Thursday, August 12, 2010

Disaster Averted

We had a bit of excitement this morning -not that we needed any.

Colin and I were standing in the summer kitchen talking about the morning and what else he was going to accomplish before lunch.  As he headed out the door to the barn I called him back.  He didn't want to come;  I shudder to think what would have happened if Colin had of continued to the barn.  I told him I could smell smoke.  As soon as he came back in the summer kitchen he could smell it too.  The acrid smell of an electrical fire/over-heating.  We searched around until we found the source.  Our old ancient freezer was toast.  Seems the fan had stopped working a while ago, judging by the cobwebs and dust, and finally had over-heated.  There were no flames yet, but would have been soon.

This freezer is a Woods, a Canadian company.  It must be close to 60 years old.  It was in the summer kitchen when Colin's parents bought the farm 45 years ago.  It's a beast of a freezer, takes up a lot of space but provides little actual room.  One good thing I can say for it, if you needed something frozen solid this was the freezer to use.  The new freezers can't touch it for freezing ability.

As you can see from the condition of the freezer, we certainly got our money's worth out of it.  I use to hate when I had to try to get meat from the bottom.  I have to dangle in (I'm only 5ft) and I was always worried I'd knock the baseball bat and have the ridiculously heavy lid fall on me.  If that happened I think I would have been lucky to escape with a broken back -it's that heavy.

Ella and I headed off to Pembroke to the Red Bargain Barn to pick up the new freezer.  We had to hurry, not only did I have some of our freezer food in there, but half of the stuff was my pork to sell at tomorrow's Farmers' Market.  Ella wasn't pleased because this wasn't part of her morning plan.  But that's what happens when you are a farmer's wife.  Sometimes your plans get thrown out the window and you have to go for parts or freezers.  We only got a 22.5 cubic foot freezer, they were out of 25's.

Right now the new freezer (a Whirlpool) is out in the machine shed, a very convenient location (not).  We have to wait for the old freezer to thaw before even attempting to get it out of the summer kitchen.  Colin thinks he may have to take a sledge-hammer to the freezer and take it out in pieces.  He will be very pleased disappointed if he has to somehow involve a tractor in the extraction.


Colin transferred all our frozen stuff to the new freezer.  It's not put away in any kind of order, but you can certainly see how much more space we have now.  I'll be able to space the other freezers out a little better than they are now and it won't be such a pain to serve customers.  Right now I'm moving bag upon bag to get to the meat customers want.   Hopefully now I can keep the freezer only 1 or 2 layers deep  :)

I'm so glad disaster was averted.  As much as I would like a new house/addition, a house fire is not the way I want it to happen.  I have too many precious, to me anyway, things in the house.   Once again, God has proven how well he looks after us.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

God certainly had you in the right place at the right time today. A fire would be scary. I think after that many years of service the old freezer did it's job. Having to make unplanned purchases are always an inconvenience to children, oh, well!!! That's life!!

Diann said...

Oh wow! So glad you were both there to avert a fire! My daughter had a fire earlier this year. Her husband had been a firefighter in CA and knew exactly what to do. They lost some appliances but saved the house. Glad all turned out well for you. Good luck with the new freezer! It looks like you needed it!

Paula said...

Oh yes, the old freezer certainly didn't owe us any thing. Colin is very glad he came back to the house, even though he didn't want to. I would have gone back in the house, the smell really wasn't that strong.

Plainlady's Ponderings said...

God is so good!