(04-27-2024, 08:44 PM)GeauxHomeLittleD Wrote: In the end it will not be "preps" that allow people to survive but skills, knowledge and adaptability. The old proverb about giving a man a fish vs. teaching a man to fish hasn't stuck around so long just because it sounds nice. People who can grow food, raise livestock, hunt, fish, trap, build, fabricate and those who have herbal and medical skills will do well. Those who know how to can, cook, sew, quilt, crochet and knit in addition will do even better. All are arts lost to most of the younger generations. I worry for the young people that never had to wash used tinfoil for their grannies, hoe the garden, gather fresh eggs, pick poke out of the swamp or hang out hand scrubbed laundry on a clothesline.
I think a lot of it is just knowing how to "make do", and folks can do that almost anywhere.
When my son was little, I'd take him out into the woods and explain to him what he could and couldn't eat out of them, where the comforts and dangers of the woods could be found.
Once, I needed a bit of rope, and didn't have any. My son was about 11 or 12 at the time. So I went out and stripped some bark from a tree that had pretty fibrous bark, and sat on the porch twisting up a length of rope out of it. He wandered over and watched me for a while, and asked what I was doing. "Twisting up a little rope" I said. He goggle-eyed for a minute, and then started laughing. "You can't make rope out of bark! It won't be limber enough, and it'll break!"
So I just grinned a little and kept on twisting up the rope. He scoffed and said it wouldn't hold nothing, so without a word I tied one end of it off to a roof rafter on the porch and then grabbed it and hung all my weight off of it. He stopped scoffing then.
For the record, twisting up rope or twine out of anything isn't hard. You make it at least two plies to make it stronger and facilitate adding in more fiber when you run short to make it longer, and you twist each ply in one direction - let's say clockwise - and them "roll" it around the other ply in the opposite direction - let's says counter-clockwise. What that does is cause it to twist tighter together when it tries to untwist itself. I twist up my bowstrings the same way.
So I taught him what I could, but I wasn't able to teach him everything I'd picked up over time. Still, he took that base and ran with it, learning new things for himself. He's quite the deerslayer now. He has a small forge of his own, where he can pound out stuff he needs. He makes his own knives, and has built at least two rifles I know of, although not really from scratch... but built them all the same. He's learned to identify plants that I never knew what it was. For example, these "blueberry" bushed that volunteered for me last spring - it was him who told me what they were. I had no idea.
He's got 40 or 50 acres, and runs a garden every year. I put him on to how to make "masa" flour out of corn, so I expect he'll be doing that pretty soon, too. I gave him some of my tobacco seed, and he grows his own tobacco as well. I think he'll do ok if it all crashes. He's already integrated himself into the "hillbilly network" where he lives, too.
You're right - knowledge is power. I gave him what I could of it, but the more important thing I think is that I excited his curiosity to learn on his own, so that when I'm not around to advise, he won't fall short of information.
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