I've got a couple of older upright deep freezes that have quit working, and rather than relegate them to the scrapyard I'd like to put them to work in other ways.
The most appealing option is to use them for hanging butchered animals. I figure I could drill a couple holes near the top, insert a strong steel rod, and hang up
deer, pigs, sheep, etc., broken down into primals if not whole, and even things like ducks, geese, and turkeys that are often hung for a few days at least. Deer season around here runs the gamut from freezing to 70's, so I can't just bank on it necessarily being cold
enough to hang up an animal for a week or so with no problems. Any advice as to how to keep the temperature relatively cold if the outside temp isn't cooperative? I'm thinking a tray in the bottom filled with ice, but maybe that's too simplistic.
Also, what to do with the freezers out of animal-killing season? For hanging meat they'd only be used a few weeks out of the year, and it seems silly to keep them sitting around empty the other 9 or 10 months. How can I maximize the usage of the space? We're not exactly hurting for storage elsewhere, so keeping them around for storing garden produce is kind of pointless. Using them as smokehouses (and subsequent smoked-food storage) in the meantime makes a certain amount of sense, but we've already got an old smokehouse on our farm that I intend to bring back to life, so keeping a couple non-functioning freezers around primarily for that purpose is also redundant.
How about using them as germination chambers for garden seed trays? Anybody tried this?
Cheese cave? If so, how to go about it?
Anything else?
Lastly, what, if anything,
should I do to the freezers prior to repurposing them? Anything I should take out, or add, or anything in particular I should leave the heck alone?
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