Activity keeps you warm
One
of the best things you can do to stay warm is to move around.
This will also raise your spirits during an extended power
outage. I've found that if I get up the courage to jump out of my
toasty sleeping bag and into the cold air long enough to get fully
dressed and give the dog a walk first thing in the morning, my blood
has started pumping enough to keep me warm for an hour or more.
Of course, if you have a wood stove, splitting wood is a time-proven
method of warming you twice.
If you're a little less
hard-core, warm foods and drinks will also wake
your body and improve your mood. It's easy to heat a pot of
water on top of a wood stove to make tea or cocoa, and then you can
make a pot of
soup for lunch. You can even pull coals out of the stove to cook
on top of, as I did during a ten day power outage in 2009 when we had
only an exterior wood furnace to keep us warm. A propane camp
stove will do the job even better. No matter how you heat up your
food and drinks, be very careful since synthetic fabrics are extremely
flammable.
Finally, know the
symptoms of hypothermia and keep an eye on young
children or elderly family members who might not be self-aware enough
to realize they're too cold. Early symptoms include constant
shivering; pale or blue lips, ears, fingers, and toes; clumsiness;
slurred speech; stumbling; trouble thinking; and poor
decision-making. You should be very concerned if you or someone
in your family experiences blue and puffy skin; inability to walk;
incoherent behavior; stupor; a weak pulse; and slow, shallow
breathing. Don't risk it if you're experiencing even mild
hypothermia --- find a way to get warm and dry immediately.
Beyond the basics
After dealing with one too many winter power
outages, we saved our
pennies to buy and install an efficient wood stove. I estimate
the stove will pay for itself in lower heating costs within three or
four years, we cook soup and beans on the stove even when the power's
on, and the cats and I love basking in the radiant heat and watching
the flames flicker inside. You can read more about our choices by
following these links:
I
hope you enjoyed this excerpt from Weekend
Homesteader: December.
The 99 cent ebook walks you through the basics of planting your first
fruit trees,
staying warm without electricity, understanding the uses of essential
tools, and turning trash into treasures. If you're interested in
other aspects of basic emergency preparedness, Weekend
Homesteader: November gives tips on storing drinking water and the
upcoming Weekend Homesteader: January will cover backup lighting
options.
 This post is part of our Emergency Warmth lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries: |
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Stumbling, slurred speech, confusion, poor decision making? But I have those symptoms all the time.
Especially if there are kids, a 3 season tent set up inside a room will protect with some movement possible.