How to Label a Freezer
The failure mode of a beef share is not spoilage. It is forgetting what you have.
Nobody loses beef to the freezer burning it. They lose it to not knowing a roast was under there until the following autumn.
The list goes on the lid
A sheet taped inside the lid, with every cut and a count beside it. Strike one through each time you take something out. It takes four seconds and it is the only system that survives a busy week.
“It's the standard that my granddad set for us, which is keep your promises, do what you say you're going to do. Don't take shortcuts, and do the right thing.”
Gray Shipley
Granddad kept records for the same reason
“And he would keep the weights of the cattle, his observations of the herd. If he noticed one that maybe wasn't eating as much or not drinking as much or separating, he would keep all of those notes and all of that data and years of notebooks that he always kept and he could go back and see.”
Gray Shipley
Same principle, different scale. The point of writing it down is that you stop relying on remembering.
What to put on it
- Cut name as you would say it, not as the processor labeled it. Nobody searches their memory for 'bone-in center cut'.
- A count, not a weight. You want to know how many dinners are left.
- The date the share came in, once, at the top.
- A line for what you have used and liked, which is the part that shapes your next cut sheet.
“And I think people enjoy kind of getting to figure out what am I supposed to do with a sirloin tip? What am I supposed to do with a picanha or a tri-tip? I get to go learn and experiment in the kitchen some and figure out how to cook something.”
Gray Shipley
Zones, not alphabetical
Group by how you cook: fast, slow, ground, bones. That is the question you actually ask at six in the evening. Full setup in how to fill a freezer.
How do I keep track of what is in a chest freezer?
A list on the lid, struck through as you take things out.
- Freezing and Food Safety, USDA FSIS
- Cold Food Storage Chart, FoodSafety.gov
Food-safety temperatures and storage times on this page are cited to the agencies above rather than to us.
Written at Shipley Farms in Vilas, North Carolina: a family cattle farm raising and dry-aging beef in the Appalachian Mountains, now in its fifth generation. No shortcuts since 1872.
Every quote on this page is Gray Shipley talking, the man who runs this farm. We sat down with him, turned on a recorder, and kept his own words. Hesitations are trimmed so they read on the page. Nothing else is added or reworded, except where Gray revised his own words in review.
Nobody knows this beef better than we do. On food safety we leave it to USDA FSIS and FoodSafety.gov, and we have linked their pages above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.
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