Last month I did the Winter Clothing Inventory to assure myself that all of my children will have no excuse when I proclaim, "Outside time!!"...meaning they each have a coat, snowpants, boots, hats, gloves. Each November our town has a huge old-timey fair (see my boys on the human run ferris wheel below) and part of that is selling such things as these so we filled in the gaps and are set for the cold. My kids love winter and would like to start wearing their snowpants just for fun even though it is sunny and 55F outside today.
Storing water is vital so on this gloriously mild November day I filled our indoor water storage tanks and containers. We also have water storage on the roof that we can siphon down to our house even when the taps are closed, but sometimes it freezes solid so it's good to have some inside. We have about 60 gallons stored inside, which could last us about 10 days if we were very conservative and did not bathe or flush toilets. Usually we can melt snow for flushing toilets and bathing once in a while.
Our daily water system is this: morning and evening water pipes from a reservoir up the mountain from us run water into a couple of 250 gallon water tanks on our roof. That stored amount of water is then available for our usage that day, and it is plenty. If the water system is broken and for some reason (a wedding has diverted all their pipes to their house for the weekend, a cow has eaten through a plastic portion of pipe, a farmer has chopped into a pipe while hoeing his field, a rusty pipe underground has developed a hole so the water is seeping into the mountain instead of flowing and filling tanks) doesn't fill our tanks on the roof, we have to conserve and only have whatever amount is in our tanks. Every year our house pipes freeze and burst, rendering them unusable until the plumbers return sometime in April and get around to fixing them. This year our landlady has wisely decided that we will drain the tanks and pipes and disconnect from our morning and evening water source so that the pipes won't burst. This will mean we really won't have running water for those months, but when the Spring thaw happens, we should be able to hook back up to the water system without having to do a lot of repairs. Usually in the winter a hose appears from somewhere up the mountain from time to time and that allows us to refill our indoor water storage and flush toilets. This may be more than you cared to know about water.
To stay warm we have a woodstove. We buy giant logs the size of grown men and then hire real live men to chop them into the right sized pieces. They use an old fashioned cross cut saw like I've seen in American museums to cut them the right length, and the chop them into logs. It takes a couple days to have it all chopped and it's a social event too, serving them tea and lunch and chatting. We also gather large splinters of a local kind of wood that is rich in natural oils and is a great firestarter. Our front and back porches hold all this chopped wood and I'm trying to remember just where I hung my laundry the past two years with no porch space available.
Hi, my name is Jenny and I'm a Food Preserver ("Hi, Jenny"). My love of all things food preservation and planning for food runs almost to a clinical level and maybe there is a seven step program for people like me...or maybe we could just share our ideas and learn even more about this. Needless to say, this is my favorite part of winter prep. Our markets are open most of the winter, but excessive snowfall can close the roads that connect us to the rest of the country so it's a good idea to stock up on foodstuffs. Knowing we won't have running water probably Jan-Mar we also stock up on paper plates. Even when the road is open, getting to and from town in the snow can be dicey so we like to be well stocked on things like beans, rice, flour, oil, lentils, nuts. The past several months I have canned spaghetti sauce, salsa, and fruit and I aim to fill every one of my canning jars before January. I've also dehydrated some fruits and vegetables. I started my crock of fermenting sauerkraut about a month ago and we will keep enjoying and feeding it until Spring.
The first year when we fumbled our way through these new-to-us patterns of life it felt awkward and unsure, an uncoordinated blip in the time of our life. There is a joy of belonging as we grow in understanding and sharing the rhythm of life. Now when I see my neighbors gathering to harvest pine nuts, thresh wheat, shell kidney beans, bring 100lb sacks of flour home on their backs, my heart knows what season it is and how to dance in this Fall wind.
