MIne is self-defrosting. It's easy for old things to accumulate at the bottom of the baskets and get forgotten. I tend not to throw such away unless it is freezer-burnt / or dried out.

Mine is manual defrost and Sears had to order it. The clerk I was working with didn't know they came manual defrost but its been my experience foods last much longer held at a steady set temp and that's especially true of breads, fruits, vegetables.

When we used to have beef in bulk, I would find things that had their taste altered if being kept too long were cuts of meat that had some fat. With those, I could begin to taste that 'freezer taste'. I'm sure they wouldn't have made us sick, but wouldn't have been as enjoyable. Hamburger, bone-in rib steaks come to mind first.

I have wild blackberries not picked in the last couple of years. We hadn't had the time, energy with several other things going on. They are fine. If they did become a little dull tasting, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice when assembling a dessert brightens them up again ;)

My manual defrost freezer had always been in a basement. It was opened infrequently with the most often used things kept upstairs in my refrigerators freezer. In this house, my freezer is in a cubby right off my mud room and while I think I use it more efficiently, it really should be defrosted every 6 months not the once in Fall I was used to. It's just too convenient now and I'm opening that door, adding and subtracting things much more often. And the basement was only semi heated as opposed to fully heated - I think that makes a difference too.

It's not a awful chore when I convince myself to do it. With every cooler we own in the hallway and a little space heater to sit in front of the open door, I can have it emptied, thawed, wiped clean and dry, refilled in under an hour.

Both of my freezers are in my basement. One is a 1988 Monkey Wards 16 cu/ft upright and the other is a 15 cu/ft chest freezer that I bought right before Covid hit so I could store the 1/2 beef that we would shortly have processed.

I defrost the upright 3 or 4 times a year because it gets opened much more often ( I like to finish off the chill on my beer in it to get it to 1/2 degree above slush. LOL). The chest freezer holds the beef and pork that we have processed annually and the farm raised chickens that I purchase in the spring. I only defrost it once over the winter. All of the meat in there is vacuum sealed and will last far longer than we need it to without any freezer burn.

I rarely have to toss anything from either freezer before it is used. I had some 3-4 year old vacuum sealed strawberries in the upright that we used for Daiquiries over July 4th that were still fine.

I also have multiple freezers, 3 chest freezers and one upright, they all get defrosted and cleaned once per year when we slaughter beef, and right before deer season. I do defrost them one at a time, so I can store items in the others while one is being defrosted.

I just baked a strawberry/rhubarb pie with strawberries from 2019 and we had some freezer jam from 2018 that the grandkids found and ate on pancakes last week. Both were fine. Jack had a better idea with Daiquiris, the booze would cover up any freezer flavor, LOL. I made a brisket that "migrated" to the bottom of a freezer dated 2020 and it was fine and I made jam last year with raspberries from 2018, probably the same time I made the freezer jam! My meat packer does vacuum pack everything and uses a thick plastic wrap so I have had no problem with meat becoming "freezer burned" unless it loses the vacuum seal.

So, to catherine, no, I'm certainly not disgusted by your eating anything in the freezer, no matter how old. If it's frozen, it's safe, although the quality may have deteriorated. I think the oldest item I've used lately was blueberries from 2016, and I put them into pancakes. No one complained.

Annie

Thanks everyone! Great info from everyone! I only defrost once a year, but it could probably use it twice. I have a good system for defrosting, but man it's a lot of work. I have a "Wood" freezer. It must be about 12-15 years old. It has started making loud popping noises intermittently, rather than it's usual sounds. I think it's okay, as long as those noises don't go on all the time. Now that it's getting filled with my 2023 garden stuff, I would totally freak out if it died. Being the overly neurotic person I am, I've even thought of just having a back-up freezer in case this one suddenly dies. But......I would probably turn it on and start filling it too. ;)