Winter preparations now it’s winter – things still to do

Posted by louisa on Thursday 25 November 2010 in frugal, green | 2 comments

We’ve had our first snow of the winter today – quite heavy flurries but not sustained. There are few snowy patches around the garden but the sun, which is shining brightly in between the showers, is quickly turning the snow to transparent ice or melting it all together.

Or at least that looks like what’s happening from up here. Even before I knew it was going to snow today, I’d decided to do the frugal thing and stay in bed for as long as possible. I’m still there now. I’ve got up for a few dashes around the house – feeding the animals & myself, a wee run, a delivery arriving – but other than that, I’ve stayed under the duvet and not had to use any form of heating for five hours and counting. (John’s out at his office today, I’ve got all the cats & dog as mobile heaters up here with me.) I will have to get up soon to take the dog for a walk and probably won’t return to bed again after that but until now, *warm*. My view has been of tree tops not trunks today:

This weekend is supposed to be a very cold one. Around here (Yorkshire), it’s not supposed to get above freezing at all on Saturday – and that’ll be positively tropical compared to other parts of the country. It’s the first time I remember it being this cold in November – the colder weather has usually waited until late December (as happened last year) or well into January or February (as is more typical). It’s made me realise how far behind I am on my “things to do for winter” list… I’ve done some of the stuff on it – some important stuff like curtains for our office, which makes a considerable difference down there – but not other bits.

Five frugal ways I’ll be staying warm this winter

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 23 November 2010 in frugal | 6 comments

This winter looks like it’s set to be a cold one – and that means that heating bills can easily go through the roof. But there are plenty of frugal ways to keep warm without resorting to hugging a radiator – here are five things we’ll be doing this winter to stay warm on the cheap.

1. Staying in bed

Mmm, bed. I love it when it’s frugal to be lazy…

I was chatting to my mum & dad on instant messenger the other day and they commented that even though it was 11:30am or so, they’d only just got up and “saved on three hours of heating”. My dad is retired and my mum only works part time so they spend a lot of time at home – but instead of getting up & relocating to their needs-heating living room, they had breakfast & read in bed until they had to get up to do other things.

Here, we work from home and use laptops so it’s easy for us to start the day up there. Working at desks helps us concentrate later on but the start of the day stuff – checking email, websites, writing to-do lists – that can be done from bed with our animals around us for extra warmth.

We’ve put in hours of hard work building up a cocoon of warmth overnight – we should make the most of it!

2. Getting our blood flowing

Frugal, cooking, growing and making link love

Posted by louisa on Friday 19 November 2010 in chickens, cooking, frugal, growing, meta, wood stuff | 2 comments

It’s super foggy here this morning so I need some ace inspiration to get going – and I thought you might need some too. Here are some of my favourite reads from the last few weeks…

• Ana White makes things that always excite me – demystifying woodwork and creating fab bits of furniture cheaply and easily. I think her old Knock Off Wood blog was the site that most inspired me to pick up a saw and screwdriver – and I just love her most recent side-table – and her “paint it bright” philosophy!
• One thing I was missing when I made my meal from just things I’d grown/caught/foraged was salt – now thanks to ManUpATree, I’m inspired to try making some myself – just got to find some clean enough sea water…
• Gillian of My Tiny Plot neatly summarised Which? Gardening’s heritage versus hybrid veg article – very useful info, thanks Gillian!
• Damn the Broccoli gave us some useful tips on staying warm but keeping the heating bills low…
• Compostwoman of The Compost Bin has been writing about… composting. Specifically, how she does it – and a very seasonal post on how to make leaf mould.
• And finally, Little House in the Suburbs recently ran a seven part series asking their community about lots of aspects of chicken keeping. I’ve contributed a number of times and loved reading what other people had to say – lots of very good advice and suggestions.

(For anyone who cares, the first is from the top of our garden, looking into the woods next door/at the bottom of the garden – and our chicken coop is in the bottom right; the second is the bandy trees at the bottom of our garden, just behind the chicken run; and the third is over our wood pile to the north, we can’t see our neighbour in that direction in the summer – or when it’s foggy!)

Preparing for winter

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 27 July 2010 in growing | 1 comment

I claim to be rather disorganised (usually as a bluff for why I haven’t done something I don’t want to do…) but gardening – and more simple life in general – forces you to plan ahead. Despite it being the middle of the summer (in the calendar, if not observably from the weather), I spent most of my gardening time over the weekend thinking about the late autumn, winter and next spring.

I planted on leeks, tended to my many, many winter squash, sowed spring cabbages & attempted my third batch of kale (the first lot got too hot, the second lot got too wet…). I also fretted slightly about where I’m going to plant my garlic when the time comes later in the year – I was hoping to have a good chunk of a bed for it but I’m not sure there will be room. Lack of decent bed space is one of the biggest problems with our garden but I don’t have the time to tend to both our garden and an allotment (if I could get one…) so I’m going to have to keep working around that. I’ve also got mental calendar notes for starting autumn-sowing cauliflower and over-winter lettuce.