3 Lessons I Learned my First Winter in an Old Farmhouse

Last Updated on June 20, 2024 by Michelle

An old farmhouse can teach one many hard lessons, but that’s never more true than in a New England winter. The way I see it, winter in these parts is like a rigid schoolmaster, offering daily lessons of the stark, difficult work needed for survival.

Thankfully, some days she can be a gentle mentor who rewards your labor with white blankets of snow and at least offers serene, soothing skies as a prelude to cold evenings.

Although our family had just been introduced to her, having moved 400 miles up the Atlantic seaboard the previous spring, our first New England winter in our old house taught us a few lessons.

 

Lessons an Old Farmhouse Teaches in the Winter

While the lessons felt, well, pretty “cold,” we’re still thankful for our little cape that sits up on the hill, at the bend in the road, where the lake’s dam spills into the river. Thankful even on the day that taught us lesson #1… thankful even as I was cleaning sticky frozen soda drops off the ceiling…

Unheated areas may get messy.

Don’t get too zealous about your old farmhouse’s unheated back hallway and see it as a “walk-in refrigerator,” storing all your food back there, unless of course you would enjoy waking to the serenade of coke cans bursting in mini firework-sounding explosions, leaving brown ice crystals on your ceiling.

Giant wood piles diminish quickly.

Don’t expect any amount of wood you have cut and stockpiled will be enough. Five months of long, windy nights in a home that has 100-year-old wavy-glass windows tends to eat through a large stash of wood, no mater how efficient your wood-burning stove is. Drafts of crisp air cut to the bone even deeper on dark February nights when you know that wood piles are running low.

Water in cold pipes isn’t water for long.

Don’t forget that water will turn solid in its frozen state, and in New England in February water tends to, well, prefer being in a frozen state… even in pipes leading to things like, say, washing machines and dish washers.

Once you utilize heat tape to its full advantage; redistribute explodable, freezable food to warmer rooms; and drape heavy blankets over the most offensively drafty windows, you just may start to delight in some things in their frozen state (yeah, lakes, not pipes). in fact, you may wind up relishing all that a New England winter in an old farmhouse on a lake has to offer…

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Do you like to repurpose old treasures? Then you’ll wanna snag a free copy of my instructional booklet, Give An Old Door New Life, for free, like right now… in my Resource Library.

You won’t believe the fun stories behind these old jars that I found on our homestead, and you might love the way I use them today.

 

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Breathtaking snow-skimmed mountain views that remind you that you are infinitesimal, yet mountainously loved.

Darkness so deep, pierced by star light so intense, you realize you never truly saw black or stars before.

Mist rising over the river and winding among the snowy branches, convincing you of the reality of Narnia.

And twisting, white journeys that lead to general stores where the owner pulls up a seat for you by the wood stove, inviting you to warm your wet boots on the same hard wood floor that stage coach riders trod on over 200 years ago.

In reality, though, no matter where I live on this beautiful planet and what roads I trod, in any season, God directs me and holds me in his hand. No matter how many pipes burst or frozen difficulties fill a bitter cold day, He is a gentle instructor, guiding and teaching me right there in the midst of that problem. He promises that He causes all things–-and, yes, that includes broken wash machines, or whatever sadness fills anyone’s day… loneliness, debt, sickness–-to work together for good if we are striving to fulfill His purpose in our life. His purpose? To make me more like Christ. If He can seriously accomplish that amazing feat, well, no lesson is too difficult.

 

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We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. Romans 8:28-29

 

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