I'm creating this thread as a repository for information I happen to run across on the internet concerning how to squeak by when times are tough or money is tight... like during a depression or economic downturn.
The Appalachians are no stranger to hard times. When white folks first settled here, they mostly just brought a rifle and some shootin' fixin's, an ax or tomahawk (or both if they wanted to be ostentatious), a belt knife that doubled as an everything knife, and maybe a fistful of seed corm.
A lot of folks in those days claimed virgin territory based on "tomahawk improvements". What that meant was that you wandered around until you found a likely piece of turf you wanted to claim, marked the corners of it by blazing trees at the corners with your tomahawk,and then erecting a half-face lean-to or a brush arbor, threw a handful of corn seed into the ground to show you were "farming", and then left it there to grow while you went off to the land office to register your claim, which could take a couple months of travel.
Those settlers learned a lot from the Indians, and it was hard to tell one from the other just going by lifewways. They lived on game from the forest in combination with corn, beans, squash, greens and whatever wild fruit they could locate. They dressed themselves in the skins of the game they ate.
That's the way it was for the next 100 or 150 years here.
Over time, stock was added to their reportoire to decrease the need to go out hunting their dinner, and more folks started dressing in wool and linen as their farming inventory increased.. Cotton never caught on here because the climate precluded them from growing their own.
As time rolled onward, the coal companies moved in and provided "gainful employment", but the net result of that was that the locals depended more on a paycheck and manufactured stuff brought in by the coal companies to stock the company store, and less on self-reliance.
That's how it was during the Great Depression around here, although farther north where my Dear Old Dad was from, and where mineral wealth had not yet been found to be exploited by outsiders, the "coal boom" was not felt. Nor did their lives change up there much from their ancestor's way of life. During the Depression, there was apparently plenty of stuff to buy, but no money to buy it with, Folks had to get creative in their cooking to make whatever they could get stretch farther. Hunting came back into vogue, but there was little time for it for folks here working in the mines, and ammunition was hard to get. Even in my day, my dad still counted my shells when I went out hunting, and when I returned, and there had better be a game item for each expenditure of powder, or there was hell to pay.
Around here, in coal country, gardens were still raised, but they were tended mostly by the women and children, since all the men were sequestered away in a hole in the ground and steadily digging the walls away that supported to roof for most of the day. It also fell to the kids, mostly the older sons, to do the hunting.
You never know when times like that might come back again, economics being a fickle bitch when she's run by knotheads and idiots.
Some of the ways food was stretched during the Depression - and I've eaten most of this stuff, especially the corn bread and the potato cakes.
Good advice from Australia on 6 things to pack your garden with for high returns to keep you from starving. I can live without the cabbage, but to each his own. Corn comes in a staggering number of varieties, but at least one sort of flint corn or dent corn should be included - it grinds better to make corn meal and flour.
Not many folks grow gardens here any more, and most of those that do are older folks. Younger folks have again become too dependent on the outside world, and if that world ever lets them down (as it has done to every single one of their ancestors), they'll either starve or face a steep learning curve, having to learn farming that they should have payed attention to earlier..
.
The Appalachians are no stranger to hard times. When white folks first settled here, they mostly just brought a rifle and some shootin' fixin's, an ax or tomahawk (or both if they wanted to be ostentatious), a belt knife that doubled as an everything knife, and maybe a fistful of seed corm.
A lot of folks in those days claimed virgin territory based on "tomahawk improvements". What that meant was that you wandered around until you found a likely piece of turf you wanted to claim, marked the corners of it by blazing trees at the corners with your tomahawk,and then erecting a half-face lean-to or a brush arbor, threw a handful of corn seed into the ground to show you were "farming", and then left it there to grow while you went off to the land office to register your claim, which could take a couple months of travel.
Those settlers learned a lot from the Indians, and it was hard to tell one from the other just going by lifewways. They lived on game from the forest in combination with corn, beans, squash, greens and whatever wild fruit they could locate. They dressed themselves in the skins of the game they ate.
That's the way it was for the next 100 or 150 years here.
Over time, stock was added to their reportoire to decrease the need to go out hunting their dinner, and more folks started dressing in wool and linen as their farming inventory increased.. Cotton never caught on here because the climate precluded them from growing their own.
As time rolled onward, the coal companies moved in and provided "gainful employment", but the net result of that was that the locals depended more on a paycheck and manufactured stuff brought in by the coal companies to stock the company store, and less on self-reliance.
That's how it was during the Great Depression around here, although farther north where my Dear Old Dad was from, and where mineral wealth had not yet been found to be exploited by outsiders, the "coal boom" was not felt. Nor did their lives change up there much from their ancestor's way of life. During the Depression, there was apparently plenty of stuff to buy, but no money to buy it with, Folks had to get creative in their cooking to make whatever they could get stretch farther. Hunting came back into vogue, but there was little time for it for folks here working in the mines, and ammunition was hard to get. Even in my day, my dad still counted my shells when I went out hunting, and when I returned, and there had better be a game item for each expenditure of powder, or there was hell to pay.
Around here, in coal country, gardens were still raised, but they were tended mostly by the women and children, since all the men were sequestered away in a hole in the ground and steadily digging the walls away that supported to roof for most of the day. It also fell to the kids, mostly the older sons, to do the hunting.
You never know when times like that might come back again, economics being a fickle bitch when she's run by knotheads and idiots.
Some of the ways food was stretched during the Depression - and I've eaten most of this stuff, especially the corn bread and the potato cakes.
Good advice from Australia on 6 things to pack your garden with for high returns to keep you from starving. I can live without the cabbage, but to each his own. Corn comes in a staggering number of varieties, but at least one sort of flint corn or dent corn should be included - it grinds better to make corn meal and flour.
Not many folks grow gardens here any more, and most of those that do are older folks. Younger folks have again become too dependent on the outside world, and if that world ever lets them down (as it has done to every single one of their ancestors), they'll either starve or face a steep learning curve, having to learn farming that they should have payed attention to earlier..
.
