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While I think it's okay to consider how one could build a freezer without our modern infrastructure and electricity, I don't really see it as a practical 'preparedness' or 'survival' tool. It's simply not needed. We have millions of years of human history before there was such a thing as a freezer. They survived. We could too. Canned, dried, cured, smoked, salted, jerked, etc--those are the most practical solutions for preserving meat in the absence of a freezer. My father grew up and survived without a freezer--and without electricity or running water. It works just fine if you have the skills to make it work. I admit, I don't right now... but I'm working on it!
On one hand as a few posters here have said, SURVIVAL without a freezer would be absolutely possible, entirely feasible, etc.
Now then...
Why do you supposed those who lived this way once upon a time worked and slaved and labored to find ways to make their own lives BETTER and EASIER and MORE LUXURIOUS than they were?
Because for all the character we ascribe to it and for all the one-uppishness we hold near and dear to our bosoms for our ability to SURVIVE without such things, in the end when you're eking out a living by scrabbling in the dirt and praying for good fortune, HARD WORK AND LACK OF LUXURIES SUCKS!
Anyone who thinks otherwise did NOT grow up living hard without luxuries. YES, you can survive, but BOY, do you wish things were easier.
On one hand as a few posters here have said, SURVIVAL without a freezer would be absolutely possible, entirely feasible, etc.
Now then...
Why do you supposed those who lived this way once upon a time worked and slaved and labored to find ways to make their own lives BETTER and EASIER and MORE LUXURIOUS than they were?
Because for all the character we ascribe to it and for all the one-uppishness we hold near and dear to our bosoms for our ability to SURVIVE without such things, in the end when you're eking out a living by scrabbling in the dirt and praying for good fortune, HARD WORK AND LACK OF LUXURIES SUCKS!
Anyone who thinks otherwise did NOT grow up living hard without luxuries. YES, you can survive, but BOY, do you wish things were easier.
I agree with this for the most part. On the other hand, I find that many 'necessities' that we now depend on are double edged swords. They may make things easier, but at the same time they tend to tie us down and cause us to be dependent. I'm not really saying that is good or bad; it's a matter of perspective, and is different for each person. Which do you value more, the convenience and ease or the freedom and independence? It's a tough question for most of us. Asked this question twenty years ago and I would have thought it insane to 'do without.' As I've grown older, I've questioned that stance and sort of gone the other direction. At some point, I really do want to 'do without' at the expense of convenience, but with the reward of self-sufficiency. It will take me quite some time to wean myself away from certain things; but, a little at a time. You eat an elephant one bite at a time. I've found studying traditional skills and technology to be fascinating; I've been practicing what I can with my limited resources. I'll get there.
Also, theoretically, every one of those conveniences you do without leads to a lower required income to sustain yourself. I don't think living in squalor and living a more self-sustainable, simpler lifestyle are synonymous. Two hundred years ago, the wealthiest didn't have any sort of modern convenience either. They just had more of what was available at the time. What I'm saying is that, yes, this sort of lifestyle would certainly be more work, but that's not the same as living in poverty. It's just a different lifestyle--I mean look at the Amish: They are typically not poor or beggers or anything like that. They just live in a different world. By their standards (the standards of their 'time'), they are quite well-off.
Actually, this is an interesting topic. I should start a new thread, rather than hijacking this one!
I agree with this for the most part. On the other hand, I find that many 'necessities' that we now depend on are double edged swords. They may make things easier, but at the same time they tend to tie us down and cause us to be dependent. I'm not really saying that is good or bad; it's a matter of perspective, and is different for each person. Which do you value more, the convenience and ease or the freedom and independence? It's a tough question for most of us. Asked this question twenty years ago and I would have thought it insane to 'do without.' As I've grown older, I've questioned that stance and sort of gone the other direction. At some point, I really do want to 'do without' at the expense of convenience, but with the reward of self-sufficiency. It will take me quite some time to wean myself away from certain things; but, a little at a time. You eat an elephant one bite at a time. I've found studying traditional skills and technology to be fascinating; I've been practicing what I can with my limited resources. I'll get there.
Also, theoretically, every one of those conveniences you do without leads to a lower required income to sustain yourself. I don't think living in squalor and living a more self-sustainable, simpler lifestyle are synonymous. Two hundred years ago, the wealthiest didn't have any sort of modern convenience either. They just had more of what was available at the time. What I'm saying is that, yes, this sort of lifestyle would certainly be more work, but that's not the same as living in poverty. It's just a different lifestyle--I mean look at the Amish: They are typically not poor or beggers or anything like that. They just live in a different world. By their standards (the standards of their 'time'), they are quite well-off.
Actually, this is an interesting topic. I should start a new thread, rather than hijacking this one!
What, precisely, is this particular brand of freedom and independence of which you speak? Because I hope you're aware that for all his writing, Thoreau didn't live that far outside of town.
When I was a kid I had a neighbor friend who was quite gung-ho about activities. At one point he stated in front of my father, to me, that we should go camping for three days by ourselves out in the forests on the farm.
I said "Okay, we'll need..." and began to list a few things, much to his aghast expression and distasteful snort.
"NO!" he said, "You don't need all that, all we need is a rifle, a potato and a handful of salt!"
He'd seen, you understand, too many movies.
My father, who grew up HARD during the Depression era, began to laugh. He knew I'd lived in squalor with my mother and he said "Mike's gone hungry before in his life, you can tell he has no intention of doing so again."
If you want a real taste of independence, go camping by yourself for an extended period out in some real wilderness, say, Denali in Alaska. I highly recommend it, DID it myself. Take along that "minimum" you romanticize as your requirements and get yourself into a position where you really have to rely on that minimum.
Now, before you read that TOO wrong, let me say that I totally agree with you on the sheer, unadulterated pleasure, the almost religious experience of self-sufficiency, of knowing you CAN DO IT, knowing that survival in the face of adversity is something you can accomplish.
But trust me, son, you need to go hungry a few times, REALLY hungry; you need to be cold and wet and miserable a few times when there's not a darned thing you can do about it, you need to be desperate to just light a fire to warm your hands -- you NEED to do these things in order to learn to appreciate the bare minimum properly.
Once you appreciate the bare minimum, then you learn how to use it. You learn that you're willing to strip down in the snow to get to your underwear, take 'em off and don the rest of those clothes quickly so that you have some dry tinder because your other efforts to light a fire haven't worked and you're freezing.
Eventually you learn those skills; you learn what you do and don't NEED in order to survive, and even to flourish.
And that's when you start learning to appreciate the little luxuries. Do you NEED a coffee pot? Nope, you can boil it just fine in a pan, strain it through a sieve cloth and have coffee. But darn it if that coffee pot doesn't make it taste like coffee instead of a punch to the jaw!
Have you ever wondered why even the most self-sufficient people slowly gather... STUFF?
I've pictured turning my little home into just as much of a self-sufficient stead as possible. And that garden is NICE, really nice, and it's enough to survive on JUST FINE.
But my place will be so much nicer with the fruit trees... and the berry trellises... and the grape vines... and the sauna... and the woodshed instead of the wood pile... and the chicken coop... and the duck pond... and the rabbit hutch... and the pizza oven... and the, and the, and the...
It's easy to say that humans survived just fine without modern amenities, but you'd be wrong to say it.
HUMANITY survived just fine without modern amenities; HUMANS, on the other hand, had a pretty high mortality rate for myriad reasons from starvation to medical reasons.
1751texan muses;
"If global warming realy does happens, what happens if the lake dont freeze over...? whole lotta wet ice"
If it gets that warm we'll just fire up the smoker and make jerky.
On a similar subject, a couple of Mainers were ice fishing. To show off hus new GMC pickup for his friend he punched the blue button on the mirror.
"OnStar, May I help you?"
"Hi, I was just showing this to my friend."
"OK. I show you on the GPS as being in the middle of a big lake. Are you on a ferry boat?"
"No. We are ice fishing."
"You are on the ice with your TRUCK?"
"Yes."
"Oh, oh Sir, you, Oh, you need to get off that ice. That just isn't safe. Oh, my goodness."
The GMC owner asked where the OnStar lady was. She said she was in Texas. The GMC owner said, "Do you think I should tell the other 25 people out here with their trucks that they should get off the lake too?"
Up here when they harvest wood on the islands there are skidders that haul large loads of wood back to the mainland across the ice. Sometimes loaded tractor trailers cross the ice.
As someone who is living off-grid out in the "almost bush" (we're a mile off the road, which is 40 minutes from the nearest village and 4 hours from the nearest city); I can honestly say that you don't NEED as much of the mod-cons as you think you do, but some of them sure are NICE to have And other "nice-to-haves" can pretty much become necessities depending on your circumstances.
Sure, I could cut firewood with a bow saw and axe... but a chainsaw keeps me from freezing to death in the amount of time it takes to fell, buck and split the amount I need daily when it's -40F outside! I could get away without needing to split wood in the winter but processing it all in the summer, but sometimes that just doesn't work either... when you need 6+ cords each winter and you have all your other building and farming and hunting and fishing and food preervation tasks to do in the (short) summer, you just don't have enough time to do it all (even if there is nearly 24 hours of daylight)
That's also a big point with food preservation -- bagging a big animal provides a lot of meat all in one go, which frees up a lot of time to do other things that must get done. If you're lucky (like us) hunting season for big animals is in the fall, and the weather is already cold enough that you can leave the meat "outside" (at least temporarily) until you can process it. In our case, since anything unheated is a big freezer for 4-6 months in the winter, we preserve half (for the warm season) and let the other half freeze (for the remainder of winter). But you have to know which cuts & preparations work better for preserving vs. eating fresh or freezing -- off cuts ground into sausage and smoked work great for dry/cool storage, drying & salt curing works good for other bits, but ribs pretty much need to be fresh or frozen or they get funky textured.
And then, of course, you have to learn how to COOK with preserved foods in addition to knowing how to preserve them (and having the means to be able to!). This is not always as easy and straightforward as it sounds. Unless you have prepared meals canned (like soup, chili & spaghetti sauce) there is no more just "grabbing" something quick to eat... you have to plan everything well in advance so you can soak it, grind it, marinade it, etc. Just take salted meat or salmon... you have to soak those with at least 3 full water changes for at least an hour each before the meat is even close to edible. Dried beans take forever to soak, or you have to boil them with lots of water for at least an hour.
And if you live some place where you really can't just pop into town or grow/hunt/fish year-round, you have to have the space to PROPERLY store all your preserved foods as well. If it's in a jar, you really shouldn't let it be exposed to light, heat, cold, or too much moisture. If it's in a can, you still don't want it to get hot or frozen. Dried stuff needs to be properly sealed against moisture and kept cool (preferably in the dark too). Failure to properly store your preserved foods seriously degrades their nutritional value if it doesn't outright spoil them, at the very least it can make them fairly unpalatable to eat (freeze and thaw a can of veggies about 8 times and then try eating the resulting mush -- yuck!).
I think the biggest challenge for any homesteader-type is determining what mod-cons they can live without, or live with simpler versions of, based on their abilities and situation. That's one of the reasons that you can't really make a list of "what every homesteader needs" and have be truly accurate for everyone. If you live where I live, you NEED a large caliber rifle (like a WinMag) because we have big game and big predators... but somewhere else where the biggest thing you need to worry about is a deer, a smaller rifle would be fine. If you live somewhere that doesn't get cold enough to need anything more than good solar design to stay warm during the night/winter, then you probably won't need a chainsaw. If you live somewhere hot and dry, then drying your food is relatively easy... not so much if you live in a very humid climate. I think that's why so many of us end up collecting things as we go... we find the stuff we have isn't appropriate, or scrimp along with the bare minimum until we figure out what additional stuff we really need to make things better/easier (which doesn't mean electrical/fuel machinery in all cases!).
These are all things to think about when you're planning your self-sufficient homestead.
What, precisely, is this particular brand of freedom and independence of which you speak? Because I hope you're aware that for all his writing, Thoreau didn't live that far outside of town.
When I was a kid I had a neighbor friend who was quite gung-ho about activities. At one point he stated in front of my father, to me, that we should go camping for three days by ourselves out in the forests on the farm.
I said "Okay, we'll need..." and began to list a few things, much to his aghast expression and distasteful snort.
"NO!" he said, "You don't need all that, all we need is a rifle, a potato and a handful of salt!"
He'd seen, you understand, too many movies.
My father, who grew up HARD during the Depression era, began to laugh. He knew I'd lived in squalor with my mother and he said "Mike's gone hungry before in his life, you can tell he has no intention of doing so again."
If you want a real taste of independence, go camping by yourself for an extended period out in some real wilderness, say, Denali in Alaska. I highly recommend it, DID it myself. Take along that "minimum" you romanticize as your requirements and get yourself into a position where you really have to rely on that minimum.
Now, before you read that TOO wrong, let me say that I totally agree with you on the sheer, unadulterated pleasure, the almost religious experience of self-sufficiency, of knowing you CAN DO IT, knowing that survival in the face of adversity is something you can accomplish.
But trust me, son, you need to go hungry a few times, REALLY hungry; you need to be cold and wet and miserable a few times when there's not a darned thing you can do about it, you need to be desperate to just light a fire to warm your hands -- you NEED to do these things in order to learn to appreciate the bare minimum properly.
Once you appreciate the bare minimum, then you learn how to use it. You learn that you're willing to strip down in the snow to get to your underwear, take 'em off and don the rest of those clothes quickly so that you have some dry tinder because your other efforts to light a fire haven't worked and you're freezing.
Eventually you learn those skills; you learn what you do and don't NEED in order to survive, and even to flourish.
And that's when you start learning to appreciate the little luxuries. Do you NEED a coffee pot? Nope, you can boil it just fine in a pan, strain it through a sieve cloth and have coffee. But darn it if that coffee pot doesn't make it taste like coffee instead of a punch to the jaw!
Have you ever wondered why even the most self-sufficient people slowly gather... STUFF?
I've pictured turning my little home into just as much of a self-sufficient stead as possible. And that garden is NICE, really nice, and it's enough to survive on JUST FINE.
But my place will be so much nicer with the fruit trees... and the berry trellises... and the grape vines... and the sauna... and the woodshed instead of the wood pile... and the chicken coop... and the duck pond... and the rabbit hutch... and the pizza oven... and the, and the, and the...
It's easy to say that humans survived just fine without modern amenities, but you'd be wrong to say it.
HUMANITY survived just fine without modern amenities; HUMANS, on the other hand, had a pretty high mortality rate for myriad reasons from starvation to medical reasons.
But, you're misunderstanding my point. I'm sure there are people who can just go out in the middle of the desert with a loincloth and a spear and survive. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying that the lifestyle (general lifestyle)--especially the rural dwellers--of 150 years ago was closer to being self-sustaining than our modern-day lifestyle is. Think about it. When you live 50 miles from the nearest town and you have to hitch up a team of horses and wagon to get there, you have no choice but to be self-sufficient to a higher degree than we are today. You can't hop in the car and run to the store for a gallon of milk as an afterthought every other day. In fact, you can't even get any milk unless you have a cow. You don't eat unless your crops are successful. You don't eat over the winter unless you know how to can or preserve food or hunt.
It's nearly impossible to be completely self-sufficient. I'm just talking in degrees of self-sufficiency here. Hate to keep bringing my grandparents up, but they were as close to it as it gets. Seven miles from the nearest maintained road at the time. No electricity. No city water system/plumbing. Sure, my grandfather had to go to town to get supplies and such from time to time, but my grandmother made all food from scratch. From what my dad tells me, she was often in the kitchen all day long. Grandfather was following a team of horses all day long. As 'modern times' caught up with them, they finally got power and running water around the late nineteen fifties, so I'm told. My grandfather continued using horses to farm until he was too old to farm in the 1970's. I remember using their still-functioning outhouse when I was a kid in the 60's and 70's.
The thing I'm getting at is not some survivalist in the desert thing. I'm saying that, at that time, my grandparents where far less affected by things that might well kill some people today. It didn't matter to them if the power went out, the freezer broke, the water system crashed, the grocery store ran out of food, etc. They had none of this. Their water supply came from a well, their sewer system was a hole in the ground, and their food was out in the field. The rest, they did without. And to the day he died, my grandfather preferred the 'primitive' conditions he lived with in his younger years to the modern conveniences he had at his death.
That's the freedom I'm talking about. I KNOW it comes at a price. I know it's damn hard work (pitching hay and helping farm at grandfather's house was some of the hardest work I've done). But, there is less dependency; that's all I'm saying. Work or no work, there is less dependency.
It's all a matter of perspective anyway. Some folks get on without modern conveniences, some don't. That's just the way it is. As for me, I'm convinced I was born 200 years too late. I've felt that way since my youngest days. I've always been drawn to 'the way it was.' It has nothing to do with which is more work and which is not. It's just the sort of thing where you know you would 'fit' better than where you are today.
And if one could come up with a renewable resource freezer of the kind I initially suggested, find a working design, then would that somehow NOT be the very independence you're suggesting yet told me wasn't actually necessary since one could can/dry/pickle, etc.?
Clearly, the more one invests into any home or locale in order to make it more comfortable or palatable, the more one will be tied to that location. The only way to avoid that will be a trip to Mongolia and life in a yurt. I've no particular desire for the nomadic lifestyle.
My whole point with the "survive with the bare minimum" is that you state something like "people survived fine without these things" -- and it's true, they survived, but it sucked. And one seldom realizes just how nice modern amenities are until one HAS to do without them rather than CHOOSING to do without them. It's why camping is modern recreation rather than a daily chore, why fishing is casual sport rather than a prayer for tonight's supper.
My goal for my place is to be as independent as possible, but that kind of independence comes at a price, whether lacking a fixed home OR being tied to a place tightly.
Anything beyond survival NEED is, admittedly, a matter of taste and preference.
If you want NO electricity in your home, then you'd better get used to candles, kerosene or darkness -- and that's fine, but the number of people who want to do that on a regular basis is limited.
I think the problem lies in the fact that most people don't understand the difference between modern efficiencies and modern conveniences. Technology that simply makes something easier to do or automatic whether you actually need it done is just a convenience. Technology that makes a necessary chore easier so that you can get every other necessary thing done is an efficiency. A convenience wastes power doing something that could be done just as easily by hand. An efficiency maximizes power usage by balancing human power with mechanical/electrical power so the least amount of both are required.
The line between convenience and efficiency isn't hard, there is no black and white, mostly it depends on the individual circumstance. In my case:
Huge refrigerator/freezer with ice maker = convenience
Small fridge and deep chest freezer = efficiency
Electric drip coffee maker = convenience
Coffee percolator = efficiency
Doing something just because you *can* even though you don't really *need* to is convenience and wasteful. Having a few bright electric lights makes some tasks a whole lot easier (like reading and needlework) and lends a sense of security (nothing like being able to flip on a porchlight when you hear something outside). But all the lights in Vegas just because the Hoover Dam power station is right there, or making your house as bright as the sun with banks of Christmas lights is just plain wasteful.
Efficiencies let you do more than just barely survive, conveniences just make you lazy if you have too many of them
I think the problem lies in the fact that most people don't understand the difference between modern efficiencies and modern conveniences. Technology that simply makes something easier to do or automatic whether you actually need it done is just a convenience. Technology that makes a necessary chore easier so that you can get every other necessary thing done is an efficiency. A convenience wastes power doing something that could be done just as easily by hand. An efficiency maximizes power usage by balancing human power with mechanical/electrical power so the least amount of both are required.
The line between convenience and efficiency isn't hard, there is no black and white, mostly it depends on the individual circumstance. In my case:
Huge refrigerator/freezer with ice maker = convenience
Small fridge and deep chest freezer = efficiency
Electric drip coffee maker = convenience
Coffee percolator = efficiency
Doing something just because you *can* even though you don't really *need* to is convenience and wasteful. Having a few bright electric lights makes some tasks a whole lot easier (like reading and needlework) and lends a sense of security (nothing like being able to flip on a porchlight when you hear something outside). But all the lights in Vegas just because the Hoover Dam power station is right there, or making your house as bright as the sun with banks of Christmas lights is just plain wasteful.
Efficiencies let you do more than just barely survive, conveniences just make you lazy if you have too many of them
I think this is a great way of looking at it.
In looking at it in a similar way, I've found many modern gadgets are really not that much of a step forward and often don't really save that much time. Others do. Sometimes doing something in the way it was done 200 years ago works just fine, makes sense, and isn't really a big deal; other times it takes hours or days longer--the replacement technology would then be in your 'efficiency' category.
I think the thing that ends up being a debate is what fits in each of those categories. It varies from person to person. My 'wasteful technology/gadgetry' category is probably way, way bigger than most folks. But that's just me.
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And other "nice-to-haves" can pretty much become necessities depending on your circumstances.
