Education of Thawed Beef

The irony of discovering thawed beef in January did not escape me.

Neither did the stench.

One of my chest freezers had died.

I had not used this freezer for a couple of years.

In fact, during the peak of Covid when people were stocking up on food and freezers were hard

to buy, I thought about selling a few of my extra freezers.

After all, I have a walk-in freezer that holds my beef and lamb until customers are ready for it.

I tend to obsess about that walk-in freezer.

I need it to work -- all day every day.

Every time I step outside, I listen for the hum of the motor and take a deep breath of relief every

time I hear it.

About a month ago, when I stepped outside, I heard silence.

At that moment, the thermometer registered -13 degrees so I didn’t panic, but I called the heating

and cooling repair person.

No rush, but please come fix my walk-in, I asked.

The forecast predicted above-freezing temperatures soon so I decided to be proactive.

My brother, my friend, Tiffany, and I moved two pickup loads of my beef and lamb from the

walk-in to my extra chest freezers.

I was proud of my proactive solution that eliminated one item on my worry list.

Good thing I had not sold these 12 freezers during Covid.

Instead of listening for the hum of the walk-in motor, I checked my chest freezers every day --

until my son came home from the Air Force and we went to Bozeman to play for a couple of

days.

The weather had warmed up so I felt more confident about leaving the ranch.

I wish I knew how the freezer felt about my absence.

This thawed beef is a financial hit, but it isn’t the worst one.

Once, I came home from a funeral in July to discover that a breaker had flipped and I was the

proud owner of five freezers full of thawed, stinking meat and a checkbook that would miss

about $10,000.

I called the county sanitarian to find out if rotten meat was considered hazardous waste.

The kids and I inventoried and tossed each and every package into a horse trailer, barely making

it to the dump before it closed.

That was a bad day.

It was also the day I called the electrician to install more breakers. After all, I don’t expect July

to cool down any time soon.

It was also the day I changed insurance companies because my policy clearly stated the contents

of freezers were insured, yet the company would not reimburse me.

The price of education is expensive sometimes.

Another time, I found the door of one of my upright freezers ajar.

The meat inside was still partially frozen.

I called my all-knowing brother-in-law who gave me a quick lesson on pressure-canning meat.

I dropped $100 on a pressure cooker that would hold eight quart jars and saved $1000 of beef – a

far-cheaper education.

I still have some of that delicious canned meat.

Tiffany and I held our noses and found a few pounds of still-frozen stew meat, but almost all of

the roasts, soup bones and broth bones in my broken freezer are too far gone to salvage for my

personal consumption.

The guard dogs and barn cats will enjoy them for the next few days.

I’ll meter them out, little by little so they don’t enjoy them too much.

I know about canine pancreatitis from another hard lesson I learned with a good dog who never

recovered from eating too much beef at once.

And I’ll haul that freezer to the dump.

I need to clean out that space anyway.