Preparing for Winter V

Ami13

So ive made a start, checking all woollens, coats and boots. 

Ordered an oil heater for mum who lives on her own and really doesn’t need to heat the whole house. 

Quick question does anyone have any recommendations for a thermal flask to cut down boiling the kettle ? 

cornishchick

Ami13 said:

So ive made a start, checking all woollens, coats and boots. 

Ordered an oil heater for mum who lives on her own and really doesn’t need to heat the whole house. 

Quick question does anyone have any recommendations for a thermal flask to cut down boiling the kettle ? 

If you can find one at a good price. The Stanley range. The big green. I have one. Brought about a year ago cheaper because it was missing the cups. Fill it with boiling water at 8 am still really hot at 5 pm after work .

mumtoomany

Hi, @Ami13. Do you have economy seven electricity or solar panels? If not then putting boiled water into a flask probably won't save any money. It costs a set amount to boil a cup of water, boiling, e.g. four cups costs four times as much. The best way I've found is to leave a cup/mug next to the tap. Then only put in one cupfull. If you cook with gas, then boiling water on the stove is cheaper. If, of course, you do have cheaper electric for part of the day then it better to use that and ignore my advise, hugs, mumtoomany.x

Ami13

Thank you @mumtoomany I’ll use your advice to fill a cup up xxx 

CumbrianLass70

Hello all, long time lurker on the Old Style boards and also long time winter prepper! It’s something my grandmother always did as they grew up way up in the wilds of the Pennine fells, often snowed in for weeks in the winter, and encouraged us all to do at least something to make the winter months more bearable. 

Currently starting to get ourselves together for winter, always seem to start around August every year:
- chimney sweep booked for early October. We have a multi fuel stove so we can burn different fuels depending on prices, wanted the most flexibility when Covid started as we had no idea where the world was headed!
- Got some replacement hot water bottles and extra blankets purchased at summer prices. Got two lovely fur covered ones from JL for £10 each (reduced from £20 😱). A little indulgent but they are SO soft and will get a lot of use. Large soft fluffy blanket from Costco for a tenner for the sofa too.
- slowly building up tinned and dry food stocks. Meat pack purchased from local farm shop today to be portioned up for the freezer, will get a couple more of these over the next few months as we start to eat our way through them.
- still clearing our new allotment that was left in a dire state by the previous tenant. One bed clear now thankfully so thinking of planting some winter crops - any suggestions beyond winter cabbages and garlic/onions for spring?
- got some rolls of loft insulation I need to lay out and wrap around the velux roof light opening over the stairs. The cold air drops down from there in the winter so will be good to get this sorted.
- need to get husbands crochet tweed waistcoat finished before autumn, just one front panel and making up left to do. He works from home and we try to keep the heating off during the day so he needs other ways to keep warm, hoping it will be a good layering piece for him.
- need to sew some PJs for the dog out of an old fleece blanket. Sounds spoilt but he’s a greyhound so feels the cold in winter, especially overnight. He has his own duvet but often ends up out from underneath it as the night goes on!
 
Lots of other things to think about like ordering wood, building an extra store, medicines, batteries, candles etc. We managed the last two years on around three bags of wood all winter with the gas heating on 1-2 hours in the morning so would like to do the same again but order more in one go to take advantage of the savings. Would also like to procure a cast iron teapot and trivet to sit on the stove this year for hot water for cups of tea.

I also batch cook and squirrel away meals in the freezer. Fellow batch cookers, just wondering if you ever worry about reusing plastic containers over and over? It’s something that’s been bothering me more recently but I’m only slowly converting to glass/ Pyrex containers so still using old takeaway ones sometimes. 

Thanks for all the wonderful ideas on here, hope to post a little more this year! 

Laura_Elsewhere

@CumbrianLass70 - we stopped heating our re-used plastic containers. So we put the hot meal into it when portioning up, let it cool, covered, and then freeze; but then we either slide it straight out if it'll come, or just ping it for 15 seconds in the microwave and let it stand 15 seconds and then it'll usually slide out. then we heat it through properly in the bowls we'll be eating it from,. or if it's a stew to go on a plate then we put the two portions into a lidded Pyrex dish to ping it. 

For winter crops - one year I had an old college friend visiting, bringing her friend who was a professional gardener. I only have one raised bed but it was all over weeds, very neglected and I felt embarrassed so I hauled all the weeds out and sowed all the seeds I could find tucked away in old biscuit tins, just so I had some clear evidence of, :"oh yes, look, I have a garden"  
Anyway - what astounded me and I try to do it every year now was that where I had emptied out three or four partial packets of lambs lettuce seeds, all of them past their sow-by date, I had a fab thick carpet of weed-suppressing lambs lettuce, which stayed lovely all winter, through hard frosts and snow. 
I sowed in iirc the second week in September - definitely it needs to be mild enough for it to germinate and get going, and 2nd or 3rd week of Sept has worked since then ok. 

So if you have any spare ground then throw lambs lettuce seeds at it, quite thickly, and you'll just get a nice steady supply of salads all winter long for those days when you feel like you just can't face another cooked hot meal with big winter vegetables! 

(and old friend's gardener-friend was lovely and obviously wouldn't have judged me in the slightest! But it was worth it as I learnt about autumn-sowing a winter salad crop even in the chilly West Midlands at 150 foot asl!)

boultdj

@CumbrianLass70,  cauliflower called 'all year round',   broad beans,  kale,  broccoli, japanese  onions and radish. 
The onions look like a giant spring onion, quite mild, went in october time and harvested about june.

CumbrianLass70

For winter crops - one year I had an old college friend visiting, bringing her friend who was a professional gardener. I only have one raised bed but it was all over weeds, very neglected and I felt embarrassed so I hauled all the weeds out and sowed all the seeds I could find tucked away in old biscuit tins, just so I had some clear evidence of, :"oh yes, look, I have a garden"  
Anyway - what astounded me and I try to do it every year now was that where I had emptied out three or four partial packets of lambs lettuce seeds, all of them past their sow-by date, I had a fab thick carpet of weed-suppressing lambs lettuce, which stayed lovely all winter, through hard frosts and snow. 
I sowed in iirc the second week in September - definitely it needs to be mild enough for it to germinate and get going, and 2nd or 3rd week of Sept has worked since then ok. 

So if you have any spare ground then throw lambs lettuce seeds at it, quite thickly, and you'll just get a nice steady supply of salads all winter long for those days when you feel like you just can't face another cooked hot meal with big winter vegetables! 

That’s very interesting re lambs lettuce because I’ve tried to grow it three times in the garden this year, as it’s my favourite, but to no avail! All other salad leaves seem to do okay but the lambs lettuce clearly not happy, perhaps it’ll be a different story at the allotment, I’ll certainly give it a go thanks!

Also good idea re not heating up food in the plastic containers after they’ve been frozen. Think we will switch to this method as well.

@boultdj thanks for the tips, I’ll keep my eye out for those.

fionaandphil

Anybody who has an oil boiler, the price is lower this week, lowest since about February so it may be worth topping up right now.  We are harvesting from the garden and getting things frozen and ready for the winter.  Blankets, coats, gloves etc all washed and ready and wood and coal stocked up.  Our slow cooker is on its last legs and I'm trying to decide whether to order a new one or to try a n!nja - any recommendations would be welcome.

Laura_Elsewhere

My To-Do list for the coming week includes turning two old second-hand lined curtains into one long one to hang in the hallway of our flat just inside the front door. 

We have decent curtains at both sets of windows (one lot were made for my bedroom in 1980! Good cotton velvet lasts a surprisingly long time, with a new cotton sateen lining last year; the other pair are half the four-curtain lot I bought second-hand for a tenner inc postage). 

We had loft insulation fitted, free, on a govt green-grant thing in March, thankfully. 

I can't think of anything else to do with the rented flat that we can do. Once I've made the door-curtain, I'll have to start looking at us and our clothing and habits!