabin the temperature dropped to -2 degrees one night. There have also been several nights that saw the nighttime temperatures fall into the "teens".  We just returned from 4 1/2 days at the cabin. We had to snow shoe in. We found the temperature in the food tube to be 44 F. I pulled two tubes for our meals. We had more than enough food as I had neglected to take left overs from the dinners into account when planing the menu.  The left overs made for a good lunch the next day.

[Squirl]

Thanks for the update.  Great to see it worked.

[Barry Broome]

Excellent information Don. I was very curious to see how this would work out.