And I thought I was prepared....

With the remnants of hurricane Sandy bearing down on our little corner of WV we have been busy the past few days making last minute preparations in case we lost power from either high wind or snow accumulations. Part of these preparations included rearranging food in our two freezers so that we could concentrate on using food from one and using the other for more long-term storage.  This strategy is not just because of the storm but is also part of our winter food-usage plans.  Some weeks ago I had also defrosted these two large freezers and placed food that needed to be eaten first in the freezer compartment of one of our two refrigerators.  This is the same fridge that is in my little milking area and where I store my milk.  Last minute storm preps yesterday involved a trip to town in the morning to pick up some milk since the goats are tapering off now with once-a-day milking and to pick up a few other perishable items.

Yesterday when I went to rummage in that refrigerator's freezer compartment I discovered that the food was mostly defrosted.  What????  How could that be?  Had I been so preoccupied with storm preparations that I failed to notice the refrigerator wasn't even working?  Guess so.  Unfortunately I had packed that little compartment full when I cleaned out the large freezer so I had a lot of mushy food to sort through.  There were a couple of packs of homegrown sausage and bacon, some sauteed shitake mushrooms, blackberries we had picked, and bags of cranberries slated for future muffins this winter.  There were also some zip-lock bags of goat milk that I had saved for soap-making.  There was also lots and lots of sweet corn from our garden.  We determined that everything was still fit to eat (mostly) so the day was spent trying to salvage all this food.  In the end I made a huge pot of corn chowder with the corn, bacon and mushrooms and a blackberry cobbler for dinner.  That may end up being dinner for the week based on the quantities involved.  I made cranberry sauce from the several bags of cranberries and I ended up cooking the sausage and we will reheat it to eat with our eggs and whatever else I can think of that goes with sausage.

One bag of store-bought strawberries leaked all over the freezer and mingled with some leaking goat milk (yuck) and I just couldn't manage to deal with all that corn.  Fortunately we have chickens that will appreciate what we couldn't save.  Now there is a cooler full of chicken food sitting on the porch in the great outdoor refrigerator until I get it fed to the chickens.  It is snowing now so I think it will keep fine, much better than in my dead fridge.  Because we tend to always have a back-up strategy, we moved important items (beer and cheese mostly) to a newer fridge that we had not placed in service yet.  This is mostly because I still need to run some electric to where that fridge is located.  It is now connected by a 25-foot extension cord.  I suppose that project will have get moved to a higher priority on that "to-do" list. This is also where I need to thank Don for spending a couple of hours yesterday cleaning out the new fridge that had accumulated a bit of mold and yuck from sitting empty for a few months.

As this day wears on the snow just keeps falling and we now how 4 inches of accumulation and it is now predicted to keep on falling until tomorrow sometime.  So:

Happy Halloween!