Racing Winter

When you live in the Great North Woods winter is a big deal. It gets pretty chill up here snuggled up against the Canadian border. 

For a lot of years I didn’t worry about winter’s chill. I spent a lot of winter down in Florida and other parts in the sunbelt. One of my favorite areas was exactly where Hurricane Ian made landfall. It will be a while before we go back down there. 

Right now the current plan is to spend most of the winter here in the Frostlands. Fortunately we’ve had some pretty decent weather this fall. I’ve been able to get some projects done. However, the clock is running. It can go from T-shirt weather to snow in matter of weeks. There are years when the snow starts falling in October and stays on the ground well into spring. That would definitely bring some projects to a halt. 

My plan to reduce the area of the house we heat is going well. I was able to frame up and install a door that shuts off the whole upstairs. All we have to do is to bring our bed and few other items to the first floor and we are good. The basement is getting a lot of junk cleaned out. That will make it a lot easier to beef up the insulation down there. There’s some R-19 sitting my mud room just waiting to be installed. 

My first delivery of fiber blocks for the woodstove came it on Thursday. I love the free delivery when bought by the pallet. The new forklift operator did an amazing job coming down my questionable driveway. He saved me a lot of work by dropping it so close to the house. 

With OPEC cutting production I probably won’t be buying much fuel oil, if any. They priced themselves out of my budget. Now they’ll get nothing from me. 

-Sixbears