I've really been thinking about getting a quarter cow lately. I think it would save me quite a few trips to the grocery store (and money), help me support local farms, and give me peace of mind knowing where my food is coming from, how it was raised and slaughtered, etc.
There are two catches:
1.) I live in Phoenix, AZ, and the temperature into November is going to be 100+ pretty much every day. I have zero space for a chest freezer in my house, and the standing fridge used for most of my food probably would not have the approx 3-5 cubic feet of space needed for a quarter cow (probably not by a long shot). So the only real place I could put a new, small, chest freezer would be in the garage.
My garage, however, is uninsulated, so the temperature inside will typically be 10 degrees or so less than outside. Is this unrealistic? I don't want to kill the motor of my freezer a few weeks after buying it and don't want to ramp up my energy costs by running a freezer 24/7 in my garage: https://mechanicfaq.com/chest-freezers-for-garage/. How do you guys deal with this? Or do you all just live in places further away from the inner circles of Hell or run your freezers indoors?
I was browsing Craig's List for used freezers, but I think if I were going to run it in the garage, I'd be smarter getting a new one: https://losangeles.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=freezer&sort=rel.
2.) I will only be here until late October. Is this even a wise investment to begin with, or should I just bite the bullet and make weekly trips to *gasp* Whole Foods to pick up my supposedly less-than-ideal grassfed cuts? Would a quarter beef be too much? Maybe I should stick to individual cuts? I really like the savings involved in ordering in bulk like that though...
Thoughts?
There are two catches:
1.) I live in Phoenix, AZ, and the temperature into November is going to be 100+ pretty much every day. I have zero space for a chest freezer in my house, and the standing fridge used for most of my food probably would not have the approx 3-5 cubic feet of space needed for a quarter cow (probably not by a long shot). So the only real place I could put a new, small, chest freezer would be in the garage.
My garage, however, is uninsulated, so the temperature inside will typically be 10 degrees or so less than outside. Is this unrealistic? I don't want to kill the motor of my freezer a few weeks after buying it and don't want to ramp up my energy costs by running a freezer 24/7 in my garage: https://mechanicfaq.com/chest-freezers-for-garage/. How do you guys deal with this? Or do you all just live in places further away from the inner circles of Hell or run your freezers indoors?
I was browsing Craig's List for used freezers, but I think if I were going to run it in the garage, I'd be smarter getting a new one: https://losangeles.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=freezer&sort=rel.
2.) I will only be here until late October. Is this even a wise investment to begin with, or should I just bite the bullet and make weekly trips to *gasp* Whole Foods to pick up my supposedly less-than-ideal grassfed cuts? Would a quarter beef be too much? Maybe I should stick to individual cuts? I really like the savings involved in ordering in bulk like that though...
Thoughts?
It will be on 24/7 and it will cost money in energy bills to run.
