In this post I'm after a bit of help!
I'm currently writing an article for a popular magazine about being prepared for hard winters - A kind of batten down the hatches and stock up piece.
 |
| Last winter will be one we remember for a long time! |
I want to give lots of advice but also contain some stories from hard winters in the past, especially on farms, smallholding and homesteads. Winters like 1963 or 1982 spring to mind, although they were before my time so it would be great to have some first hand accounts and stories.
Also I'd love to know what unusual items or ones most people wouldn't have thought of that you now keep in stock because of a hard winter or a problem you had to overcome.
If anyone has any old pictures from winters past it would be great if I could use them? I'd love some pictures of people and animals snowed in or pictures of heavy snow - I bet there's some great pictures out there!
You can leave comments here or email through pictures via my contacts page or through social media and you'll have my everlasting thanks and a mention!
I've got nothing useful for your article but I was 8 in 1963 and it just seemed like good fun! except it can't have been because the pipes froze underground so we must have been without water! I remember still walking the half mile to school and the ice pushing the silver tops off our third-of-a-pint school milk.
ReplyDeleteIn 1982 I had two children under 3 and can't remember a thing!
I remember the frozen bottles of milk from the 70's. The teachers used to then put them on the big iron radiator to defrost, so by break time the milk was warm on the outside and still icy in the middle. I don't drink much milk nowadays...
DeleteLast winter, we had so much snow, our chickens are free range, the snow was so deep that they couldn't get back to the coop. We decided to fence them in this winter so we aren't digging chickens out of the snow.
ReplyDeleteFrom recent experience, if you prepare for a hard winter, it won't happen. We live in a small cul-de-sac, on a fairly steep hill. We're too tucked away for the gritter lorries to reach us, so every time we have moderate snow, the road becomes an ice sheet. And being a steepish slope with a steepish patch of green space attached, local kids channel their inner luge racer and conditions can be treacherous.
ReplyDeleteAfter being iced in during our first winter, we bought a few sacks of grit for the benefit of ourselves & our neighbours. Only one family bothered to chip in, so when we ran out about a year ago (and they had moved), the street became an ice rink as soon as it snowed last year.
Partner has bought winter grip tyres for his bike, so at least we'll be able to get out for supplies if it's a hard winter.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteWe don't tend to get cold winters up here, just wet and windy. If it does get cold and the hill into the glen gets icy then suddenly people start appreciating the local shop we run. It would be quite nice if they invested in it year round! Sometimes I have to ration the bread and milk and do deliveries to people who can't get out their drive. As well as the obvious food and salt, there are candles, torches and lamps, batteries, parafin and gas bottles, coal, wood and kindling, camping stoves, grippers for shoes etc. (depending on how nervous people are about the power supply) all of which we stock 'just in case'.
ReplyDeleteAt home before we had a fridge or freezer it was convenient over christmas to have it freezing outside - extra cold food storage space!
My feeling is that we'll get payback for the lovely warm summer the UK has had - probably in winter winds though.
very good. Thank you for sharing!Good article and very interesting.
ReplyDeletegclub