4 MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 437 



people have found that a combination of both a locker and a small home freezing 

 cabinet is quite satisfactory. Some of the new home refrigerators contain storage 

 space for holding frozen foods and this facility in combination with a locker may 

 be adequate in some instances. In this case a week's supply of frozen foods may 

 be brought home from the locker plant at one time and stored in the home re- 

 frigerator frozen food storage compartment. 



Some owners of home freezing cabinets take advantage of the services offered 

 by locker plants for the wholesale purchase, preparation, and freezing of some 

 foods such as meats. For instance, if a whole or half an animal is to be frozen at 

 once, the capacity of a home cabinet may be inadequate to handle the load. 

 Under such conditions the meat may be cut, packaged, and frozen at the locker 

 plant, and when frozen it can be placed in the home cabinet. 



Freezing Space Required 



The number of cubic feet of storage space required for frozen food will depend 

 upon the total quantity of food needed for good nutrition, the amounts of food 

 that may be best processed by freezing, the proportion of their yearly food re- 

 quirements that a family desires to freeze, and the extent to which other methods 

 of preservation, such as canning and common storage, are emploj-ed. 



In owning a home freezer or renting frozen-locker space, the practical side 

 must be considered and a freezing program mapped out. It is recommended that 

 a definite freezing budget for foods be outlined on paper. Such a plan will serve 

 as an aid in planning the home garden and in the purchase of foods for freezing. 

 Tressler, Evers, and Long (16), have suggested a four-point program which 

 can be used as the structural basis for any size freezer and any size family: 



1. Freeze those foods at hand. 



2. Freeze what you use. 



3. Need what you freeze. 



4. Confine "Specials" to left-over space. 



A typical vegetable budget for one person for one year as prepared by Foley 

 and Cole (6), and modified to include freezing is shown in Table 1. A freezing 

 budget to furnish a fruit, vegetable, and meat supply for a family of four to six, 

 and utilizing 12 cubic feet of freezer space, as suggested by Tressler, Evers, and 

 Long (16), is presented in Table 2. 



Filinger (5), has indicated that the proper size of a freezing cabinet to store an 

 adequate supply of food for the family is difificult to determine. He showed 

 that an average family of five would require 3,135 pounds of foods, that can be 

 preserved by freezing, a year. He assumed that about half of this could be ob- 

 tained and used fresh and that only about 1,500 pounds would be frozen. In 

 his opinion a home unit would permit a rapid turnover of food and, with careful 

 management, a 12-cubic-foot cabinet would accommodate 1,500 pounds of food 

 in a year. If the food in a home or locker freezer can be turned over rapidly 

 the operation will be much more economical per pound of food stored. Table 

 3 shows a schedule of ch anges in a food freezer as suggested by the above author. 



For practical purposes, in calculating the capacity of home freezers and lockers, 

 it may be assumed that one cubic foot of freezer space will accommodate from 

 35 to 40 pounds of meat or 25 to 35 pint packages of fruit or vegetables. These 

 figures may vary because of variation in sizes of meat cuts, irregular packages, 

 the type of package used, etc. 



