Cécile Stelzer Johnson

If you bought the seeds, they have a date. If not, hopefully YOU wrote the year. Some seeds can be good for many years, but others are rather perishable.
https://joegardener.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Seed-Longevity-Chart.pdf
Long story short: if you have old seeds, toss them. In your garden, in your compost pile... Anywhere where they could still surprise you and germinate:
You will be better able to organize if you let go of the unusable or nearly unusable.
I save my seeds in favor boxes that I buy from Michaels. (An art & craft store here). Favor boxes are made of thin cardboard, so don't put them where they'll get wet. Little boxes 2" X2" X3" are the perfect size for pumpkins and other cucurbits...
I've re-used boxes for years, just changing the label.
I put those boxes in a few different places. Most are not afraid of the cold. They can be placed way up in the coop, above the chickens: It will be quite cold there, but not below zero.
The insulated garage, with a small heater + thermostat can be kept just above freezing, like refrigerator temperature. To encourage me to be vigilant, I put a lot of my canned goods there, in glass jars.
The rest, I keep here, in the office.
I try (but I'm afraid I have not been always consistent) to make a census of them on a spreadsheet, along with where I stashed them.
When the snow is gone, change of plans: I bring them out by planting date:
Some are cold crops (peas, lettuce, radishes... ) will have to go in the ground first.
Melons, corn and the like, warm crops, will go in later.
Of course, there are also cuttings of bushes, like raspberries, black currants and others. Last year, I thought ahead and made cuttings of black currants late in the fall, after the leaves had fallen. I stashed them outside, in a pail of dirt and dedicated a 2" pipe, 1 ft long to each of them. (I love that system: I cut chunks of PVC, like 1 ft long, stand them up in tall totes with a few small holes about 1" from the bottom, on the sides and fill all the pipes with good soil. This way, I can put 50 cuttings or so in one tote.
They stay outside all winter and when I see them take off in the spring, I pick up each pipe and check for roots at the bottom. when the roots start coming out of the bottom, I know they are good enough to plant.
For chestnuts, I wrap them up in a blue Scott's towel, get it wet then squeeze most of the water out of it. In March, most have started germinating and I put them in pipes just like the currants.
Chestnuts are very touchy: You don't want to mess with the root, which is very fragile, because if you break it, you'll just have to throw it: It would never make a tree.
I wish I had a hothouse or a solarium, but I do not have much room in the house: Only 3 shelves are facing East and South windows, so spots for starting stuff inside are rather limited. I buy a number of plants (herbs in particular), as most are hard to start...
I guessed I went a bit longer than just answering the question. Sorry: It's all gardening, though.
So yeah. It's messy. It's complicated, but I love it!

In a previous house, when I had a wood burning stove down in the basement, we would bring wood downstairs and stack it near the stove (but not too close) As we had plenty of wood, the wood could stay outside for a year before we needed it.
In the fall, we would bring as much of it as we could downstairs and it would finish drying. We did bring in a couple of mice and a number of insects, which wasn't too nice, but I regret my wood stove overall: It gave us a very comfortable heat.
It seems to me that if you kiln it, you have to build a kiln (not free) and are spending energy to dry it, though, which kinda defeats the purpose? or am I misunderstanding something?

Well, I'm in 4B, Central Wisconsin. Spring and Fall, in a Continental climate are the seasons that are quite unpredictable. Like they say, "if you don't like the weather, just wait a day: It will change".
Right now, December 26th, the snow is melting. That's not what you would expect.
After a cool spring, we had a torrid summer. There does seem to be a perturbance in the weather force.

Bj Murrey wrote:For me in north Texas, its been composting everything I can in place, and supplementing as I can with wood chips and manure. I went from straight sand in an oak forest to a foot deep of dark black soil full of life.over 10 years. Not hard work, and totally worth it. I prefer adding soil on top rather than trying to amend it in ground. Just my experience.

I bet its much colder up north!

That's pretty much my experience as well: My garden soil was a sandbox, with barely 1" of top soil when I started. the first thing I did was build beds, usually 4' X 8' and scraped the alleys clean so as to have 1.5" of "top soil".
I have chickens who give me *abundant* manure and their litter is made of wood chips, so when their house/ winter run gets cleaned, it all goes on the garden, or elsewhere, around prized trees.
Around here, town folks have to rake their leaves and bag them so they don't plug the city's sewers.
2 years ago, the weather was perfect (It stayed fairly dry for the entire week that the city was collecting). I got ahead and collected bags of leaves (with permission, of course), selecting the less groomed yards, as they are less likely to have been sprayed!
I collected over 100 big bags of the precious stuff and put my entire garden (and the alleys too) under a blanket of precious leaves. My garden has less weeds, I water less and I get more out of it, with a lot less effort. I now have almost a foot of good workable black soil.

Actually, as far as the weather, we have a pretty freaking mild fall and winter. We did get a "white Christmas", defined as a snow cover of at least 1", but we didn't have much more than that. It is melting now (34F) on the 26th of December.

Alina Green wrote:Some people buy chicken feet (aka "back scratchers"  haha) to add to bone broth, for the gelatin in all that skin and connective tissue...and toenails.  ugh.

Absolutely! although, personally, I like to remove the toenails but you don't have to. I leave the spurs on if I have  a rooster... Cut the chicken legs where the scales begin like you normally do. Scrub them well and clip the toe nails then.
Now, on to the scalding: keep some water boiling and immerse a few legs at a time for 20-30 seconds, then toss in freezing water. (Not too long or the scales will start to really grab the tissue underneath and you'll have a mess: It won't peel well)
(Just like peeling eggs, it is the temperature shock that loosens the scales from the legs or the shell from the hard boiled egg).
Rub the legs between your fingers and remove all the scales. They will peel off in just a couple of pieces. You now have very clean legs to use for broth: nothing objectionable about nice, clean "back scratchers".
And they do make the best broth!

It won't gel if you use too much water, cook too hot/fast (breaking down gelatin), use bones without enough connective tissue (like just marrow bones), or don't simmer long enough, while store-bought broths often skip gelatin-rich parts for clarity and shelf stability, making them less jelly-like.
It is the cartilage, skin and joints that turn gelatinous if you give them a looooong, sloooow cook. (Like more than 24 hours, for sure)
Marrow is good for flavor but won't turn to gelatin.
You want to add salt and spices just before you can the broth.

My daily ritual starts in the evening: I go to sleep thinking of my next project. I have found that if I didn't have the solution when I went to sleep, I often thinking of a new idea that I can use while I'm sleeping. When I wake up, I'll often have the idea I didn't have when I went to sleep.
I get up around 5 am and right now, I'm on crutches, so no bath or shower.
I strip naked in front of the sink  and reach what I can reach with a wet cloth. (right now, no soap because I could not rinse properly). Then I print my SUDOKU, weigh myself before I dress and fix myself a cup of coffee, fix a no cook breakfast (yogurt & fruit sauce) read the digital edition of my paper while doing my SUDOKU. (That's my little lump of sugar high, my little reward, before I tackle work.)
Now, I'm ready!

Before I can preserve it, I'd have to grow it, and unfortunately, I do not have a machine that could harvest any amount of grain. I'm thinking of fabricating one with an electric hedge cutter (battery powered Ryobi) to which I would add wheels. I'm still thinking about that one, but I figured I could cut a couple of day's worth easily.
I don't have a thresher either, but since it is for chickens, they could get the whole plant, clipped at the base, especially for buckwheat, as this is a bugger to separate from the chaff.
I'd like to grow rye too, for ryegrass to bale and sink in the pond. (Great mosquito killer!)
Right now, I just buy grain as I go and store it in homer pails in the shed, near the coop. The homer pails with a good fitting lid are perfect: Mice can't get at them and they are not so heavy that I have a tough time taking them to the coop. In the winter, I have a rugged sled, like hunters use to bring home a big deer.
My discovery is that even when you don't have much snow at all, the sled will glide on grass... for a while.
Next, I switch to the little metal, hand pulled, trailer.

We live in flat country in central Wisconsin. In winter, the wind can howl and chill anyone.
Adding windbreaks is the best way I can help wildlife here: We have lots of oaks dying from the wilt, so for years now, I keep piling dead branches between 2 rows of timber.
The pile is about 200 ft and all of it is at least 4 ft high, with spots almost 6 ft. I have started a second pile, parallel to the first one but on the sheltered side. When a tree gets downed by a storm and still has leaves I keep the leaves on the branches.
The original pile is now growing flowers like false indigo, and brambles. The brambles are not making good fruit for us anyway, but while they eat those, they don't go after my prized raspberries!
A little trick, also is that if at the end of the planting season you still have seeds that you didn't plant, that hedge is a good place for those seeds, before they become too old to sprout. Some will be eaten outright, others will grow, adding to the pile and the protection.
We also have a big deck on the south and east sides of the house. So the house is cutting the dominant winds. I'm keeping it accessible to critters. Right now, we have rabbits living under there. When the snow falls off the roof and on the deck, it makes a huge area that's snow covered. We see tracks of all sorts going in and out of that shelter.

That's quantitatively difficult to assess in most situations: I live in sand, so most of these "imports", that get distributed over my land without cost or any effort on my part, is welcome.
Some poo, I don't mind at all: Deer, wild birds, racoons (if they don't steal from my garden!)
But I do make a couple of exceptions:
My neighbors have cats and dogs that visit regularly, at night, and leave their hmm... "visiting cards" (and lots of them) on my lawn where I have to be careful when I step barefoot. (I love walking barefoot: It's healthier than keeping my feet confined 24/7).
I do not have cats or dogs. Not because I do not like them, I do. I could pet them all day. But there is a huge cost in maintaining them in good health, housing them, and vet bills are just not something I can afford. Winters here are cold, so I'd have to keep them in my house, and as is, I have trouble keeping things clean. some folks here keep their pets confined outside, in small kennels, and I can't see myself doing that to them either. I think it's cruel.
Since they love their pets, I think they should want to keep the whole experience for themselves, fleas, bird killing, snarls and poop included.
We invite lots of birds, squirrels and the like to our bird feeders, and even without their daily deposits, they are most welcome.