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Preserving Food

FollowingHim said:
@Joleneakamama, we are very familiar with running freezers off solar power.

If you set the temperature to the lowest it will go, and have the freezers in a cool location (outside air: garage, porch etc), you can then simply put a power timer on them that turns them off in the evening and back on once the sun comes up. That way they are rarely drawing any electricity from the batteries, and basically serve as their own battery, being powered directly by the sun (plus a small amount of battery draw on cloudy days). Any freezer will easily go for 12 hours overnight with the power off. The batteries are the most expensive part of the system, this lets you get away with a smaller battery bank (but you still need a battery bank).

Whenever you're putting in a fresh load of meat, remove the timer and let them have continuous power until the meat is frozen, watching the batteries and using a generator as required. Once frozen put the timer back on.

Buy brand new freezers, the most power-efficient you can find for your budget. This is way cheaper than buying enough solar panels and batteries to run old, less efficient freezers. When we upgraded our fridge & freezer to larger brand new ones, we managed to roughly double our total fridge & freezer space, while roughly halving our power consumption for refrigeration, ie we were now using about 1/4 the electricity per cubic foot of fridge + freezer space. And that was buying a really cheap no-brand freezer that happened to have really good efficiency, and a Haier fridge. So not top-brand equipment, simply the most efficient we could afford at the time.

Use the old freezers as storage cupboards for nonperishable food, animal feeds or whatever. Or sell them to help pay for the new ones. Seriously don't be tempted to save money by keeping using old equipment, you won't actually save money.

However, our cheap energy efficient freezer can be very slow to actually freeze bulk food - I think the compressor has been undersized to save power and minimise manufacturing cost. This is ideal for solar power - it minimises the peak power draw when the compressor is starting and running, so minimises the inverter size you need, the smaller compressor just runs for longer. But it means it doesn't have the capacity to shift a lot of heat in a short time. So it may be worth keeping one older, but powerful freezer, to use occasionally to quickly freeze bulk loads of food while running from mains or generator power, before transferring to the efficient freezers for long-term storage.
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Great info!
 
If you idle a small older non urea diesel car with inverter connected to it, runs as small generator all day long, actually almost 2 days on full tank. They lean idle. Gas idles rich. Pure gas 110k (ethanol 60k) btu gal, new diesel 137k btu gal.
 
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Great info indeed! Thanks @FollowingHim!

We have already purchased a lot of panels. Need to design and install the system.

Having water from solar and grass here will let us have more off season lambs. That means more year round milk and meat, and less mass processing in the fall.

We need a solar cooling system for our high tunnel too. Evap coolers with a thermostat will keep the plants happy.

One thing at a time. :)
 
Sta
Joleneakamama said:
We could probably can a few steers without running out of jars, but I have no idea how many it would take. :p

I used to put a chicken in a quart jar.

You could probably get 1 1/2 + pounds of beef in a quart. How many jars would vary with the size of steer.;)
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Standard understanding is 2lbs per quart and 1lb per pint for any meat. Pack it tight. Generally Pressure canned for 90 min. @ 10 lbs depending on elevation. But I know world wide water-bath canning of meat is actually pretty common place.
 
Foxlily said:
Sta

Standard understanding is 2lbs per quart and 1lb per pint for any meat. Pack it tight. Generally Pressure canned for 90 min. @ 10 lbs depending on elevation. But I know world wide water-bath canning of meat is actually pretty common place.
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You must be using a ramrod to pack that stuff in there! Or is it just really lean meat?
 
Foxlily said:
Sta

Standard understanding is 2lbs per quart and 1lb per pint for any meat. Pack it tight. Generally Pressure canned for 90 min. @ 10 lbs depending on elevation. But I know world wide water-bath canning of meat is actually pretty common place.
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Maybe I should edit my post. That is a long ways off!
 
Asforme&myhouse said:
You must be using a ramrod to pack that stuff in there! Or is it just really lean meat?
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You'd be surprised how much it cooks down lol
If you don't pack it in, the full looking jar you put in comes out looking like a half full jar.. and you looking in your canner going.. where'd the meat go?
 
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Joleneakamama said:
Maybe I should edit my post. That is a long ways off!
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Not that far off.. I've never raw packed chicken though.. I usually make stock pull the meat can it and then can the stock after condensing it some.
 
steve said:
How many quart jars does it take to can a steer?
Inquiring minds want to know.
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Haven't even gotten to canning beef yet, still working through the hogs. They don't take as many jars as we pull a lot of cuts off for smoking.

Asforme&myhouse said:
About a pound of beef fits in a quart jar. So, dressed out, how much does that steer weigh?
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Dress % usually runs 60%, that give you a hanging weight, then for cutout %# of that, if you grind it all the cutout is usually around 50%. Higher though when you take bone in cuts. Starting weight of the steer depends on breed and fattness.

cubanito said:
If you idle a small older non urea diesel car with inverter connected to it, runs as small generator all day long, actually almost 2 days on full tank. They lean idle. Gas idles rich. Pure gas 110k (ethanol 60k) btu gal, new diesel 137k btu gal.
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If anyone is looking that direction, I suggest investigating the option of a thermal king diesel unit. Esp. as you can save money with non-tax diesel (in the US).
 
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How long is the shelf life good for QUOTE="steve, post: 216253, member: 216"]Reasons for canning meat:
1). Lack of freezer capacity.
2). In a no-electricity scenario it greatly extends the shelf life of protein.

As we say at our house “It may not be great, but it will keep body and soul together.”[/QUOTE]
 
When canning meat do you just put meat in the can and close it and pressure cook it. How late ng do you think the meat in the can will be good for. Looking to start preparing for when God brings me a family
 
I haven’t studied it yet, just doing our best to get some stored up.
Rotating stock will become important down the road.

There are plenty of YouTube videos available to instruct you, watch several and follow what makes sense.
 
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