Prepping your homestead for winter

Prepping Your Homestead For Winter

Prepping your homestead for winter is key but it’s no secret that winter can be a challenging and trying time. Because homesteaders are self-sufficient, or at least—halfway homesteaders, the cold winter months require significant preparation to make it through successfully. Without these preparations, you may lose your livestock, gardens, food storage, and more. Prepping your homestead for winter is the only sure-fire way to prevent these issues from happening.

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Prepping Your Homestead For Winter

Here are a few easy tips that can help you be ready for those cooler temperatures of the year.

Prepare Your Home to Hold Heat

As the weather turns colder, you’ll likely begin to notice areas in your home that may need winterizing. These spots can include leaky windows and doors, attic doors, basement doors, and so on. All of these spots can leave cold air leaking into your home. This not only makes your home chillier, but it will also cause your bills to rise.

To prevent these air leaks, cover the windows of your home with Visqueen at least three mils thick. You may also want to consider doing the same to the attic, basement, and back doors if you do not need to use them.

One other place to check is under cabinets and closets. Sometimes these areas are not sealed well and, as such, can allow cold air to come into your home. If you live in a cold, snowy climate during winter, these small air leaks can make the difference between a warm home and a cold one.

Prepare Your Livestock

If you have livestock on your farm, especially small livestock such as chickens, you will need to take the time to winter them down as well. This could mean anything from using a coop heater to adding extra bedding and so on. The more care you take with your livestock, the better they will survive the colder temperatures.

Don’t forget your pets and other animals. You’ll want to be sure that you’re taking care of them and keeping them out of the cold as much as possible.

Winter Your Garden

Even winter garden plants will need tending once the weather gets freezing and the potential for snow happens. For those that do not grow winter plants, winterizing your garden ahead of time can create less work during the spring. One quick and easy way to winterize things is by using plant frost blankets. These blankets are meant to cover your plants or the ground beneath them to provide an additional layer of protection.

You may also want to consider moving your plants into a portable greenhouse if you are genuinely concerned that your plants will not survive. These mobile versions of larger greenhouses are great for conducting heat, even during the winter months. They are a great way to give yourself some growing options even while the weather is cold.

Tend to Water Storage

If you keep water storage on hand, especially water stored for livestock, you will want to ensure that it does not become a frozen chunk of water. While your livestock can lick frozen water to get their hydration needs met, doing so when the weather is already cold can lead to lowered body temperatures. As such, it is best to find a way to keep the water from freezing in the first place.

You can accomplish this by storing the water at a higher elevation since heat rises by using an immersion heater and keeping the water moving. Moving water takes much longer to freeze, and when combined with the heater, it will require much colder temperatures to freeze. You can also get heated hoses and waterers.

Plan to Preserve Enough Food to Last the Winter

Finally, as your spring and summer gardens come to harvest, you will want to gather with the winter months in mind. This mindset is critical if you live primarily off-grid or are far away from the closest grocery store. You won’t want to get snowed in or become otherwise unable to get food should your emergency food storage run out. An excellent way to ensure you have the emergency pantry you need is to practice home canning with your garden harvest or dehydrate what cannot be home-canned.

A good rule of thumb is to preserve and store twice as much as you expect to use. By having more than you wish to use, you will be able to rest easy in the knowledge that you can still feed your family should you need to rely on it.

Don’t Forget Your Other Supplies

Finally, as you’re stocking up for winter and doing any other winterizing tasks, be sure you don’t overlook other necessary supplies. These supplies are the ones that help to keep your home moving, such as toilet paper, cleaning supplies, laundry soap, extra blankets, and so on. Without these supplies, your home may come to a dead stop. If you make these types of things yourself, be sure to stock up on the supplies you will need to make them. Having extra on hand won’t hurt anything, but it will help should you need them.

Prepping your homestead for winter can take weeks or months, but it can save weeks or months of frustration and other issues for those who live this lifestyle.

Prepping Your Homestead For Winter

Prepping Your Homestead For Winter