Refrigerator musings

I don't have too much to write today, but after the last post I want to balance things out and look on the bright side of things. I came home yesterday to see our garden cart full of canned and boxed foods and our coolers full of frozen meat that the pastor had brought over. Now we need a refrigerator! We just had electricity run in here last fall, after using a generator for the last two years. We have mixed emotions about hooking up to "the grid", but the monthly electric bill is a lot lower than the cost of a month's worth of gas for the generator, and it cuts down the noise pollution here. We're still hoping to go solar some day but the initial cost is out of our reach right now. We have one panel that could provide a limited amount of power, and I think we should hook that up to the new house as a backup and to reduce consumption and pollution even if only by a minuscule amount.

But back to the refrigerator, since it was late fall when we got power there was no immediate need for a refrigerator; Nature supplies plenty of free refrigeration here in Minnesota for a good part of the year. But now the days are getting warm enough that the coolers need ice and we can't keep frozen stuff. My living without a refrigerator has changed my views on the necessity of one though; now it seems the ultimate absurdity to keep a refrigerator inside a heated space in winter, consuming electricity to keep food cold, when a cooler on the porch will do just fine.