To-Do Suggestions for Winter

WINTER

Your local adult education program and Ag. Extension almost certainly have something useful to teach you - woodworking, crocheting, music training, horseback riding, CPR, herbalism, vegetarian cookery... take advantage of people who want to teach their skills.

Get serious about land use planning - even if you live in a suburban neighborhood, you can find ways to optimize your land to produce the most food, fuel and barterables. Sit down and think hard about what you can do to make your land and your life more sustainable in the coming year.

The winter lull is an excellent time to get involved in public affairs. No matter how cynical you tend to be, nothing ever changed without engagement. So get out there. Stand for office. Join. Volunteer.

Now is the time to prepare for illness - keep a stock of remedies, including useful antibiotics (although know what you are doing, don't just buy them and take them), vitamin C supplements (I like elderberry syrup), painkillers, herbs, and tools for handling even serious illness by yourself. In the event of a truly severe epidemic of flu or other illness, avoiding illness and treating sick family members at home whenever possible may be safer than taking them to over-worked and over-crowded hospitals (or, it may not - but planning for the former won't prevent you from using the hospital if you need it).

Most schools would be delighted to have volunteers come in and talk about conservation, gardening, small livestock, home-scale mechanics, ham radio, etc..., and most homeschooling families would be similarly thrilled. Consider offering to teach something you know that will be helpful post-peak (although I wouldn't recommend discussing peak oil with any but the oldest teenagers, and not even that without their parents permission.

Now is the time to convince your business, synagogue, church, school, community center to put a garden on that empty lawn. If you start the campaign now, you can be ready to plant in the spring. Produce can be shared among participants or offered to the needy.

The one-two punch of rising heating oil and gas prices may well be what is needed to make your family and friends more receptive to the peak oil message. Try again. At the very least, emphasize the options for mitigating increased economic strain with sustainable practices.

Get together with neighbors and check in on your area's elderly and disabled people. Make a plan that ensures they will be checked on during bad weather, power outages, etc... Offer help with stocking up for winter, or maintaining equipment. And watch for signs that they are struggling economically.

Work on raising money and getting help with local poverty-abatement programs. After the holidays, people struggle. They get hungry and cold. Remember, besides the fact that it is the right thing to do, the life you save may be your own.

Get out and enjoy the cold weather. It is hard to adapt to colder temperatures if you spend all your time huddled in front of a heater. Ski, snowshoe, sled, shovel, have a snowball fight, build a hut, go winter camping, but get comfortable with the cold, snowy world around you.

Have your chimney(s) inspected, and learn to clean your own. Learn to care for your kerosene lamps, to use candles safely, and how to use and maintain your smoke and CO detectors and fire extinguishers. Winter is peak fire season, so keep safe.

Grow sprouts on your windowsill.

Now is an excellent time to reconsider how you use your house. Look around - could you make more space? House more people? Do projects more efficiently? Add greenhouse space? Put in a homemade composting toilet? Work with what you have to make it more useful.

If a holiday gift exchange is part of your life, make most of your gifts. Knit, whittle, build, sew, or otherwise create something beautiful for the people you love.

If someone wants to buy you something, request a useful tool or preparedness item, or a gift certificate. Consider giving such gifts to friends and family - a solar crank radio, an LED flashlight, cast iron pans; these are useful and appreciated items whether or not you understand peak oil.

Do a dry run in the dead of winter. Turn out all the power, turn off the water. Turn off all fossil-fuel sources of heat, and see how things go for a few days. Use what you learn to improve your preparedness, and have fun while doing it.

Learn to mend clothing, patch and make patchwork out of old clothes.

Write letters to people. The post is the most reliable way of communicating, and letters last forever.

Make a list of goals for the coming year, then for the coming five years. Start Keeping records of your goals and your successes and failures.

Keep a journal. Your children and grandchildren--or someone else’s--may want to know what these days were like.

Wash your hands frequently, and avoid stress. Stay healthy so that you can be useful to those around you.

For those subject to depression or anxiety, winter can be hard. Find ways to relax, decompress and use work as an antidote to fear whenever possible. Get outside on sunny days, and try to exercise as much as possible to help maintain a positive attitude.

Memorize a poem or song every week. No matter what happens to you, no one can ever take away the music and words you hold in your mind. You can have them as comfort and pleasure wherever you go, and in whatever circumstances.

Take advantage of heating stoves by cooking on them. You can make soups or stews on top of any wood stove or even many radiators, and you can build or buy a metal oven that sits on top of woodstoves to bake in.

Winter is a time of quiet and contemplation. Go outside. Hear the silence. Take pleasure in what you have achieved over the past year. Focus on the abundance of this present, this day, rather than scarcity to come.