Little House and the Long Winter

 

My little guy and I have been listening to the Little House series via audio books.  It's been a nice experience to share these books with him.  I enjoyed reading them as a child, and my older boys were just not interested in reading them with me.  But the little guy enjoys them.  

We are currently listening to The Long Winter.  We aren't very far into it, but it's affecting me in ways that are causing me to worry about our own long winter.

We went from summer to fall as if someone flipped a switch.  The last several years, we've had very warm weather well into October.  This year is different.  We went from 80 degrees to 50 degrees in a day.  And I noticed the trees starting to change in September.  The leaves are now taking their sweet old time changing at the moment.  But they did start early.  It made me wonder if we were going to have an earlier and harder winter.  

In The Long Winter, the Ingalls family are finding themselves ill prepared to deal with the blizzards.  Right now, they are running out of coal, oil for the lamp, and meat.  It's making me think that maybe I should be increasing my stock of essentials for our own long, Ohio winter.  Of course, we'll be fine with coal and lamp oil, but meat and other food staples could be an issue.  I went through my freezer stash over the summer when I was trying to get the grocery bills lower, but now I'm thinking that I should build it back up again.  Not so much in a hoarding sense, but just in a "be prepared" sense.  

I notice that the supply chain issues are still with us.  Businesses are still having a hard time finding employees.  But while it can be annoying, it's not really an issue because we have enough items to substitute with unlike during the pandemic.  If the store is out of brown rice, I can still find white rice.  During the pandemic, there was no rice.  I'm not too worried about that happening again (but maybe I should be).  I just want to make sure that I have enough staples on hand that if I can't get to the store for a week, I can still feed the family. 

Items I like to keep stocked in the pantry/freezer:

1.  Beans- canned and dried
2.  Frozen veggies
3.  Boxed stock
4.  Bread - in the freezer
5.  Rice/Quinoa
6.  Meat in the freezer- ground and sausage
7.  Canned tomatoes - diced, diced with chili's, and whole
8.  Dried pasta
9.  Crackers/granola bars
10. Canned fruits/frozen fruit
11. Canned tuna

With the above items, I can make several different meals or soups.  I have canned fruit, but I don't really use that often, so I have to make sure to rotate that out.  The other things I use weekly so it's never a problem using them up before any expiration dates.

I always have olive oil, spices, and condiments so I don't worry about those.  With the pantry/freezer stocked up with those 11 items, I don't worry about feeding my people.  For other families, I would suggest nut butters too, but we have a nut allergy in our house and the little guy won't eat PB and J so I don't worry about keeping those in stock.  

I also like to keep a package of each size batteries in the house for things like flashlights or Xbox controllers (if you have kids, you understand how important that can be).

We also keep a small gas can of gasoline for our generator.  We have one that is portable and will run certain things like the heat, a few lights, the refrigerators, freezers, and our well and pump (no power means no water from us). If I ever hit the lottery, I would love to get one of those automatic whole house generators.  Our neighbors have one and it's great.  But right now, I'm thankful for our portable one.

Since we have a child with asthma, I also like to make sure that we have extra asthma medication in the house just in case.

It's always good to be prepared, but there is no need to overdo it.    If there is one thing that the pandemic taught us, it's that there are things that can happen that can be out of our control.  We don't need to stress out about it, but it's good to make sure that we have enough items on hand, that we can fend for ourselves if we have to.  

The Ingalls could have benefitted from a stocked pantry during The Long Winter. As the homemaker and keeper of the family, I'm going to make sure that I've got us covered.