Getting Ready for Winter, Etc.

Three of my six bins for the freezer arrived yesterday. They say the rest are arriving today.

This is only part of what I canned on Monday. I cooked up the large pack of ground beef and was able to fill 11 jars. Then I cut up the top round roast and was able to fill 3 more jars. Since my canner does 7 pints at a time, this gave me two full loads. They both process at 75 minutes so it was perfect. I had never done stew beef before so I thought I had filled up the jars but after processing, there was room left in them. So next time, I know to fill them with more meat. I have already put away the other 6 jars but I need to put these in the basement. I am running out of room upstairs.

Yesterday morning, I went up to Home Depot to get 5 more bags of lawn soil. Hubby has been filling in around the edges of the new driveway that was put in last fall with the soil and planting grass. He had already purchased 10 bags but it wasn’t enough. Those bags are heavy. I was lucky to find a young employee who did all the lifting, rung me up, and put them in the car. Hubby finished it yesterday and he had just put the last bit of seed down, when it rained. So we didn’t have to water. That made me happy since we just paid our 3 month $200. water bill.

After bringing the soil home and Hubby unloaded it, I went back to Walmart. I had not been in a Walmart in a long time. I always get delivery. But I am running out of some of the sizes of my canning jars and their site showed they had them. They had not one. But I needed other things that were on my winter list so I did a bit of shopping. I was shocked to see how barely stocked the shelves were. I have never seen a store this low on stock. That Panama Canal slowdown of the ships is really hurting the store inventories. If you need things for the winter, I would suggest getting them sooner rather than later. I don’t know how long supplies will last.

Fortunately, our 240 pounds of water softener salt arrived. We also have enough furnace filters and humidifier pads to get us through the winter. If you are stocking for the winter, they are just a couple of things that you should look at.

I picked up some OTC necessary medicines that we needed, some warm clothing, a bit of food, and warm socks. $178. later I walked out of the store with just 4 bags. Things are getting more expensive. I won’t bore you with the list of items. When I got home, I ordered many cases of pint jars which they are shipping from the warehouse. I don’t want to be short of them while I am doing the freezer.

Hubby and I went through our home over the weekend and made a list of all of the items that we believe will not last us the winter. When I talk about winter, I mean 6 months. We get a lot of snow and cold here and the forecast for the winter here is not good. It looks like it will arrive early and last later than normal. Lots of snow and below average temperatures are coming. I told him that I am not going out of the house this winter to run errands or for anything else. I have actually rescheduled all of my appointments until late spring. When we need fresh produce, dairy or anything else, we have Walmart Delivery and Instacart. So we can get delivery of almost everything. Our drug store will deliver our prescriptions.

Later in the day, a man from the Tree Service we called came to look at our pear tree and our other trees. The pear tree is loosing it’s leaves early and didn’t look good. The man told Hubby it probably was related to the weather this year. No fungus found. He told Hubby to get some Neem (which we already have) and just spray it in the early spring. He says it will come back and be just fine. He is coming back to trim our birch tree and maple tree. He said our cherry tree is just perfect. Our purple plum is on it’s way out. But he said they only last about 15 years anyhow. It is almost 14 years old now. So we will have to think about what we are going to replace it with.

For dinner last night, Hubby grilled the chicken that I purchased last weekend. He used my homemade BBQ sauce. It was so delicious. It is a recipe that carried down over the years from our ancestors. He grilled 4 breasts so there are two left for dinner tonight.

Since our dinner is ready for tonight and I quickly picked up the house, threw a load of laundry in, did the dishes, and cleaned the bathrooms this morning, I can start working on pulling food out of the freezers that I want to can. When it thaws, I will start the canner. Then I can defrost the chest freezer and organize it. This will definitely take me a few days.

Are you stocking up on necessities for the winter?