By J:
As a group, we preppers are always seeking a good source of accurate and useful information. Unfortunately, locating such a source of information is all too often the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. Everyone, it seems, has the inside track on things needed and what will work in a serious survival situation. Many times, it also comes at a promised low, low price.
To be honest, a lot of my knowledge and skill developing started when I was a kid, from my grandparents.
My grandparents were born in the 1910’s and all lived through the Great Depression in farming families in East Texas (a SHTF situation by anyone’s reckoning) and had to master the art of “getting by” as they put it. A lot of habits learned during that time never left them. For example, there was always a large garden planted every year. Late summer was canning season, much to my dismay, as I was often drafted to help. I learned to plant, harvest and put up produce for storage.
We also raised livestock: chickens, pigs and a few cattle were raised and then either sold at market or slaughtered for use throughout the winter and spring. While this was not our only source for food, it was always added in. I asked once why they didn’t just go shopping at the grocery store to buy what they needed instead of working a garden and was told that the garden freed up money for other things. At eight, I did not really understand this but my perspective is different now.
These goods were not hoarded either. When someone in the area was having hard times and needed a hand up, these canned foodstuffs were liberally shared around, the lessons here was never to let another do without. Sooner or later, it would be our turn to need a hand.
I never realized it at the time, seeing the work as chores that I as a young boy all too often hated, but I had invaluable skills passed on to me at that time in my life. Raising food was only one area of this education, I was given a number of skills during my childhood that I see now as considered necessary skills for “getting by” (to coin a phrase from my childhood) from farming and handyman skills to basic generosity and helping out those in your community.
Thank you for following so far, as now I come to the main point of this article. We can learn a great deal from the old timers that are still around. As technology has grown to take a much larger part in our day to day lives, much of what was considered basic knowledge is slowly being lost. Taking the time and opportunity to have a conversation with some of the old timers in your family or neighborhood could yield a veritable treasure trove of information from people who have used the skills that so many of us as preppers prize. In my experience, trading off some time and perhaps a bit of around the house or yard work as barter, you can often have the opportunity to learn a lot from people who have practical knowledge and experience in the arts of “getting by”.
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