[Donna-Martz]

I think the answer depends on whether that food is something that you can’t afford to lose, or if you are just trying to salvage it from being wasted.

I had a chest freezer thaw that was filled with fruit and tomatoes that I had dry frozen on cookie sheets then bagged up. The freezer had thawed to a degree that the bags of fruit had thawed and essentially melted into each other. The freezer was turned back on when the problem was found. That created a chest freezer of a solid mass of food baggies that could not be separated when I found out about it. The food was most likely still very useable for sauces and cooked items, but I had to thaw the entire freezer in order to get the bags of food out. I let this conundrum rule for 3 years of paying to keep it frozen. Finally, I had to unplug the mess and dig out my heart ache. I do not have any farm animals to feed spent food to. But, we did add it to a new large compost pile. So, we got that out of it.

I hope that my experience gives you some perspective and you can make your decision more easily. I have purchased freezer thermometers that send the temperatures to my kitchen so that I can keep an eye on them even in a different building. Another lesson is to put bags of food in baskets in a chest freezer. 😎

[Donna-Martz]

My connection to Freesteading is also through Rain Country. But, I live in western Washington state. Are you in the UK?