Preparing for Winter V

[Deleted User]

Another one with woodstore envy!! 😍😂 
I started reading this thread yesterday for the first time (I skipped to the posts from the beginning of this year to start and will read the rest today) as I really want to be fully prepared for the winter. Last winter we had just finished major renovations in the house so I didn't really have time to get sorted and thankfully with it being so mild, it didn't really matter! 😉
My preps to date this year have been dehydrating excess (shop bought) veg,  (we have put veggie beds in the garden now and I'm planning on being pretty much self sufficient in veg within 2 years), replacing my fire brick maker and bread maker and I've started to collect glass jars for preserving. We replaced the windows and doors as part of the renovations so I'm hoping that will make a difference to the heating required and I'm intending to get blinds in the kitchen to help with that too! I live in a rural area so we don't have gas - I got quite a bit of heating oil recently to make the most of the low prices and will do the same again in the next few weeks to fill the tank. I have open fires available as well as central heating but I don't have a woodstore - seeing suki's has made me really want one now though!! 😉) 
My ds & dil should be moving out in autumn so I'll have much more storage space available, my bills will reduce and I will finally be able to live the lifestyle that suits me rather than accommodating other people's needs 😉 it's actually quite exciting!! 😂 
Oops - that's turned into a mega post - sorry!! 

Laura_Elsewhere

@squirrelgirl - that sounds really exciting! I look forward to hearing how it goes... will you be alone once your ds & dil move out? I have always wondered whether people living alone in rural areas need to make extra preparations for back-up of stores and contact methods for help from neighbours in case they eg sprain an ankle or worse (I realise as I type this that they almost certainly do and I'm just being a bit slow to catch up here!)...

I lived til I was 45 with 1880s single-glazing, and the last 6 years in a 1990s flat with good double-glazing, and the difference is AMAZING!!! In blustery weather I still sometimes stand by the windows marvelling at the way all the weather stays outside...!!!

suki1964

missychrissy said:

I have wood envy too. I’m going to continue doing what I’ve been doing and collect wood when I’m walking the dog but I need to store it for longer. It’s free wood and a paper sackful will last me an evening. That’s 5 or 6 hrs not using the central heating. Sometimes I’m offered wood as well (I have a chainsaw). There is absolutely no point in buying fuel for my stove if it is more expensive than CH. I’m on mains gas, electric, drainage etc here but house before last I had LPG and a septic tank. My Villager stove burnt anything and the glass doors didn’t black up like my present Charnwood.

No its not worth buying fuel if you have gas. Freebies is different . Have a look on freecycle and facebook buy and sell in your area. Lot of people are having trees taken down but won't pay the surgeons the extra for removing it so offer it up for free. We also collect pallets. Not the big blue or red ones, but the ones that are for single use, I call them the balsa wood ones. They are light enough to lift and easy to break up and haven't been treated so safe to burn. I can get two or three in my mini with the back seats down . If you have a car its worth taking a cruise around the out of town shops, looking around the loading bays see what's around and asking. Skips are another good place to collect from. Doors and skirtings whilst not the best for burning as they have been treated, can still be chopped into kindling. It is nice to have the stove lit, even if you have CH. I was so tempted to light ours last night and Im looking at it today and think its going on. The house isn't cold, but my feet are and its just miserable wet and dark and if I wrap up in a blanket Im going to fall asleep

missychrissy

Welcome squirrel girl. I look forward to hearing your adventures. Although, I am on mains gas, drainage etc. I still live quite rurally. I have just googled my village and apparently there were 2,020 people living here in the 2011 census. I can be out in the countryside within 2 mins of leaving my house and walking along the river Ouse within 10 mins. That’s where I pick up wood along the river bank. 

Like you I dream of self sufficiency. I’ve always grown veg in pots but recently my youngest son built me 4 raised beds on a triangular piece of grass (picture on ‘Prepping thread‘ pg 442). I hope to plant in the spring when the turf we lifted and filled the beds with has broken down. If I could I would have chickens but there is a covenant on my house against it. However, the birds have eaten all my lettuce and a few other seedlings. I used to feed them on feeders hanging on the side of my garage wall that is next to my new raised beds. I am now feeding them on the opposite fence but they do have to compete with the squirrels. I could stop feeding them but already today I have seen a coal tit, a wren, my resident robin and a great tit as well as the usual starlings, sparrows and pigeons. I saw a new bird yesterday that I didn’t recognise so I must get out my bird cards to identify it.
I hadn’t thought of preparing for winter with a medicine supply. I always have Paracetamol, though I haven’t taken any since I broke my ankle nearly 2 years ago, and Calpol for the grandchildren. I also always have plasters and steri strips. Before I retired I was a night nurse in a nursing home and was responsible for ordering all of the drugs, lotions, creams, catheter bags etc. I always made sure we had a supply of steri strips. Old people have very fragile skin and steri strips were a godsend. It’s the same with accident prone grandchildren. In the fridge I keep Savlon and Bonjela. I also have a cold sore cream. Zovirax is probably the most well known one but the active ingredient is Aciclovir and I buy the equivalent in Home Bargains for 99p (Virasorb). Apart from those the only other thing I keep is Zambuk. I must remember to buy some more as my second off youngest pinched mine - he swears by it. It can be used pretty much like Savlon.

[Deleted User]

The weather forecast for the coming week is promising increasingly good weather with dry warm days so I will get all the throws and fleece blankets put through the wash and line dried outside to go back into storage nice smelling and clean for when the weather cools again in the autumn, mind you it was so cool last night that I ended up with my 2.5 tog quilt and 3 extra layers, wouldn't think it was June at all. All the hats, scarves, gloves and boot socks will be laundered too and again put away against the colder weather later in the year.

[Deleted User]

I'm going to sit down today and work out a winter menu plan using mainly store cupboard items.  I have concerns about the food supply as we get to the implementation of Brexit and also because of the covid pandemic affecting world food production and distribution.  I'll make sure we're well stocked with things that will keep without a power source and try to achieve a balanced diet that is nutritionally sound. I know past generations have survived well on far less than we have access to in 2020 and I'll try for simple meals and a couple of days a week having soup and pudding for a main meal.  I'm going to try and find some pottage recipes and make sure too that we include porridge fairly often ( I sometimes have it for lunch) and not just oatmeal porridge but rice and maize porridge too which are staples in parts of the world already and combine them with pulse based dishes for a whole protein meal.  I think the things we've been used to and the life of everything being available in the shops when we want it might be a thing of the past.

Eenymeeny

I agree and reckon that the French dockers will go on strike as soon as Brexit is completed! (They have a history;))
I don't mean to encourage panic buying but have stocked up on some canned foods such as corned beef, spam, tinned potatoes, and some tinned veg. these are items that we don't often use but are good as basics for soups, stews, curries etc with pulses added. (I once made a chilli using corned beef and it wasn't bad!) Has anyone noticed how the price of tinned potatoes has risen? Tea and coffee are rumoured to become in short supply too as they have had problems with the weather and harvesting. I know, third world problems...  

Primrose

I share your concern boazu and ai think the current warm weather and generally good supply of fresh products could easily let us drift into a sense of complacency.  We could also face powers cuts if we have a shortage of workers due to another Coronavirus spike so focusing on easily prepared simple meals now and having a list of potential menus will focus the mi d.
one item we,ve invested in is a large jar of mixed dried mushrooms.  Mushrooms form the basis of a lot of meals, a little of the dried products goes a long way and they are good for the gut, albeit a rsther expensive investment up front.

During the summer We,re going to compote down soft fruits like plums, blackberries, blackcurrants Etc into small bags for the freezer to eat with ice cream for dessert, or breakfast porridge.  We,ve been doing this currently, decanting each bag  into a glass lidded jar stored in the fridge as needed and has proved a useful addition to our meals as well as providing some daily vitamins.
Lentils and dried peas are a "must" for our storecupboard. They can be used as a basis for all kinds of filling soups on cold winter days.  We make big pans of them and store in the freezer In one pint plastic milk bottles which makes a generous portion for two people. We just take the bottles out of the freezer the previous night and thaw on the kitxhen counter, or if needed in a hurry, put the I opened  bottles in a Pyrex bowl in the microwave on defrost. This is a far easier way of freezing home made soup than plastic bags which can leak and burst. 

Primrose

Eenymeeny.  A good supply of stock cube, herbs and seasons is often forgotten but essential sometimes to take the blandness out of some meals, and I agree The dockers could be a problem, as well as Eu fisherman who will finally have less of a share of our fishing supplies.   It would be ironic if strikes here prevent us from accessing a more generous supply of "British" fish after all this years! 

Laura_Elsewhere

Primrose, I do the same with pureed fruit, and freeze it in a silicone tray I bought years ago, intended for baby food - it freezes a couple of tablespoons in each bit, in bars about the length of a fish finger, but squarish,  in cross-section, like a chunky kitkat! 

Incredibly useful - I freeze homemade pate this way and know that three bars will do two slices of toast or two bars will do 3 Ryvita, so I can take out only what I want for lunch and let it defrost over the morning. I freeze beaten egg and have one-egg bars. I freeze fruit, and add bars to plain yog to make my own fruit yog. And the bars, in labelled clear freezer-bags, stack so neatly in our tiny freezer so I can have more and more fruit through the winter - I know that adding one bar of blackberry will be just right for a 2-person apple crumble, for example! 

And yes, like both of you, I'm also reviewing our stocks of various things, to keep them high without panic-buying. We use the free app NoWaste and it's very useful with checking stock, and use-by dates too. 

It sounds so panicky, "prepper", but I think it is just sensible. We have all been used to a "just in time" lifestyle in so many ways for so long, we've forgotten how to have sensible stocks. 

I have felt guilty for years about my love of bagged leaf salads all year round, importing them all winter, the extra plastic involved, etc., and am delighted that one side-effect of not shopping daily in lockdown (nearing the end of a 2.5-week total isolation for shielding reasons so no fresh shopping since a couple of weeks ago!) is that I have finally learnt to love shredded white and red cabbage with shredded onion, in my homemade dressing. I make up a plastic tight-lidded box of it and add the dressing, and it lasts days in the fridge.