Preparing for Winter V

Laura_Elsewhere

I noticed this week that the supermarkets have the very small onions in again, so I shall organise myself to do a few pounds of pickled onions- the ones you buy are all now either hot-spiced or sweet, and I really like just plain pickled onions in a good malt vinegar with only some peppercorns and mustard seeds! I haven’t seen real pickling-onions for years but the bags sold as “shallots” do the trick: small and round.
I peel them and then layer them with salt and leave about 24 hours, stirring every so often, before rinsing quickly but well in cold water, packing into jars, sprinkling in the pepper and mustardseed and filling with malt vinegar. I have some plastic lids that I have cut a slit in, and I push those inside the filled jars to keep the onions below the surface.

Cherryfudge

Ooh, I love pickled onions! And I've not made them in years without number. That's a very good idea about using the plastic lids to keep them down.

Laura_Elsewhere

@Cherryfudge - I reckon homemade pickled onions make wonderful sandwiches, cut into thick slices, mmm!

cuddlymarm

Good morning guys
I’m feeling winter prep envy as we hopefully complete on our house move on Friday and everything is packed up. I can’t even knit because I can’t find my needles.
With today being wet and miserable it’s making me feel even more ready to prep for winter.

SuzeQStan

We are winter prepping for Winter 2027 here - 2 of our 4x log stores were were filled with self sourced split logs spring/summer 2024 which we will be burning in our rural village multiburner to provide most of our house heating this winter.

And we have just this weekend completed splitting & filling log stores 3&4 for winter 2027.

In years past we would have paid around £750 for 1x seasons worth of unseasoned firewood (which we then seasoned for 16month prior to burning) but our supplier left the business so we thought to DIY it.

We’ve saved ourselves approximately £1500.00 as all this wood has been sourced for free across various arborist websites,marketplace & the free apps.  But there has been huge amounts of work required - chainsawing, transporting, splitting. Hard work but nice being outside in fresh air (most of the time!) ☔️🌊🌪️⛈️

fionaandphil

My OH finished prepping yesterday while the weather was a bit cooler but dry. He's cut a lot of the logs for 2026 and they are in the log store to dry out fully. This year's logs and firestarter are all in our outbuilding stacked and ready to go. It was definitely feeling cooler at night this week.

We are lucky as all of ours are sourced locally too and many have been taken down due to dieback or age. As you say it does save a lot but the time and effort is considerable.

Oil prices are staying stubbornly high so I'm still holding out for a drop but will have to order at some point this month.

Laura_Elsewhere

We’re the opposite end of the range, as we’re in a tiny top-floor rented flat so no log-piles for us!!

 I shall be checking the washers on the ‘stone pigs,’ our Victorian ceramic hot-water bottles which act as little storage heaters; filled from a kettle and with a thick knitted cover, used as a footrest they stay hot for a good 2-3 hours, and if put into the bed with the bedclothes over, then if filled at 9:30pm it will be actively hot, not just warm, at 8:00 next morning. 

We have tried lots of ideas but, amusingly, it turns out that the best washers for the screw-top stoppers are to cut a flat ring out of a cork tile, which is pretty much what they would have had! It works better than silicone, etc., although we had to learn to leave them filled over summer, tipped on their sides to keep the cork from drying out!

Wednesday2000

Laura_Elsewhere said:

We’re the opposite end of the range, as we’re in a tiny top-floor rented flat so no log-piles for us!!

I know this is about winter, but i was just thinking about this with the heatwaves we have had. Do you find living in a top floor flat too hot in the summer?

My friend has a flat on Brighton seafront and she says it isn't too bad with the sea breeze.

Laura_Elsewhere

@Wednesday2000 - we're lucky in having windows on both north and south, so we can open those wide and get any through breeze there is. Sometimes there just isn't any breeze but we've got excellent insulation above us in the roof, free to us under a govt scheme, and that has definitely made a difference. We also bought a tension-pole, those curtain-rods that don't need wall attachments, and put it into the window on the south, with very very lightweight pale curtains so we can pull those across so the sun is reflected back but the breeze still comes through. (Heavy winter curtains don't help in summer!)

SuzeQStan

Thanks for the reminder @Laura_Elsewhere to replace washer on stone pig.  No greater pleasure than popping my feet on it for a warm