Getting Ready for Winter

I had worked in the school district for the last ten years. I also worked part time for a different company, but also in the school setting. Last summer I’d gone back to work for them with the same child at their home and a little bit through the school year. Before school was over last year I sensed that God was telling me it was time to stay home and concentrate on writing and the worship ministry he’s given me.

I retired at the end of the school year last May. I actually had time to put in a small garden. I made raised beds lined with plastic, but I couldn’t afford enough soil to make it very deep. Therefore, the plants grew, but haven’t produced much. I’ll have a head start for next spring, but in the mean time winter is approaching.

Between getting back to gardening and not bringing home a paycheck I’ve gotten more of a sense of making do with less. I have to say “no” to my sons more, which is very liberating. Also, I now have the time and energy to actually enjoy cooking from scratch. I’ve watched how God has taken the dollars our budget can manage to feed our family of four and expand it far beyond what it should. Surely if my ears could pick it up I’d hear the bills squeal from being stretched so far! I still have a bit left over which I never did when I was working. Shhh, don’t tell my husband.

There has also been more time to pay closer attention to what’s going on in the economy. The price of oil raised the price of fuel which in turn raised the price of everything else. As you know the price of meat went through the roof and our freezer was almost completely empty. The half a beef from a range cow that my husband had bought months before from a friend of his was about gone. We’d relied on it to supplement the grocery budget. All through the summer months we’ve been trying to figure how we were going to replace it; especially with winter drawing near. Now we only have three or four packages left.

On top of that we’ve been undergoing a change in our sewer system. We bought a house outside of the city limits back in 2000. The area was kind of in-between towns and everyone had septic tanks. The problems with the city sewer we’d had in town were left behind. Well, guess what? The little township up the street wants to become a city and take in our neighborhood and all the surrounding townships. They’ve tried and have been shot down each time by the voters. The new sewer was proposed before the last vote to entice people into a positive vote. It didn’t work, but they’ve pretty much forced the sewer on everyone anyway. If we didn’t voluntarily sign up for it, then we’d have to pay at least $5,000.00 to put it in later. Anyone who lived in the neighborhood could turn us in as a health hazard at the first sign of a problem and we’d have to pay to get it done. We also took into account that if we ever wanted to sell the house having city sewer would be a contributing factor to the sale. After we considered everything my husband and I felt we didn’t have much choice. Even though the system has an electric grinder pump and our house is all electric we signed the papers. The man my husband talked to lives in our area and told us that if the electric went out, just call the water company and someone would come out with a generator for the pump. The idea of not being able to use the bathroom was not an appealing idea. Needless to say I’ve been skeptical to say the least. Time passed without anything happening so we more or less forgot about it; until this summer.

At the time of this writing we are officially on the new sewer. The work started at the beginning of the summer or the end of this last spring. In the process they dug up some of the lead lines to the septic tank so that option is completely gone. Other things had been dug into during the process also. Things like the telephone lines and the electric lines. We lost the phone a couple of times and the electric went out more than once. Then we got the wind and the rain from the hurricanes of Gustav and Ike. We lost lights off and on with Gustav. Every time the electric went out I was thinking of the alarms that would be going off all over the neighborhood once the sewer is done. It brought pictures of people in their pajamas and robes getting wet as we all go out to push the button on the box to the sewer to shut off the racket.

Ike on the other hand brought in wind which blew down lines that was connected with ours. The electric was off from the afternoon through the night and most the next day. The electric did come on a couple of times, but didn’t last long enough to cook. My husband came close to boiling, but I doubt that counts.

It has become apparent around here it isn’t a matter of if the electricity goes out, it’s when. This was really brought home this summer. It wasn’t easy trying to figure out how to cook meals without the stove. I used to cook out on an open fire and could again, but it was raining. I’ve never been good at starting fires in the rain. I did manage to get a fire going using charcoal and very old wood in the grill on the deck. There is a bit of an overhang that I set it under; it worked enough. The wood I had left was old enough it should have burned very quickly, but it took forever to get it going enough for the charcoal to stay lit. Both were old and must have absorbed a lot of moisture. In the process I got wet and by the time the burgers were almost cooked, the electric came back on and stayed on; go figure.

The one thing this house has going for it is the fireplace. This is the only source of heat when the electric goes off. It has an insert and works great. We used it the first couple of winters partly because I enjoy watching the fire. Also, the fireplace is in the largest room which also opens onto the deck and into the garage. Between the two it gets very cool in that part of the house. Wood heat is very warm and I’m a very cold natured person. There is a blower which really circulates the heat into the house even more. Of course that doesn’t work when the electricity is out.

I quit using the fireplace when the rain started coming in around the rocks and floods the mantle. We thought it’d been fixed a couple of times, but alas when the rain became heavy enough or blew the right way in it came. So towels line the mantle ahead of any chance of rain. Each time it was supposed to be fixed it would be many weeks before it would rain enough to test it out. This part of the country has been in a drought state since before I moved here. That’s how little it rains, especially during the summer. Because of that it was very hard to call people back and say that their method didn’t work. We’ve had so much rain that my husband is getting water proof stuff to put on the chimney so we can use the fireplace this winter.

The only problem with using the fireplace for our only source of heat is the wood. What we have left was here before we bought the house. As I said; its old enough it will burn very quickly. I’d been wondering about how to go about getting more. There haven’t been any ads selling wood that I know of and we couldn’t afford it any way. I frequent ‘Freecycle’ on the internet for our area and with the wind from the hurricane a lot of trees were downed. Someone had gone on asking for wood from those trees. I’d thought of the same thing. After several days I decided to try it myself.

Hey! What’s all the fuss about getting ready for winter this year? You may be asking this question like our sons have been.

We’ve had the mildest, coolest, rainiest summer I’ve ever seen in the 20 something years I’ve lived here. Many people here are looking at what they can do to get ready for the coming winter. My instincts have been telling me it’s going to be a hard one because of the weather we’ve had this summer. I just found out the almanac is backing those feelings. Last week I came to the realization that my husband is of the same mind and had been mulling ideas and doing research on the net. In this part of Arkansas when we have a bad winter we don’t get as much snow as ice storms. The ice is beautiful on the trees and bushes when it’s over, but can be very deadly. People lose livestock and trees. Flat roofs cave from the weight. For some people the electricity goes out every time for many days. They are left without, depending on what their house has. If you have gas or propane for heat and cooking then you are better off than the houses with all electric systems. You’re better off as long as you can afford the gas.

Memories of being without electricity during an ice storm a few years ago have been resurfacing. Ours came back on after only three days. We were lucky. Many others were without electricity for a month and more.

The boys were small and some of the wood had been covered. We cooked like we were camping with hotdogs and marshmallows on those really long forks. I took an old pan to heat vegetables and such in the coals. I slept with one eye open to keep an eye on the fire and was up every few hours to put more wood on the fire. We camped out in the living room with sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows. Thankfully I had candles already and found a couple of battery powered lights at the store. Most things were already gone by the time I got there. We made do with what we had. The boys were young enough I could make it fun for them and was able to provide food for everyone. With the fourth night approaching I was sleep deprived and telling my husband we had to do something else! The electricity came back on late that afternoon. Who says we’ll be so fortunate next time? With this experience behind us we are gearing up. It isn’t a matter of worry, just doing what we can do.

God has been blessing our efforts. A very nice young lady emailed me back on freecycle and said they had trees that’d come down at the beginning of summer that I could have if I could come and get it. When I got there to check it out I found many trees cut up in various sizes. Much of the more seasoned wood was already cut to a good size for us. There was more that my husband could easily cut to size with his small chainsaw. I loaded up my trunk and before I left the young man offered a fourteen foot trailer my sons and I could load. Then he would bring it to the house for just gas money. I couldn’t pass that up. He even helped us unload it. We have ended up with almost as much wood as we started with when we first moved in. I bought some six mil plastic that measured 12′ x 12′ to cover it with. Once I get the wood cut the rest of the way and stacked the plastic should cover it completely, or almost. It comes close to it now. We ended up with some wood that is seasoned enough not to cause the chimney problems and yet new enough to last. Some of the wood is so solid that even the smaller pieces are heavy. The really old wood will be excellent starter to put under the newer stuff. We also have small twigs and branches on the pile for kindling. We have a large box of matches and get the daily newspaper.

My husband found the sealer for the chimney leaks he wanted at a good price with free shipping on the net and it’s on the way. The fireplace will be set and ready to use.

The master bathroom has a small heater that runs on propane with a tank on the outside of the house. That will be filled up shortly. We found it will heat the bathroom and our bedroom with the door shut. My husband, Michael, says it’ll keep the pipes from freezing also. No more sleep deprivation for me, ha!

So that’s the heat, but what about cooking? Well, Michael has found a generator that we could afford and will handle the freezer, fridge, some lights, microwave, tv, stereo, and have plug ins and watts left over for more. It has a wheel kit and a cover. It arrived a couple of days ago and are in the process of figuring out where to set it up at and how. Even though it will handle all of these things we’ve decided tv time will be limited. The guys will just have to read for a change. The freezer will stay plugged in at night, the fridge during the day. We will get another gas can to supply the generator with. Since we’re going to be careful on the load we put on it the amount of gas needed will be cut down. We are looking into an electric two burner hot plate for cooking pasta and such that needs to be boiled. We have a microwave that is also a convection oven which will cook most of what we need. The convection part roasts meats and bakes cakes. We have a crock pot to use for whatever we might need it for, also. Between all of these we’ll be set. Whichever one we need we can plug into the generator as we need it.

Ok, we’ll be warm enough and we can cook. What about the meat? We are not vegetarians and don’t want to be. Meat isn’t necessary or even healthy for every meal, but some is needed. Case in point: I knew an older gentleman whose wife had taken them off all red meat. She has a degree in nutrition so she knew how to get the complete protein from a combination of foods. This is what they’d been doing when he got sick and ended up at the doctor’s office. After careful examination and questioning the doctor told him to eat some beef. His wife didn’t want to, but adhered to the doctor’s orders. It didn’t take long before her husband was well just from putting meat back in his diet.

That’s all well and good, but we don’t have any and can’t afford to pay the prices that have been in the store. We don’t have the money to buy fresh beef this time and what the butchers have to charge for processing right now doesn’t make it much cheaper than the store bought. We’ve been checking prices and the quality of the beef trying to see what our options are.

Then Michael gets the newspaper one day and finds an ad paper from a new store that’s opened in town. They had chicken quarters and ground chuck lower than the other stores in town have had. He sent me off to the store to stock up. It’s not like having a side of beef, but it will go a long way to get us through the winter. We’ll eat spaghetti, chili, beef & noodles, chicken and noodles, chicken soup, vegetable beef soup, and may even have enough for hamburgers once in a while. Since I won’t have the burden of buying meat out of the grocery budget I’ll be able to stock up on beans, pasta, frozen vegetables, and staples such as flour, powdered milk, and shortening. I have great recipes for biscuits and bread if the stores run out. Michael will be going out hunting the first day of muzzle loader season also. He’s looking to get a good size deer and will have a great deal of it ground up. I’m also hoping for a wild turkey this year. I’ve heard they’re delicious and I’ve already figured out how to cook it to tender because of the experience cooking the range beef gave me! As I told Michael, God has blessed us thus far I’m sure he will bless him in that also.

I found out that Michael had been praying for as much overtime as he can get to pay for the car insurance that’s coming due and for the generator. Well, God has certainly answered his prayers. He’s worked over every week, sometimes two nights in a week. I’d been asking for help in trusting God and relying on him to take care of us since I am no longer working. I had gotten the idea that I could work part time for the other company if I needed to. A few weeks after school started up I started to panic and contacted them. They had someone that needed part time, weekends, overnight. It took enough time that God showed me that I need to strictly trust him to provide and rely on my husband. I finally prayed about it and decided that if God wanted me to have that job then the client would choose me for the position. Well, it didn’t happen and my husband is actually happy about it. Michael said the answer from God showed me that he that he can take care of us by himself. Our relationship has gotten much better because of it! I had thought he was stressing out from me not working and found out he wasn’t. I’m no longer stressed or panicked. A peace and joy has invaded my heart, mind, and spirit that I hadn’t experienced before. God has definitely shown me he can and will stretch the money to do whatever we need done. Remember the squealing I said the money should be doing? Well, it may very well be doing more than that. The gas money I paid the young man for hauling the wood came from my budgeted grocery money. I still had money left and we ate as well as we had been. God has provided my husband with overtime and transformed his heart as well as his mind.

Getting ready for this winter has been a life changing experience. I definitely don’t worry about being ready for this winter or any winter. All I have to do is trust God, do what he says and do what we can do. God is taking care of the rest and always will.