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llampacaeatingguppy · 6 years

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Aspects of winter life that might not occur to you

Maybe you’re writing a book about someone in The North but you live in The South, maybe you’re moving somewhere cold, and maybe you just want to know. I don’t really care, I’m just a long-time resident of Wisconsin who wants to write a bunch of stuff, so I am. (Please note some of this might be Wisconsin-exclusive)

First of all, let’s talk about that little transition from summer to winter. There are literally maybe two weeks of a stereotypical “not too hot, not too cold” temperature, sometimes not even that. Fall is mostly unpredictable weather hell and it’s hard to be sure when they will truly decide to stop. For example: our last warm day was December 4, and it was almost 60 degrees (15.5 C). On my sisters birthday, December 6, it was 20 degrees (-6.5 C) and snowing, which was far more normal for that time of year.

Women’s clothes are the dumbest things ever, especially jeans. Your top half gets additional insulation through your coat. Your legs do not, and women’s jeans are thin. Leggings and/or long socks under your pants pretty much every day are a must if you don’t want you legs to turn into icesicles. And if you must either wear leggings or jeans by themselves, I feel warmer in leggings. Sweatpants are the best, but I usually use those as pajamas.

On the topic of women’s clothes and coats, my classmate was cold in class once and I offered her my fall coat (which I wear if it’s about 40+ degrees (4+ C)). It’s a hoodie that I found in the men’s section. You know what she told me? It was warmer than her fall coat. Let me tell you something: that thing wasn’t even marketed as a coat. Don’t get me wrong, I knew it was warm, that’s why I wore it, but I didn’t realize it was that warm. Women’s clothes vs men’s clothes. Yay. And people wonder why men on campus are still walking around in sweaters when women are wearing their winter coats in the fall.

One more thing about clothes to get all the salt out of my system and then I’m done with clothes, I promise. If you want some women’s clothes actually suitable for the weather, your best bet is secondhand stores or small local shops, because those clothes are from people who also actually have to endure this climate. Any sort of chain of stores just don’t have clothes designed for cold weather. Heck, some of the stuff that I’ve seen in Target for “winter” I wouldn’t wear until May or June.

There is a confusing temperature where you’re not sure whether to wear your fall coat or your winter coat. It varies per person, but since my winter coat is literally a cleared for -30 degrees (-34 C) heavy duty stuffed trench coat (that I had to scramble for while it was on sale, cheap coats are not made for Wisconsin-level cold. People do it, but I have no idea how) and my fall coat is a men’s hoodie, the choice between roast and freeze is particularly present because the range of temperature those were made for is so different.

If you go outside and the snot in your nose freezes before you’ve taken two steps, you can safely say that it’s really cold without anyone arguing with you.

Also, “You know it’s cold when your snot is frozen in two seconds” and other variants is kinda a local meme. Probably has been for decades. I’ve lived here 18 years and I don’t remember ever not hearing it.

A lot of people seem to assume that sickness season is in the winter. It’s not. It’s the Times of Horrible Weather (aka spring and fall). People get sick in winter, sure, but it’s spring and fall where over half of the people you know all get sick at once, although it’s milder cold-like things. The exception to this is the explosion of influenza that happens around January, but one month is a small chunk of winter, believe me.

Spring is really similar to fall, just an fyi. I keep saying fall because we’re in the thick of winter now, it’s -17 (-27 C) outside, and spring looks like an impossibility, but they’re really similar in terms of awful temperature fluctuations. Most people are more tolerant of its obnoxiousness because when it ends the weather won’t be trying to kill you. I personally like it less because all that snow melting makes everything wet and muddy and all the litter that the snow hid is now visible and I never know if it’s hot or cold outside and it feels like nothing really grows until the week before summer so it’s just naked and ugly and inconvenient. I hate spring. Can you tell?

I’m just now realizing that it probably sounds like I don’t like winter, but I actually do. Like yeah it’s annoying, but I like it? It’s kinda like that character you love who’s a complete asshole and you’re not even sure why you love them but you do.

The. Car. It gets cold. And it doesn’t warm up right away, either, because of how cold the engine gets. And you might need to jump start it, too, depending on how good your battery is. Also there’s ice and snow and fun stuff that you have to scrape off after it snows. And it’s cold outside while you’re doing it. And you’re probably also late because the world hates you. And the roads are probably bad.

10+ inches (25.4+ cm) of snow = elementary and high schools have to close. -40 degrees (which is the same in Celsius, crazy right?) or lower windchill = elementary and high schools have to close. Both happen a few times a year. College classes don’t have that rule. You walk to class in -50 degree (-45.5 C) windchill anyways and try to ignore the fact that you haven’t been able to feel your face pretty much the whole time.

If you’re on your period, things can get really cold and uncomfortable down there. Changing your pad more frequently than usual helps some. Tampons might also do the trick, but I can’t tell you for sure because I don’t like to use them.

If you’re like me and get chilled easily, winter is kinda nice because nobody will judge you for wearing an ungodly number of layers. Are you still cold when you go outside? Probably, at least some of the time. But you’re comfortable while indoors, which is a nice change of pace.

Folks farther north try to assert their dominance over you, and you do the same to those who live farther south than you. This is achieved by bragging about the bad weather.

Snowing on Halloween is a very real thing. When you’re a young trick-or-treater, it’s beyond frustrating because unless you’re literally going as a scientist living in Antarctica or your parents don’t care if you get sick by running around without a coat, good luck having people see your costume because it’s coat time.

Bugs are small. The largest spider I regularly see is a little bigger than a quarter, and most of that’s legs.

My dad loves to tell the story about how when he lived in Virginia, they got two feet of snow and they still expected him to come to work because he was from the north, despite the fact that the state was essentially in a state of crisis. But we don’t drive in two feet of snow, either, because a crap ton of snow plows go out every time it snows. It’s not perfect, and the roads are bad for a while, but there isn’t literally the total amount of snow accumulation just sitting on the road for us to drive through. So please don’t ask your employee from the north to come in to work when it snowed two feet overnight and there are not nearly enough snowplows, because then there literally is two feet of snow on the road and that’s dangerous for anyone, north or not. (He didn’t go in, by the way.)

When the roads aren’t great, seeing cars in the ditch is normal. People don’t even bat an eye and they’re often used as a measurement for how bad roads are. (ex: “I saw three cars in the ditch on the way here” = roads are bad) This is just normal, car swerved a little bit and ran off the road stuff, though. If it’s more serious (like if the car flipped upside down or hit another car or something), then it gets regarded as a car accident, not as a car in the ditch.

If you’re asthmatic, the cold can induce asthma attacks. It doesn’t always, but when I was diagnosed with asthma a few years ago, the doctor told me to be careful because it’s a very real problem for some folks. The worst it does to me personally is makes me cough a few times if it’s less then 0 degrees and I breathe too deeply through my mouth, and if I cover my face with a scarf it gets rid of the problem altogether.

I have never in my life successfully made an igloo. I don’t think most people have. They always caved in at the top the few times I tried. What I did do all the time as a youngling was dig tunnels under the snow and army-crawl through them.

Later in the winter, when the temperature starts to ease up but it’s still not spring, just the top layer of snow will melt a smidge and then freeze back over, making a hard shell. It’s oftentimes thick enough for kids to walk on without breaking it and I thought it was one of the coolest things ever. Even now, if I find a place that can support my weight as an adult, it gives me this odd sense of giddiness and usually makes my day.

Electronics were not made to handle cold and leaving them out in it can be a nightmare on your battery.

There are quite a few people who eat summer-coded desserts in the winter, especially ice cream. Winter gives enough people negativity without the added sadness of certain sweets being off-limits.

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josephkitchen0 · 6 years

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9 Common Homesteading Supplies and Hacks

Nifty gadgets have their place on the homestead but sometimes you just can’t go down that often-pricey path. Don’t get me wrong — I’m a hopeless fan of wonky inventions (think egg flashlights and nut wizards), but even if you have the cash, you might not feel like cramming yet another single-purpose item into your barn or basement. Enter common homesteading supplies and the hack. A time-honored tradition!

Inexpensive and creative solutions to everyday problems might be the most important tools in a backyard farmer’s toolbox. Here are a few of my favorites gleaned from several years raising vegetables, fruits, and animals on our suburban farm.

1. Zip Ties: Worth Their Weight in Gold

On our property, plastic cable ties are homesteading supplies that have been put into service in countless ways and, despite their low cost, typically last several years, even after very hot summers and sub-zero winters. From building cages to thwarting squirrels and all the many tasks in between, the lowly zip tie steps up to a starring role in various homesteading productions. They come in several lengths, colors, and styles but my go-to model is the 8-inch commercial electrical model — heavy-duty and rated to operate in temperatures ranging from -40 to 85 degrees Celsius, well within our Northeastern United States parameters.

How many will you need? Probably more than you think.

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Zip ties are strong but can also be employed for short-term uses. For example, if you don’t tighten them all the way, you can easily cut them off when they’re no longer needed. Or you can turn them around and use the non-tightening side for loose closures where you want to get in and out, for example, a door flap. Be careful, though. Zip ties are not toys, keep them out of reach of children! They can be very difficult to remove once fully closed.

Sample uses:

Create quick fences and covers – Attach poultry wire, netting, hardware cloth or any material you can stick a tie through to sticks, poles or pipes. I use a hole-punch to create openings when necessary.

Hang objects – Leave a gap in the zip to make a loop. You can make chains of zip ties to add length.

Attach objects – Signs, varmint deterrent lights, etc.

2. Cardboard Box: A Farmer’s Best Friend

All sizes can be handy but whenever a really large cardboard box comes my way, I stash it in the garage with my homesteading supplies for guaranteed future use. I prefer to employ the basic brown, made in the United States version and try to remove all plastic tape when feasible.

Cardboard can be called on for all kinds of quick and lightweight duties.

Temporary walls – Along the lines of cheap fencing ideas, cardboard is really useful to separate or corral poultry when evading capture. (The ducks take one look and know it’s pen-up time!)

Instant weed/lawn suppressor – You could dig it up but wouldn’t you rather get a head start by covering that pesky vegetation with sun-blocking cardboard first?

Animal carrier – With bedding in the bottom and holes for air, a sturdy cardboard box makes a great lightweight container for moving small animals. Whenever we have an injured duck, it’s easier for her to be transported in a box than to have to navigate the openings of a typical pet cage.

3. Sticks: Not Just for Poking

Over the years, I’ve collected scores of sticks in various lengths, widths and wood types. As a newbie, I figured that all sticks were equally durable but a few harsh summers and winters destroyed that fantasy. I still use the faded, split and splintered pieces of hardwood that I first bought for bean teepees and tomato stakes but this spring I graduated to long-lasting locust for what I hope will be the last veggie poles I ever need to purchase. Those locust stakes are now screwed into the sides of our cedar planters where they support our homemade poultry wire cage attached with (what else?!) hundreds of zip ties!

You can also use homesteading supplies like sticks for temporary fencing, trellising, keeping doors ajar for ventilation, digging holes and excavating hard-to-reach coop muck, securing string for edging, flagging objects underneath the heavy snow, hanging covers or shade cloth and many other uses I have yet to discover. Keep a range of weights from bamboo light to locust hefty and lengths up to the famed 10-foot pole. You can always trim to size as well as repurpose broken pieces for many years of service. Your farm dog will thank you for keeping an extra stick around the place, too!

4. The Never-Ending Straw Bale

Many articles, blog posts, and even a book have been written with straw bale gardening instructions extolling the virtues of the ordinary straw bale for small-scale vegetable gardening. I’m here to tell you about its special advantage for poultry owners as well. Every autumn before most folks have even finished their back-to-school shopping, I start scoping out the local farm stands, hoping to be the first to score as many straw bales as possible. Why? Straw (not hay, different item altogether) makes a fabulous slow-release fertilizer that when gathered into a bale (or pieces of a bale) forms the perfect container for next spring’s edible plants.

But that’s not all! My main reason for buying so many bales in the fall is to place them around the edges of the poultry pen for instant winter protection for the ducks. As the straw decays, the bales heat up. They get warm enough that you can feel it when sitting on them in the middle of a snowy yard. That means that not only do they block the sharp wind but they also add a little extra cozy to your coop.

In the spring, the bales will then resume their slow organic breakdown, inviting tasty worms, fungi, and other organisms to join the party. My ducks love to forage in between the bales, especially when the ground is still a bit hard for digging. Then, once the first brassica seedlings are ready to go, I either move the bales in one piece or, much easier, move them in slices to where I want to grow my vegetables that season. It takes all summer for most of the bale to feed the crops and if there’s any left, it goes on top of the harvested plots to protect the soil for next year’s planting.

5. Poultry Fencing

Whether you’re talking hexagonal opening (AKA poultry) or square (commonly known as hardware cloth), netting materials from heavy-duty metal to the lightweight fabric are common homesteading supplies that are enormously useful on any sub(urban) farm. Just like the sticks I can’t do without, I keep a wide selection of everything from raccoon resistant heavyweight wire with tiny 1/4 inch openings to plastic poultry netting, mostly useful to keep out ducks, not rodents. Here are some styles and uses.

Plastic hexagonal – Use this for temporary fencing or veggie cages for anything squirrels don’t like. (Rodents can chew holes in plastic.) It’s lightweight, inexpensive and easy to work with.

Metal hexagonal – Use this for veggie cages, temporary dome covers, aprons for cages where large varmints are a problem. It’s lightweight, inexpensive, and can usually be cut with scissors.

Plastic hardware cloth: Use this for all the same uses as hexagonal but it has smaller openings so it can be used as shade cloth. It’s easy to cut, but rodents can chew through.

Metal hardware cloth: Buy the one-inch and one-quarter-inch squares. Smaller opening hardware cloth for chicken coops is useful to protect sides of pens from raccoons. The larger openings in heavy gauge can be used for overnight accommodations when thoroughly secured and with at least an 18 inches of apron rim around the edge. The interior floor can be dug out and hardware cloth run underneath it as well. Wire-cutters are needed.

6. No-till Composting

Okay, so I realize this is heresy and it all depends on what you use and how you use it but I’ve stopped getting compost from a composter. What?! Yeah, it’s true. Partially it’s because I’m lazy, partially it’s because I never get enough compost from those fancy rotating set-ups to feed my huge vegetable habit. So, two years ago, I began directly tossing kitchen plant scraps (not meat, eggs, oil or cooked foods) into a new garden bed I had been trying to quick-start. In the fall, I then added some very weathered straw bale material and the next year, voila, super successful Brassica, and later that autumn out-of-control squash.

Last winter, I took it to the next level by choosing two off-the-ground planters and trying the same thing. Before the snow set in, I tossed a thin layer of veggie scraps onto the top of the soil and in the spring, gently turned them under, adding a little more potting soil to supplement what got lost in the previous season.

Take a look at the photos. The plants grown in the two no-till beds are going gangbusters. The compost-less beds, not so much. Are there other reasons? Sure. Each soil system is different but I think I can reasonably say that using a little veggie scrap without waiting for it to break down completely into crumbly compost is not a terrible way to get rid of your dinner trimmings. Do not go overboard, mind! You don’t want to create an anaerobic environment; you just want to protect the soil in the winter and add a little nutrient with very little work.

7. Incredible, Bendable Wire

You would think I’d have learned from my experience with zip ties but no. I started with a couple of crop covers and eventually realized my farmer ambitions outstripped the coverage supply. I sought out an agriculturally rated material and serendipitously discovered handy heavy gauge wire that’s sold along with it. Johnny’s Seeds offers varying amounts, weights, and lengths so of course, I bought the largest box of the longest length (100 pieces may, in fact, be a lifetime supply for a quarter-acre property but contact me in a few decades and I’ll let you know!)

Like the practical wooden stick and other homesteading supplies, a bendable wire can be useful for building lightweight structures such as cages or domes to fit odd-shaped plants (think bush variety pumpkins) or for hanging objects, crafting doors or flaps, flagging items under snow, and, of course, holding crop covers, shade cloth and the like. Best of all, they are made of seriously long-lasting, reusable galvanized steel. Super easy to store, I tie them into bundles and stack in the garage. Who knew a common homesteading supply like a skinny piece of wire could be so useful?

8. Strange Uses for Your 1990s Pantyhose

I’ll confess here that although I’m rather a fanatic about not using synthetic pesticides or fertilizers in my home or garden, my tomatoes do get some help from a store-bought friend. That said, there’s very little I won’t do to produce a bumper crop of pizza and pasta sauces. Among the weirder strategies I employ is a tip I gleaned from the classic reference tome, Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte. In that book, Riotte talks about how lightning adds nitrogen to the soil when it strikes the ground. This is not to say that I think you should go all Ben Franklin in your tomato patch. Riotte’s suggestion is a much milder and safer method of harnessing electricity by using pantyhose tied both to the plant’s stalk and also to a supporting structure, such as a tomato cage. The static electricity generated by this connection is said to promote a bumper crop. Your neighbors may look at you funny but I’ve blogged about this and used this method for several years and have raised many delicious fruits to show for it.

9. More Purposes for the All-Purpose Rubber Bowl

You know ’em, you see ’em everywhere, you probably own a few of these plentiful homesteading supplies; the ubiquitous rubber pans that come in sizes from two quarts to fifteen gallons. These durable workhorses are indispensable for anyone raising small livestock. Great for food, water, bathing and carrying everything from eggs to straw and beyond.

My favorite rubber bowl hack, however, is the Instant Staircase. I guess you could really call it a coop hack since there are very few duck-specialized houses on the market. This means that to get a duck into a chicken coop you usually have to pick it up and place it inside because those cute little entry ladders are not well suited to waterfowl feet. I considered a wider, longer board but that would be heavy and unwieldy with no guarantee that the girls would want to “walk the plank.”

One cold day in February, I decided to use a couple of large rubber bowls instead. I picked each duck up and placed her on the secure surface then shooed her inside. It took no more than two nights for the ducks to get the drill. Now I leave the coop door open each afternoon so the girls can go inside when they’re ready. Thank goodness for no-slip rubber!

Quick & Easy Tips Using Common Homesteading Supplies

Your store-bought crop covers seen better days? Tear off the material and reuse the hoops underneath with row cover cloth.

Don’t have room to store another trellis or bean cage? Make a teepee out of sticks and burlap string. At the end of the season, pull it apart for other uses.

Need an entry flap for a veggie cage? Cut a flap slightly larger than the opening and attach one side with zip ties. Reverse a few zip ties (the non-binding direction) and use those to close the flap. This will not keep out super-wily rodents but may slow them down a bit!

Tomatoes grow better fruit when they’re buzz-pollinated. Grow lots of bumblebee-friendly flowering plants near your tomato patch and get ready for the most delicious “love apples” ever.

What are some of your favorite hacks using common homesteading supplies?

9 Common Homesteading Supplies and Hacks was originally posted by All About Chickens

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