Letting Go of Our Second Refrigerator

Yesterday we said goodbye to our second refrigerator.
Although the fridge wasn’t the prettiest appliance I’ve ever seen, it worked harder than any other fridge I’ve ever had.

We mainly used this fridge to store extra frozen goods and a whole lot of homemade kefir and whey.

I put an ad in craigslist and in less than 24 hours, someone was interested and on their way to check it out.

Since we were still using it yesterday, I can only imagine what the guy thought when I opened the fridge. I should have taken photos, because as he looked in the fridge, he had a blank, almost expressionless look on his face.

It was as if he didn’t know what the heck he was looking at! There had to be at least 35 quarts kefir and 24 quarts of whey stored in there.

Anyway, he looked it over, felt that it was a fridge he could use in his garage and we sold it for $80.00.

Our main reasons for letting go of our second fridge:

1. Energy consumption- This hog is an energy vampire, especially since it is NOT an Energy Star appliance.

By mid-November, we’ll see if it made any further impact on energy bill.

2. We’re moving away from refrigeration. It doesn’t make any sense to continue to hold on to habits that we’re trying so hard to break. We make a lot of kefir, but we really haven’t shared it as much as we could with our animals. There’s no need to have such a surplus of perishables in the fridge.

Add to our habit of making kefir, gallons of Kvass at a time and now water kefir over this last month, and this is a disaster in the making! The only way to get it all under control is to start feeding the milk kefir and some whey to the animals. The water kefir goes fairly quickly, especially when we’re working outside. My beet kvass is a staple, which doesn’t last long either.

We can’t go completely without refrigeration until we build an ice house. We can’t build our ice house until we build the root cellar. I’ll write more about our root cellar plans in the next few days!

At this time last year:

Note: Over the last month, I didn’t post “At this time last year” because of how lengthy my posts were.

I love looking at all the photos from this time last year to see how much my children have grown, and also to see how much progress we make on the interior or exterior of our home and land. Below, the walls weren’t finished and the fireplace wasn’t refinished.

My daughter Shoshie came out to visit for the weekend and all my children we seated around the breakfast table. Yes, Gina likes to stick her fingers in her siblings noses. 😉

There is no greater sense of joy to have all my kids under one roof again. I look forward to when they can all be together with us.