Gotta Love Those Snow Days

We have been snowed in for 5 days now.  I have been working on taxes, cooking, cleaning, and of course doing laundry.  To me that is part of cleaning and automatic washers and dryers make it easy. 

I was raised on a  600 acre grain and livestock farm.  I remember ringer washers, renting a freezer locker at the local butcher shop, canning everything you can raised, coal stoves, hand pumping well water, butchering on the coldest day of the year, smoke houses, raising chickens for meat and eggs, peddler wagons and outhouses.  We did have electricity and party line rotary dial phones.  Eventually indoor plumbing, bathrooms, chest freezers, automatic washers and dryers, and oil heating stoves were installed. I do not regret the way I was raised but I do love all of our modern day conveniences.   My Father was one of 13 children raised in a 2 bedroom log cabin.  He and two brothers stayed on the farm, bought it, and more acreage.  As children we could safely walk gravel roads to Grandma's house, pick berries in the summertime, ride bikes for miles. When I think of some of the things that were thrown out over the years I cringe.  I guess everybody tossed old items they considered primitive for the newest shiny possessions.  My husbands Aunt told me she regrets throwing all her crocks out when Tupperware started being sold.  Hindsight is foresight.  Everyone has fond childhood memories of live being simpler, mainly because as children our parents worry about the household we don't. 

It does seem like in Southern Indiana our winters are not as extreme as they used to be.  Last winter was really mild, but then we had a very hot dry summer.  If this snow keeps up we may just pull out of the drought. 

We do live pretty far out in the country on gravel roads.  I still practice what my mother always stressed about keeping at least a 30 day supply of every in the house for winter just in case of bad weather.  I don't shop I stock up.  

In the winter I make soup bases and freeze it for quick lunch time meals.  Yesterday I used all of the turkey and chicken broth I did not use over the holidays to make chicken vegetable soup base to freeze.  I will make noodles and freeze them in small quantities to add to soups and stews, tomorrow.  Pork barbecue was made last Thursday and it was also packaged and frozen.  Boring food makes for a long winter, so we strive for a variety in meals here.