When we moved here to the lake from the claim last September (we left "home" in Alberta on July 31 and spent about a month at our claim cabin) we decided not to move our propane refrigerator with us. It was freezing at night already and we were able to keep food cold by leaving the cooler outside overnight. Winter, which followed shortly after made keeping food cold even less of a problem. We put the cooler outside at intervals throughout the day and found that if it were no colder than -10 degrees Celsius, nothing would freeze inside - even if left overnight, except maybe lettuce and cucumbers... We had two deepfreezes here as well, which, of course looked after themselves when left outside for the winter. We didn't run the generators on the deepfreezes from November until late March, save for the odd warm spell this winter. I am not saying I will give up my refrigerator when we get home, but we proved that life can be lived easily without it in cooler climes for much of the year. Think of the money saved! Heating and cooling are the two biggest power eaters around.
Now that it is warm again, we run the deepfreeze (we are down to one - see below for what is going on with the second one...) for 2 to 3 hours daily with a 1200W generator - this maintains the freezing easily enough When we had the two we used our 3000W generator. Since we are still using a cooler as our "refrigerator" and the snow is all gone - I found that the culvert helping our spring cross the road up the hill still had several feet of perfectly clean ice in it. We just have to chip it out with the axe and fill the cooler. We have a Coleman Extreme cooler (if you are ever in the market for a good cooler - these are the ones to use - both of our families use them) which keeps ice for up to a week. Problem solved!
About a month ago we cleaned the last of the food of our second deepfreeze - eliminating one. This deepfreeze came in handy when we transported the wolverine home. 4 wolverines were trapped this winter, 2 were sold at auction and 1 each was kept by Tim and Paul. We hope to have ours taxidermied, and in order to do this - it is best left to the taxidermist to skin it. This means keeping it "frozen whole" until that time. He is now safely tucked away at my Mom and Dad's farm, until his next move to the taxidermist. He has even survived a power outage there for close to 2 days (thank goodness for backup generators!) during a recent snowstorm. He smelled bad enough when he was fresh - I can't imagine him after being thawed for a few days!
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