Winter, vikings and a kerosene lantern

I've been taking a long break from the world on internet. It's both rewarding and educational, but I tend to forget why I actually started this journey when the computer takes more time than I have. That's what happened, but now it feels good to start with a more open mind to what my part here and on other sites are. I was working on two different websites for both me personally and my crafts besides being here on steemit so I just had to break for a while.
It's nice to talk or write about what I'm trying to do and what I want to do, but by taking this break I also got a lot more done and that has lead me and my family to new conclusions. I've been making yoghurt, cookies, bread, knitting items like socks, mittens and dishcloths and lots of cooking! I'll show you more of the things I've been doing in upcoming posts. The one thing I haven't done is working on the crafts I make to sell, heating up the barn wasn't an option so now I'm waiting for better weather before I start weaving again. It's been nice to focus on my family and our needs.

We've had a bit of a rough winter, both me and my hubby are between jobs so we've been home together for a few months. Winter is the time of year that we need to heat our house and also our car to get it to function so it requires a lot more money and energy to maintain a level of comfort. We've had a mild winter this year, but lots of snow. The last measurement I heard about snowdepth was 155 cm (5 ft) and we are only third in the country. We haven't had as cold as we usually have, at least not until the last couple of weeks. We are starting to get spring weather, that means warmer days with sunlight and really cold nights. It's about time we get our snowmobiles running. It was -28 C this morning and the sun needs to be up for a while before it gets a bit warmer. I rarely find reasons to cry on a regular basis, but when our electric bill comes every month I feel the urge to weep. Now more than ever. Our electric bill has doubled since we bought our house and it's not because we use more. It's getting more and more expensive to live here, that's just the reality. So we started to make a real effort to heat our house with wood instead. I've been using our woodstove for comfort for years, but now we have been doing it with a purpose. We need to get those bills down.
This is my son splitting wood using muscle-power. He consider this to be fun.

We use electricity to heat the house during nights and when we aren't home. So we had to find out how low we could go with it and how cold it actually got first. So I turned down the heat during a day and we thought we were going to freeze to death! We've had the heat in the house way up high and gotten so used to it that we never even thought about it. When we got down and below what is normal indoor temperatures we thought we got into a new ice age! It only took a few days to adapt and now it doesn't bother us even during nights when the temperature goes down significantly. Being the people we are that has given us some giggles. We are supposed to be like vikings here.

We have this beautiful antique kerosene lantern that we have no idea how we got! Yesterday we bought some kerosene, the lantern has been used by whomever may have had it before. It felt so good to light it up instead of only having it on display and I can see the benefit of using it even if we live on the grid. We'll probably use similar lanterns once we finish our off grid cabin too. There's one more use for candle light and the kerosene lantern, they help to heat up the house. So every morning I light up some candles and have coffee while I'm waiting for the kitchen to get nice and comfortable from the fire in the wood stove.

The points I've been trying to make about homesteading and self-suffiency this last year has finally started to make sense to the rest of my family. So far it has been more like I've had a new hobby and soon It'll pass, but now they've started to see the benefits of being more self-reliant by growing more food in our garden, having a food storage and trying to keep costs down where we can. We are working on a better and more detailed plan for a food storage, I started doing that myself but now everyone is involved. It's exciting enough to me, but when everyone is showing interest I get really happy. The things I did store has been so nice to have and that's probably what made most difference so far. We are going shopping for groceries tomorrow and it's most needed.

This post turned out long and maybe not all that fun, but this things makes such an impact on me that I just had to write about it.
I noticed the increase of followers that I got while I was offline! That's also exciting! Thank you for following me, I hope that you'll find some value in the things I'm up too.

Until next time, be well.
//S