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No.865: How I’m Preparing for a Cold Winter

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In light of current events and a general sense of instability, I’ve been thinking a lot about what we can do to prepare for a cold winter.  We live in the mid-Atlantic so we don’t get bitterly cold temperatures, but it is entirely possible to lose power out here in the country!  To prepare for this, I’ve been playing out the mental exercise of, “What would we need if we lost power for an extended period of time?  How could we stay comfortable if electricity costs became financially prohibitive and we had to knock the thermostat down a few degrees?”  We’ve had winter outages before and already have a head start with a generator and a manual well pump, but here’s what else I’ve been working on:

STOCKING UP ON FOOD AND BROTH

For the past six weeks, I’ve been picking up five extra items in my weekly grocery trip to put back for winter.  These are typically items that we use for chili/stews/soups (tomatoes, beans, etc) but I also think I should get items that we could eat straight out of the can, should the need arise.  I’ve also been working on a stockpile of chicken and beef broth using bones and carcasses.  I freeze the broth in one cup Souper Cubes and then keep them in big freezer bags until needed.  Very handy!

CHOPPING FIREWOOD

We should be set for 2024 but have been working to get 2025’s cut and ready to dry out!

CHECKING COATS AND SNOW GEAR

I went through our snow gear bin and pulled out all of the items that our family has outgrown.  Thankfully, we have most of what we need and I only have to find a few things for my daughter and middle sons.  I also made sure we had thermal underwear for everyone and am considering stocking up on wool socks.

COLLECTING AND WASHING BLANKETS

‘Tis the season for wrapping up in cozy blankets!  I’ve been refreshing our collection with a trip through the washing machine and I picked up one new addition at Home Goods.

MAKING A WINTER BOOK LIST

Nothing is better than reading a good book by the fire, so I’ve been going through my book piles for choices appropriate for the season.  Here are a few possibilities:

STOCKING UP ON MEDICINE, SUPPLEMENTS AND TEA

I’m not a doctor so do your own research – blah, blah, blah – but I prioritize taking a multivitamin, a probiotic, supplemental vitamin D, and fish oil every day in the winter.  I add vitamin C, quercetin and zinc when I feel myself getting sick and I like to stock up on Cold Calm and Vitamin C tea for those times too.

UPDATING EMERGENCY CAR KITS

My husband and teenagers are on the road a lot, so these emergency car kits give me peace of mind.  This time of year, I like to replace any stale/expired food and make sure there are enough hand and foot warmers, gloves, wool caps and socks in each bag.  (My complete itemized list is in this post.)  I need to make sure an ice scraper and a blanket are still in the cars.  I’ve also heard that kitty litter is a good idea to have in the chance that your car gets stuck in the snow.

MORE THINGS TO DO AND CONSIDER…
  • Clean the fireplace
  • Check the batteries in the carbon monoxide detector
  • Take inventory of our candles
  • Buy an extra bag or two of charcoal for the grill
  • Stock up on tissues

No.856: Last Week at the Farmhouse // Be Not Afraid

“Peter Walks on Water” by Philipp Otto Runge (1806)

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I knew it would happen eventually.  I’ve been burning that proverbial candle at both ends for awhile now and I finally hit the wall mid-week.  Thankfully, a two-day forced rest helped immensely and I was able to rally enough to celebrate birthdays by the weekend.

All that to say, I had planned to write about my thoughts from an article I read titled, “What Pope John Paul II can teach us about moving beyond fear” this week.  Being sick, that never came to fruition but I hope you’ll still read it and find encouragement like I did.

I plead with you–never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged. Be not afraid. – JPII

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ celebrating birthdays!  I have two children whose birthdays are five days apart and they wanted to celebrate together.  My husband and I took them on a “shopping spree” to a few stores and they found a handful of great treasures.  We finished up with lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings and then had cheesecake at home.  A great day.

+ continued diligence with my Weather the Storm Challenge.  I felt a little discouraged as this work feels somewhat inconsequential, but I know it’s building the virtues of perseverance and patience…so we keep going!  This week, I:

  • used the weekly grocery store ad to buy peaches, applesauce and shampoo on sale
  • purchased five canned goods to put back for winter (diced tomatoes – also on sale)
  • made cinnamon applesauce muffins using some of that applesauce above
  • sold eggs to friends
  • started air drying about a third of our laundry loads (which should save a tiny bit on our electricity bill)
  • used a spatula to get the last bit of peanut butter out of the jar
  • made english muffin bread twice
  • picked tomatoes from my dying plants to throw to the chickens
  • accepted two packs of fresh slider buns from my son’s work (delicious and free!)
  • made more chicken broth, using up the last of the celery/carrots/onion in the fridge
  • purchased next year’s birthday wrapping paper on clearance

+ selling fifteen unneeded items for the Car Loan Payoff Plan: six books, five pieces of clothing and four dyslexia workbooks.  After shipping and fees, I made $149.31!

Reading //

  • “Screen Sober” from Meredith Hinds at Still Today // “That said, ‘it is lawful to amuse yourself…’ but what are the limits? Discerning that means contemplating the difference between ‘doing the thing’ and ‘caring for it.’ And a helpful question to me in that line of thought is: are the stories I’m watching getting in the way of the stories I want to live?“
  • Finding The Seam: How Small Farmers Can Thrive from Lenny Wells at Front Porch Republic // “But one can still be a farmer and care for the land without relying solely on the business of farming to support a family. In fact, most of them do. As of 2022, around 84% of farm households have off-farm income. Some would call what I’ve described above as a hobby farmer. I don’t. The fact of the matter is that if the average person wants to farm nowadays, they need an off-farm income.”
  • The Hungry Years: A Narrative History of the Great Depression in America by T.H. Watkins // Really interesting so far.  One quote:

If the politicians and the pundits felt confused, others felt betrayed.  Perhaps the most fully deceived were those hostages to a middle-class dream gone bad – salesmen, promoters, businessmen, brokers, boosters, middle-management executives, Rotarians, Lions, Toastmasters.  They had all played by the rules, had joined enthusiastically in the great game of consumerism and limitless potential.  Now there was nothing to sell, nothing to boost, nothing to dream on.  “The kind of readjustment they are called upon to make is heroic,” Episcopal Bishop John Paul Jones observed in the pages of the Survey Graphic in 1933.  “Vast multitudes of them have lost financial security forever.  In bewilderment and bitterness they will seek a sign of hope, and no sign will be given.  Some will give up and end it all, but a great majority will go on living some kind of broken and frustrated lives.” (p.54)

New Additions to The List // 

Watching/Listening //

Loving //

No.795: Last Week at the Farmhouse // Gentle Defiance

“Carriage on a Country Road, Winter, Outskirts of Louveciennes” by Camille Pissarro (1872)

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I recently fell down a Youtube rabbit hole where multiple, seemingly unrelated videos expressed their difficulties with life outside of technology.  One Booktube creator now has crippling social anxiety and couldn’t even attend his father’s birthday party because he didn’t know the people on the invitation list.  Another creator shared her troubles in the classroom, reflecting on the current teaching advice to change instructional methods every five minutes in order to keep the kids’ attention.  And on and on.  I watched these videos with such a sadness in my heart.  What is happening to us as a society?

Ever since I was a little girl, I have had a stubborn streak and preferred to dance to the beat of my own drum.  That tendency was tempered a bit as I advanced in grades because well, kids are mean and “blending in” tends to be the best survival tactic.  But as I grow older, that little stubborn streak has returned.  I don’t want to become an automaton, a slave to technology.  I don’t want that for my kids either.  I want to experience the real world even if it’s inconvenient or messy or awkward.  I want to see technology as a tool, not something I cannot live without.  So I resist.  Gently.

Some small examples from the past few years: We don’t have any streaming services and buy secondhand DVDs instead.  We gave up Amazon Prime.  We have one television and it lives in the basement.  We don’t participate in any social media.  I haven’t replaced my cell phone in five years.  We grow our own food even though it’s a ton of work and way more expensive than just buying at the store.  We loathe debt and often pay for items with cash.  We read widely and often.

These examples seem small and insignificant, but are they?  Nothing is insignificant if they order us toward Truth.

Wendell Berry’s poem, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, provides the encouragement to keep going, to seek small ways to keep our humanity, both in body and in spirit.  You should read the entire poem, but I especially loved this part:

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.

I think my life’s mission will be finding new things that just won’t compute.

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ RAIN!  While winter rain is kind of miserable, I’m grateful for its arrival.  Last year’s drought was so terrible and I know our pastures and gardens are in dire need of the moisture.

+ committing to a vitamin routine (thanks, Little Things Bingo!) after waffling back and forth in December.  I’m not a doctor so do your own research – blah, blah, blah – but I’m currently taking a multivitamin, a probiotic, supplemental vitamin D, and fish oil every day.  I add in vitamin C, quercetin and zinc when I feel myself getting sick.  And bonus: I made myself a “poor man’s pill box” using a plastic tackle box and scrapbook stickers we already owned!

+ checking off another bingo prompt: make a new soup.  I made a tomato bisque with homemade chicken broth and a can of tomatoes from the pantry.

+ getting prepped for a new growing season.  I fortunately still have a large seed collection and only needed to purchase a few seed packets (tomatoes and flowers), onion starts and seed potatoes.  I also ordered our first batch of broiler chicks for arrival in early March.

+ trying winter sowing in milk jugs for the first time.  I used this tutorial and started lavender, foxgloves and brussels sprouts.  (I’ll be adding more as we drink through more milk.)  The process was super easy and I’m really excited to see if this will work!

+ making pizza sauce with cherry tomatoes I froze back in the fall.  We made homemade pizza for dinner one night and then used up the rest for pizza dip later in the week.  A pantry/freezer challenge win.

+ purchasing a brand new piano book for my daughter and a like-new Iliad & Odyssey for me on Pango Books for $17.  By not purchasing from Amazon, I saved $20 and supported another seller.  Win/win.

+ selling eleven unneeded items: five books and six of my son’s video games (I sell on his behalf and he gets the money).  After shipping and fees, I made $107.14!

Reading //

Grampa, who had grown up on a Wisconsin dairy farm during the Great Depression, shared his generation’s hallmark frugality. He couldn’t stand seeing anything usable or fixable thrown away, from leftover food to old books, which he restored in one of his other workshops, a bindery. (Not coincidentally, he also shared his generation’s penchant for packrat collecting.) But his repair work wasn’t primarily about saving money. The value of a thing wasn’t measured by its replacement price but rather by the use to which it could be put, and by the labor of those who had made it or previously repaired it.

  • Why I Traded My Smartphone for an Ax from The Free Press // A teenager’s perspective on technology.
  • The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster // A science fiction short story from 1909 that eerily rings true today.  Excellent.  I copied a ton of quotes, but here’s just one:

“You talk as if a god had made that Machine,” cried the other.  “I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy.  Men made it, do not forget that.  Great men, but men.  The Machine is much, but it is not everything.  I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you.  I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you.” (p.8-9)

Watching/Listening //

Loving //

No.775: October in Review & Goals for November 2023

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission of any sale made at no extra cost to you.

FIVE THINGS I LOVED
  1. blood pressure mostly back in normal ranges (after 7 years!)
  2. an entire month of not having to turn on the heat
  3. peak leaf season with reds, oranges and yellows everywhere you look
  4. new sweaters
  5. roaring fires in the fireplace
THREE LESSONS I LEARNED
  1. “Feeling better” is not a linear process. // This month, my health “journey” has been up, down and all around.  I’m feeling more rested, but am still sound asleep most nights by 9pm.  My energy levels have increased, but my weight hasn’t budged.  My blood pressure is finally within normal ranges, but I still feel like my stress isn’t completely under control.  I’m making tiny bits of progress, but it’s something, so I’ll celebrate it!  One day at a time…
  2. The Congo has been used for their riches for a long time. // “No one knew at the outset that the Congo would prove to be home to some of the largest supplies of almost every resource the world desired, often at the time of new inventions or industrial developments – ivory for piano keys, crucifixes, false teeth, and carvings (1880s), rubber for car and bicycle tires (1890s), palm oil for soap (1900s+), copper, tin, zinc, silver, and nickel for industrialization (1910+), diamonds and gold for riches (always), uranium for nuclear bombs (1945), tantaum and tungsten for microprocessors (2000s+), and cobalt for rechargeable batteries (2012+)…At no point in their history have the Congolese people benefited in any meaningful way from the monetization of their country’s resources.  Rather, they have often served as a slave labor force for the extraction of those resources at minimum cost and maximum suffering.” (from Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, p.15)
  3. Regular creosote cleaning in the fireplace is important. // We recently had our fireplace cleaned and inspected.  Since we use our fireplace a lot during the winter, the technician recommended using a product that will help keep creosote from building up.  There are a lot of different options on the market, but we decided to try Co-Mate Chimney Cleaner.  Hopefully it will keep our fireplace clean and safe.
THREE “LITTLE PEOPLE” WE SUPPORTED
  1. Farm goods from a farmer friend
  2. Treats and pumpkins from another local farm store
  3. Sneakers from a seller on ebay
FIVE GOALS FOR OCTOBER REVIEWED
  1. ✔ Stock up on vitamins, medicines, and tissues for winter. // Done.  Some of my favorite vitamins for the cold weather months: probiotics, vitamin D, quercetin and zinc.  I even found a great vitamin C option that includes probiotics and bioflavonoids in it!  We also stocked up on tissues and throat drops.
  2. ✔ Finish building the permanent pig paddocks. // Done!  The piglets and Fred are in neighboring paddocks for the winter and we are happy to have an easier chore schedule for a few months!
  3. Return to the habit of making homemade bread. // Nope.  Not a single loaf!  Maybe next month.
  4. Take our own family pictures. // Another task that I just didn’t have the brain space for.  Between everyone’s schedules and the weather and more pressing farm to-dos, I just couldn’t summon the energy to get this done.  Instead of feeling like a failure, I’m giving myself the grace to take the year off.
  5. ✔ Create a junk journal. // Yes!  This little project has been so wonderful for my creativity.  Can’t wait to share more soon.
FIVE GOALS FOR NOVEMBER
  1. Get the majority of my Christmas shopping done.
  2. Participate in the Historathon and Nonfiction November readathons.
  3. Finish filling the paddocks and barnyard with woodchips. 
  4. Create a junk journal for the month of December.
  5. Plan Thanksgiving!

Help me transition away from “traditional” blogging income streams while still keeping the lights on at the BWF!

Less Materialism, More Intentional Living

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