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KEEPING WARM

By Philbe

Reading the recent post about all the various ways people are keeping warm during this extremely cold spell, sure brought back some of my childhood memories! LOL I'm definitely dating myself, but here goes. I was the oldest of four, two boys and two girls (two other's came along when I reached my teen years). We lived in a 3-room "cottage" that only had electricity to the ceiling lights. Dad worked as a farm hand on a large farm and in return received the little house, one hog a year, and a milk cow on loan, some chickens and free electricity. We heated & cooked with a wood cook stove in the kitchen, the folks slept in the living room and all 4 of us kids slept in a 4-poster bed. Boys at one end, girls at the other. We covered up with a feather mattress & lots of blankets and none of us kids complained about "touching each other" J We lowered our cold foods in a bucket, into the well just outside our back door. The water was cold-cold-cold and our milk, eggs, butter etc. was too. Wasn't unusual at all to see all 4 of us lined up on the back porch, in straight back chairs, chugging away in glass gallon jugs to churn our butter up. We didn't have any fancy churns…except us kids! J Never remember any of us complaining about being cold. Mom bought 2nd hand adult coats, cut them to size and made our coats...they were very warm. And I don't recall being made fun of either, probably because it was a very small town and most of the family's lived pretty much like we did. We didn't know we were poor. Didn't wear fancy shoes (couldn't afford them) and dad hated those "pointy shoes that will rot your toes off"! LOL Later we got two "real" wood stoves when we moved to a larger house. One in the kitchen and one in the living room. Us girls slept in the upstairs bedroom, the boys in a huge "closet" type bedroom off the kitchen was which probably at one time, a pantry. Folks slept off the bedroom. When mom hollered for us to rise and shine, it didn't take much time to hit the floor and head for the wood stoves, back up to them, lift your "tails" and warm up! LOL In my first marriage to late husband, we were pretty poor also and he had trouble keeping work so again, I was very used to keeping warm by a wood stove, sealing off all rooms in really cold weather & covering our bodies as much as possible. We got stranded once in a snowstorm in the mountains of California & because it was a ski town not a soul was there. The engine in our car blew (young whipper-snappers never thought to put in anti-freeze…we lived in California!) and found sanctuary in a post office that had a floor vent. We laid down, each of us on one side of the vent and put our 9 mo.old baby between us & covered ourselves with a dirty old sweater that we scavenged from the trunk…again, no coats…we lived in California! I'm probably one of the most "prepared" people you'll meet when it comes to getting in a car during winter, and keeping my home as a sanctuary. It nearly cost us our lives. Now...we (the love of my life, MrWE2 and I) have central heat set at 55 in the Roost and supplement the heat with our solar box in the south kitchen window. Stays perfectly warm. That little house is so tight, not much heat escapes. MrWE2 put ALOT of insulation in when he started the remodel etc. He was a preparedness junkie when I met him and now he's met his match! We'll be looking into a small wood stove to set in the attached, enclosed porch, that we can quickly vent through a window in a crisis situation...Here, but we have our Big Buddy that uses the canisters in emergencies. Here we keep the temp at 65 and supplement with an Edenpure in the living room. Last time the power went out here, we just hung one of those "space blanket" type things over the doors to enclose the living room, kitchen & bath area and fired up the Mr. Buddy. Stayed very comfy. We wear insulated under garments to bed with a fleece blanket and a thermal blanket on top of that. Again, we stay very comfy. If my nose starts to feeling chilly, I find me a hot cup of coffee or hot chocolate...which is the first thing we do when we get up to "knock the chill off". That's one reason we're relocating to the Roost. Our heat bills there run about $59 a month. It will rise a bit I'm sure when I start cooking with gas, but that's to be expected.

I'll be changing from electric cooking to gas cooking..yeh!!! Back in the good old days, the power companies convinced everybody to switch to electric & finance their new stoves through them...remember? I'll be glad to get back to gas. Even our lab-brat cuddles in her blanket! She's WAY to big to be any place else, and we don't allow her on furniture or beds of any kind. So we have to make sure she's got a warm "blanket" to snuggle with...usually not too far from the Edenpure! LOL As for insurance companies, isn't that a hoot!? That's one advantage of having your property paid off & just self-insuring (if you dare). I sometimes think about the thousands of dollars we've paid on house insurance and never used a dime of it except on a new roof after a storm or two. We'll be glad to get this "ancient" off our backs. Insurance companies hire people to "turn down claims" ... not pay them. Ask those unfortunates in Katrina and Sandy, they'll tell you how honorable the insurance industry is in "taking care of you" in a disaster :-( We'll be looking into a mass rocket stove alternative at the Roost, but for now will have to settle for a simple wood stove just sitting and waiting in our enclosed porch. Anyway...stay warm friends...any way you can! Don't matter how, so long as you're warm. It's better to be alive and figure out how to deal with objections than to go toes up during a blizzard or other breakdown.

Just submitted another article for a popular web site and thought I'd copy & paste it here for you my friends.

 

 

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Good to remember the ways things used to be done....and can be done currently if we choose. I'd sure like to be where I could have those options. Renting for many years and there is just so much you can adapt. But we are relying heavily on pellet stove...ancient thing which we have to coax along. But with propane price just shooting through the roof....and being RATIONED, we'll make do more with the wood pellets.

 

:unsure: Unless the electric goes out. Then we have a Buddy heater too.

 

If a long term hooey [electric goes out] finds us still in this house, we'd have to pull out the pellet stove and remove a panel to open up the old chimney and use the fireplace. That wouldn't be very efficient but it would likely keep us from freezing. Thin out a few trees too. Got several dead but still laying up off the ground, leaned against others or spiked up by their branches. :knary: Get REALLY warmed up trying to cut and fetch the wood from these mountain sides too. :0327: Have several hand firewood saws.

 

During childhood, our old farm house leaked like a sieve when the wind blew. Got down to 18 degrees in my brother's NW bedroom and that was with the furnace running! We'd hang quilts in the two doorways out of the kitchen and keep that room warm - er. No one wanted to go to the living room to answer the phone. :frozen: My brother and I dressed up with so many layers, we added a towel for a cape and thought we were Batman and Robin. :lol: Surprised I didn't have permanently bent-over toes...from all the weight of blankets and quilts [not down quilts like I have now] on our beds.

 

Yeah, around our current drafty log cabin, I often wear ski pants over my sweatpants. Down vest and several layers too. A body gets used to being warmer and it also gets used to being colder [except if there is a health issue, of course]. We figure to keep used to being fairly cool so iffen we ever HAD to get by a lot colder, we wouldn't have so far to transition.

 

MtRider :campfire:

Edited by Mt_Rider
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Memories....

 

We lived on a self sufficient farm in northern Michigan. 20 cows, pigs, chickens, plus an annual turkey and any other animal we would hunt. Our tri-level home had a fire place in the center, a wood cook stove and an old hand pump for water in the kitchen sink, which regularly needed to be primed to get any water. No electricity. Now that dates me. LOL

 

During the winter there were times we would have to dig tunnels through the snow to make it to the barn, milk the cows and feed all the animals. Or the years we went out the 2nd floor door and walked on top of the snow to get to the barn. I remember cuddling up against the udders to keep warm while milking and when it was so cold, the milk froze while pouring the buckets through the filters into the milk jugs.

 

Every morning, first one up, stoked the fireplace, the stove and put water on to boil, then headed out to do chores. Grandmother and Mom made our clothes. I remember they were always warm.

 

Awwwww, the memories.

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