20 Forgotten Winter Tricks Rural Families Used When Snow Trapped Them for a Week

When a winter storm buried the farm road and the nearest store was miles away, rural families had no plow, no phone, and no furnace to fall back on. They got through a week of snow with 20 old tricks that most people have never heard of today. In this video we count down the forgotten winter survival methods used on farms and homesteads across America, from the Great Plains and New England to the Appalachian mountains. You'll learn how families kept a house warm on very little firewood, why farmers tied a rope from the back door to the barn before every blizzard, how prairie settlers burned twisted hay when the coal ran out during the hard winters of the 1880s, and how a single banked fire could burn from November to March without going out. Included in this countdown: Rag rolls and door snakes that stopped winter drafts Banking the house foundation with straw and snow Hot bricks and soapstone bed warmers The blizzard rope line between the house and the barn Burning twisted hay, cow chips, and corncobs for heat Melting snow the right way and keeping the hand pump from freezing Root cellars, straw clamps, and the winter porch freezer Leather britches, soup beans, and stretching flour with cornmeal Grinding wheat in a coffee mill during the long prairie winters Keeping sourdough starter alive in a freezing kitchen Sugar on snow and old-fashioned snow cream Keeping hens laying and stock tanks open through a blizzard Onion syrup and old farmhouse remedies Banking the fire overnight so it never went out These old-time skills kept rural families warm and fed long before modern heating and grocery stores. Many of them still work during a power outage or winter storm today. Did your grandparents or great-grandparents use any of these tricks? Tell us in the comments. We read them all. Subscribe for more forgotten skills, old farm wisdom, and the ways our grandparents lived. #WinterSurvival #HomesteadingSkills #ForgottenSkills #OldWays #BlizzardSurvival #RuralLife #OffGridLiving