What do you do in the Winter?

During the winter, I like learning to do new things ... last year it was learning to make sourdough.

I also like to do baking in the winter as it helps heat the house.

I like to look through seed catalogs and pick out what I will be growing in the garden.

Travis Johnson wrote:Sleds are great.
I like snowshoeing

When my folk got me snowshoes I actually looked forward to getting enough snow to use them. When a got a snow machine again I looked forward to getting enough snow to use it. Getting out to explore is key to realizing winter is not bad, but fun.

I will leave ya with some hot tent fun with Wintertrekker https://www.youtube.com/user/Wintertrekker/videos I highly suggest checking his other stuff out he has some great videos

We always had the luxury of visiting my wife's family in Florida for the month of December and then in January we would start heading north to NY arriving around the 3rd week.  We would start immediately seeding trays for greens in the hope that we could put them out in the greenhouse towards the end of February when the days were long enough to support some kind of growth.  A lot time spent doing cuttings and getting them started.  There never seemed to be a break at all except for the month of December.  Upstate NY where we were never seemed to have enough snow to support outdoor activities.  It all blew away our snowed and then got warm and melted.  We had an indoor bike rigged up so that we could read or watch youtube.  Got warmed up even on the coldest days and were in pretty good shape once the weather broke.

We are moving to the coast of Maine in March, shutting down the farming, and probably giving up on the southern trips, so all of this information is welcome.

This thread is great. Exactly what I needed to read to get me dressing winters a little bit less.   I grew up in Canada but after 10+ years in Australia we will be returning to the great white north to build our homestead (instead of just dabbling in it as we have been).
The way you've all framed wintertime as a welcome change of pace in being able to rest and take up hobbies that there is no time for in summer actually has me almost looking forward to winters again (easy enough to say as someone who hasn't experienced one in 10 years lol).  But I have long mentioned how I miss the change of pace that comes with winter.

I'll have to turn this thread into list I can print out and refer to often when I'm regretting the move.  I think making a weekly goal of getting outside to do something fun (sledding,  skating,  snowshoeing,  skiing,  ice fishing etc) will be a good idea too.

Maureen,

I kinda envy you for being in the Great White North.  I live in the Soggy South (well, sorta South.  We get precious little snow)!

Snow is all white and pretty.  Cold days are crisp.  In the Soggy South where I live we get lots long periods of depressing gray days with no brightening snow and no leaves on trees to add color.  I grew up further north where we got snow and now snow is a rarity that I miss terribly.

So for me, winter is my stir-crazy time where I concoct all kinds of schemes for later spring and summer.  Right now I am planning on building some edges for a raised bed gardens (built out of 2x10’s, coating them in a rot-proof masonry sealer, and for my really big operation, I need to chip up about 5 cubic yards (maybe more) of trimmed brush in order to May a lot of woodchips for my garden.

I am also considering how much mushroom spawn I need to get this going, and especially what species of mushrooms to use.  Wine Caps definitely, but I am really thinking about adding some oyster mushrooms just to get some culinary diversity and to really decompose what the wine caps missed last year.

But back to your question, I wish for more snow while I dream about how I am going to improve my garden beds this year.

Eric