Preparedness 12.0/ Final Harvest, Winterizing The House and Coop

 

Preparedness 12.0/ Final Harvest-

Our first hard freeze is here! Eastern Idaho had several inches of snow two days ago. This is the time of year where you start preparing for winter. As they used to say in Game of Thrones WINTER IS COMING! We wrapped up the harvesting, except the Basil and herbs, covered those with a row cover-

High winds so need to weight it down

Only some small green tomatoes are still outside. We'll check on those this weekend. We picked our last really ripe tomatoes and peppers. With the cold snap warning Dave harvested all the last of the large green tomatoes in advance-

This is only one tray!

The really ripe ones we're using on homemade pizzas this week! Got the dough from a local pizza place. Some of the others I'll be freezing or I may make a big pot of pasta sauce. The green ones we will lay out and let ripen slowly. They never have quite as much flavor but they're good to use in soups and things. I dehydrated lots of dead ripe tomatoes, more coming!

This time of year we winterize the house, doing things like closing up the foundation vents, putting out some fleecy blankets for snuggling. I'll be adding our heavy comforter this weekend to our bed. I moved my summer clothes into our spare bedroom closet. Got out all my flannel blouses and fleece. Luckily I bought more wool socks last month! One of the things we do to winterize the houses is buy some of Costco's amazing chocolate/almond biscotti's! They are so good with a cup of something hot on a cold day. Winterizing the house includes the yard like putting away the hoses, pump is out of the pond and we moved some of the perennials in pots to winter-over in the garage. I'll pack up my garden bench and cover with plastic this weekend. Got out my small space heater for the kitchen. The big sliding glass doors make for a cold spot near the desk-

Link to my post Low Cost Ways to Keep Your Home Warm for more ideas. We got the cars ready for winter- new wiper blades, got out the snow scrapers, added a blanket in the backseat of each car. All those little things in case you get stranded and buried! What I bought this week- more acorn squash, lemons (small amount of pesto to still make), misc stuff.  

FOR MORE REALITY CHECKS- 5% inflation (today), new of possible brownouts/blackouts in some areas possible, droughts equal less foods, last springs freezes equals less foods and feed for ranchers, gas is going up, sizes going down /prices up (shrinkflation), less food in the stores, restaurants having less staffing/ more areas closed off, less available online to buy, trucking shortage, blackouts in China affecting manufacturing. Here's some visuals and links-  

From Wskg.org Supply Chain Troubles

Grocery Stores Food Shortage    China's Power Crunch  Australia Victorian Home Quarantine Selfie App   Natural Gas Prices Skyrocketing

Again- no down side to being prepared 

Winterizing the coop is actually fairly easy. We have a large window on the bottom of the coop that faces East. In the spring we switch it out, put on a frame with hardware cloth for ventilation (Dave built). We also took off the glass panel on the storm door. It was part of our Coop Rehab  Works much better than the old warped wood door, and it was recycled! The upper coop window (recycled) slides and can be opened as needed-

Lower vent on the left

Dave put the big glass panel on the coop wall back on and added the glass panel to the storm door before the freeze hit. They still have good ventilation through the lower vent and the coop itself is not airtight. There's also a vent in the roof. The main thing with the coop is that you do not want to have too much moisture inside. We also have the upper window that we can open if it gets really warm. Will be adding our exterior extension cord soon, to plug in their water so it won't freeze. It also allows us to turn on a light inside the coop if we have to go out after dark. I decided not to add a light at night to get more egg production. We do use a hardwired-in heat lamp and a reptile ceramic disc for additional heat if it gets really cold. Usually that would be in the teens or lower, but it depends. The good thing about the deep litter method is it actually generates some heat in the winter as it slowly breaks down. We love that method and there's never any odor! We'll add the sunroom soon, the new design worked great last year-

Just knocked off the snow once in a while!