Also, when subzero temps are pushing into the house…and it does…a hot radiant wood stove pushes back. I found my mistakes building this house when winter came. I now wish I had put foam between the floor and the stud walls. I wish I had used adhesive on my vapor barrier. I can feel cold pushing through any tiny area even through the tongue and grove sub flooring. I can see moisture pushing out a small hole from my dormer when it’s -30F.
Yes, when one is chilled to the bone from damp cold or subzero temps, 80 feels fanstastic. I’m not getting any younger.
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Well when it gets to-30f my old farmhouse from 1901 doesn’t get much above 65 with 2 stoves on the first floor and a big furnace in the basement going full bore. But then I have the original windows and my grandfather always said those windows are so tight you dont have to worry about letting the cat out at night the cat can just slip out around the window. It is a truly drafty old house but at the moment I dont have the time or money to upgrade it. The little house mom lives in is up to modern construction now it was rebuilt about 10 years ago and is really nice. So at least I can warm up when I visit her for meals… but I find 80 too hot even in raw days. I do love to come in and sit by a warm stove though nothing better when your cold then a hot wood stove to warm you up.
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Well I recognize a suffering man when l see one 
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I tried Tiawan for a while I will take snow over the summer heat. But man the winter trips where great.
That said I have a busy month ahead of me getting ready for another winter.
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I trade all of my white stuff for a week in your peace of paradice Koen 
From my world:
Its that time of year when the young wine stops fizzing and the autum breeze shakes down the chestnuts, and for some reason God made them fit together perfectly 
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Garry Tait and Bill Schiller, have 2018’s first snows and JO is sitting on his porch, basking in the sun, sipping a drink, in his bare feet and Koen is enjoying time at the beach, I would guess in his flip-flops. Our weather is between you all’s. Today my wife reminded me that because of the rains, it had been 7 day since I had mowed. She likes it done every 5 days so the windrows don’t get too big and clump. So, dispite the temperature out side being exactly what my refrigerator manufacture recommends the temp that the refrigerator should be kept, I was persuaded to as the French would say; “Moe-de-lawn”.
TomC
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Haha!
Nice combination. Relaxing in the sun, seaside views, wine and chestnut treats and then there’s the bombsquad mowing the lawn
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Just received pics from Ida’s (oldest daughter) first day at moose hunting. Even if she was not the one to shoot the first one personally, the meat is chared within the team of 6 people.
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Good time of year. Change in the air, but still not cold. You guys are hard to understand, but more power to ya up there freezing your nay nays off.
K, we’ve been eating chesnuts too. One of the things I always wish I could have experienced is the American chesnut. They say it was the biggest tree in the woods here. How do you prepare them?. DO you cook them in the shell?
Luke skinned a little deer the other day.
Here’s a few pics of life in E Central AL.
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Ha! Ha! Not much to October picture here. Rain. Rain with full overcast. Rain with sunbreaks. Overcast with 20 minutes to 45 minutes between drizzly raining.
Warmed up some. 50F throughout the nights. 55-57F in the days. Very hard to keep the house woodfired down to just 72-74F. Wifie complains and opens doors and windows.
Woodstove not fired up and the electric furnace cycles, and then I complain. Grid-slaving.
marriage: the tie-lock that will keep two complainers together, moving forward . . . .together
one; is just so damn lonely
tree-farmer Steve unruh
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Thats the kind of picture report l love to see, random stuff from other side of the world. Keep them comeing guys!
Chestnuts have a wery strong tradition here, they were a important sorce of food for hundreds, if not thousants of years in this region. Traditionaly, they are rosted over fire on a perforated steel tray. Can be done on on any tray or hot surface like l did on my cast steel cichen stove on the pic, but the perforation in the tray lets some flames trugh that burn the outer shell some, this adds to flavor and makes pealing easyer. Allso, about half way in the roast, sprinkle water (or better, wine) on them. They will just fall ouz of the skin when done.
Wery good chestnut roster can be made out of old washing machine drums.
A nother few ideas:
Boil them whole, cut in half and squeeze trugh a garlic press mincer. The clean puree will be squeezed out and the peel will stay behind. Puree is used for a thousant things, from soup to cakes. Eaven beer 
A nother good idea is to peel the outer skin off raw nuts. Boil them in a mix of water and milk, seasoned with a spoon of sugar and a spoon of salt. The iner skin will faall right off and the nuts will stay whole and delicious.
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JO,
That is a BIG animal. Even six home freezers couldn’t hold all that meat. Is a cold storage Meat Locker available for rent somewhere? When I lived in Minnesota I would help my uncle slaughter hogs in the middle of the Winter. He would just leave the meat in some junk cars that were sitting out behind the barn. It seems that it would stay cold for a long time, at least until the meat was spread out to the relatives.
Thanks for sharing the pictures.
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It is a huge animal. It looks like Jo’s next project is a walk in freezer. Our friends, who were originally from Minnesota, had one and they processed pigs for sausage every year. He called it roadkill sausage.
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Either that or a nice big wood powered smokehouse. The pork remained me of the old timers smoking a pig and then hanging it in the shed chamber.
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Ray,
I guess most people in the countryside have big freezers Actually when most of the bones are cut out and the meat is devided on six families there’s not that much to store. Also small hunting teams don’t score every year. Good thing is moose contains very little fat and can be kept in the freezer for many years.
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OK, Kristijan, Here is some random. We have been super busy and stressed-out at work this Summer. Too many changes all at once, inside and out, building, equipment, tower, almost everything. A milestone today as the antenna (10,000 Lbs.)comes off the old tower (right) to be inspected, painted and put back on top of the new tower (left). It is very unusual for a TV station to get a new tower, but they wanted to put more heavy stuff up there and the old 1957 tower was loaded to the max. The new one is much more heavy-duty. That is me in the orange hat in the bottom picture. Guess who gets to start sanding and painting tomorrow
Oh-well, that is job security I guess!
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Jan around here most freezers are set to about -17 C or 0F. In you lower that to about -23C or -10F you double the storage life of the meat. It is something I looked into when I started raising grass feed beef because the old freezer I grew up with would keep meat good forever. I forget where I found the curve but from the reading I did that was -10F was about the ideal tradeoff between storage life and cost to run the freezer. 0F is the default to get the best energy efficiency ratings.
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Dan,
Thanks for the tip. I would have guessed the colder the better but I never realised only another 5C would double the storage life.
On another note, but still about store - your word for shop.
I like the fact that the place storing things for us you call store, because that’s actually what we pay stores for. Here we call it affär, which also means business - not as appealing.
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