Skills from 100 years ago - Page 6

[bohmproof]

Originally Posted by smeisnotapirate

I'm not sure I'm really talking about "just survival" actually.

I'm talking about living a quality life on less. Sure, if I was starving, I could figure out fire + something relatively edible = food. I'm talking about things to learn to live smaller and more independently. Learning to cook some of your favorite foods so that if you can't afford to go out to eat and eat it, you can do it at home.

I'm not talking about the collapse of the world - I'm talking about the fact that lots of us are learning to live on less, whether by job loss or by frugality itself. What can we do to maximize that?

I agree with this... my DH and I are constantaly trying to improve our way of life to be simple, self reliant, self sustainable.. we make 95% of our food from scratch, and if we go out to eat.. it's to try something new, and try to re-create it from home.. while the meal might be expensive to make at home, it's more expensive to order it from a restaurant. But we also get to spend time in the kitchen together, experimenting.. to us, the $ is worth an evening spent together, making something together, and learning, verses 2 hours in a restaurant.

We have a family community garden, and process most of our own food, even though it would be cheeper to buy a jar of pickles, we still made our own, just because we can, and they taste better too:

I also agree that sewing can be expensive if you are going to the fabric store to get all your supplies, and most everything still comes from china... (which was extremely frustrating for me.. carbon footprint..ect), but I enjoy making small projects for my children because they know that I made it expecially for them...

Oh.. about the books, check out the local thrift store or goodwill.. I picked up a book in the cookbook section "Stocking Up" by rodale press.. 2$, printed in '73, that goes through how to homestead, garden, butcher, cold celler set up, winter gardening, stockpileing, harvesting, cheesemaking, all with recipies and canning tips.. very cool.

[Belleweather]

Originally Posted by Storm Bride

Actually, there are lots of rules, laws and regulations that get int he way of self-sufficiency. We have a municipalities here that won't allow clotheslines, for example. And...how many urban/suburban areas ban the keeping of even a couple of chickens?

I really believe that we're coming up on the time when those sorts of laws and covenants are going to be about as enforcable as the ones about how it's illegal to drive a red car down main street for fear of scaring the horses, you know?

Originally Posted by velochic

Sewing doesn't seem to save money much anymore, but I enjoy it as a hobby. I just sewed a couple of skirts for dd. The zippers alone were almost $3, and after the material and thread they were not very frugal in the end. I didn't even use a pattern, otherwise it would have been SO much more expensive. However, dd wanted a long skirt and we could not find one anywhere, so it was nice that I could bust one out in a day. She is 7 and has always been very modest in the way she dresses... she would rather have a calico dress from 1880 than to wear the clothes that are manufactured for girls today. So the benefits of sewing, IME, is repairing and making clothes that cannot be found on the shelves.

It depends on how you do it... I can very rarely make a garment from purchased fabric yardage that is cheaper than one in the stores (leaving out stuff like historical costuming and whatnot), although sometimes I strike it lucky on the remnant or sale table. On the other hand, being able to reuse and repurpose stuff we've already got has been great at saving money and would be even more important in a situation where we couldn't get a lot of new materials. Making curtains that were too short for our new windows plus a zipper from a skirt that tore into a kid's dress is more the kind of thing where I think sewing becomes important.

Originally Posted by smeisnotapirate

I'm not sure I'm really talking about "just survival" actually.

I think we've got to deliberately talk about something other than "just survival". Just barely surviving on scary bread and nasty food with no warm clothes makes people crazy and violent in the long run. Preserving some sort of quality of life -- whether because it's the end of the world as we know it or because you're facing garden-variety reduced circumstances -- is really key to long term survival.

Originally Posted by tayndrewsmama

True. But, I don't think hunting skills in this area have ever been anything close to lost. I think maybe I am just looking at things in a more local way and I should be looking wider than that.

Yeah, in Wisconsin where you can't go outside AT ALL in the fall without wearing blaze orange and screaming "I'm not a deer, please don't shoot me!", it would be VERY hard to argue that hunting skills have been anything close to lost.

I may exaggerate, but only a bit.

[tayndrewsmama]

Originally Posted by Belleweather

Yeah, in Wisconsin where you can't go outside AT ALL in the fall without wearing blaze orange and screaming "I'm not a deer, please don't shoot me!", it would be VERY hard to argue that hunting skills have been anything close to lost.

I may exaggerate, but only a bit.

It may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but certainly not by much. We live out of town and have neighbors that wear blaze orange when riding their motorcycles during hunting season.

We had a rabbit problem here for a few summers....so we made meals out of them.

[lolar2]

Originally Posted by tayndrewsmama

True. But, I don't think hunting skills in this area have ever been anything close to lost. I think maybe I am just looking at things in a more local way and I should be looking wider than that.

I find it quite humorous how many threads there used to be on MDC about how unsustainable it supposedly is not to live in a major metropolitan area and now here we are talking about these things. It's good to see things finally come around a bit to more realistic things.

Most of these sustainable skills are practiced in major metropolitan areas all around the world. I learned a lot of them in Budapest, in Washington, DC, in Atlanta, and in New York City. I continue to practice many of them in the Los Angeles area, and could practice more if I chose to.

[tayndrewsmama]

I guess I am lacking in understanding about the areas more than I thought. Wouldn't you say hunting, raising livestock and most foraging is not much of an option there? I also think it's important to note that those particular cities are definitely more progressive in those areas than many in this country are. We spend quite a bit of time in DC and I agree that there are a lot of fantastic options for learning, but they still aren't all the same as being rural.

I wasn't knocking city living on the whole. I was just noting that it's nice to see threads that show there is value to not living in the city. It used to be around here that you were a selfish, wasteful individual if you didn't see why you should drop everything and move to the city.

[Juvysen]

Re: bread baking w/out an oven...

You can make breads on a skillet or grill, too. They need to be flatter (think pizza crust or naan), but it's do-able... and tasty!

[Ellien C]

Originally Posted by Llyra

Sometimes I think I'm the last person on earth who knows how to darn a sock. Or darn anything. I know plenty of people who can sew on a patch or hem something or sew on a button, but darning is definitely a lost art.

I can darn - but boy was it ugly. I ended up felting the slipper to hide the darn....

My mother doesn't sew at all and can only cook from boxes. HER mother was a seamstress and mom's story is that she could never do it good enough for her mother so she stopped trying. My mother would hire someone to sew a button on (or my dad might do it) or to re-hem pants or a skirt. She's a great story teller though, knows the value of a dollar and how to shop well.

[lolar2]

Originally Posted by tayndrewsmama

I guess I am lacking in understanding about the areas more than I thought. Wouldn't you say hunting, raising livestock and most foraging is not much of an option there? I also think it's important to note that those particular cities are definitely more progressive in those areas than many in this country are. We spend quite a bit of time in DC and I agree that there are a lot of fantastic options for learning, but they still aren't all the same as being rural.

I wasn't knocking city living on the whole. I was just noting that it's nice to see threads that show there is value to not living in the city. It used to be around here that you were a selfish, wasteful individual if you didn't see why you should drop everything and move to the city.

Fishing is more common than hunting in most urban areas where I've lived or visited, since big cities typically have grown up around water routes. But foraging and raising (small) livestock are quite common. They tend to be done more by recent immigrants who don't speak much English, and by people who are quite low-income and not likely to be able to afford computers, and neither of those two groups spends a lot of time on the English-language internet. But both groups taken together comprise a pretty big portion of the population of an average city, and there are certainly middle- and upper-income people who also do at least some of these things.

I don't have any opinion as to where any individual family should live, btw. But pretty much all of the skills listed in this thread are practiced in urban centers as well as in rural areas. There were urban centers 100 years ago.

[lolar2]

One other thing-- if you want to see a LOT of knitting and crocheting, take a ride on a bus or subway.

[Ellp]

Originally Posted by Juvysen

I didn't notice anyone mentioning knitting/crocheting a basic garment. I know lots of people can, but lots of people look at you like you've got three heads if you tell them you KNITTED the outfit your kid was wearing. Also, spinning and weaving. Possibly basic fiber acquisition - how do you shear a sheep/clean the wool if there's no electricity? I actually don't know how to shear in that case... scissors?? I know carding would be doable...

See, this I can do. Everything from raw fleece to wearable clothing. The only thing I don't do is the shearing as I've never tried it and don't want to start! Btw, you can shear a sheep with a very sharp pair of shearing scissors. It takes longer and you have to be skilled so as to not nick the sheep's skin.

I once wore a complete outfit that I had sewn/knitted. Cotton peasent top, A-line corderoy panel skirt, knitted sweater. The only things I didn't make myself were underwear and shoes. Dh remarked that I looked way too hippy for his taste. Bah humbug to him! I was just glad I looked "unique".

[Magelet]

for me, its sort of lopsided. I can sew my own clothes, to an extent, and with a pattern (I've never tried without, I could probably figure it out fast), but I am teaching myself to patch them. (of course, part of this problem is the sort of... "low value" of modern clothes. That is, oftentimes, by the time a pair of jeans need a patch, there is nothing to sew the patch TO, since the entire inner thigh, for example, is threadbare (and this happens within a year). I'm still learning. After I patched my jeans, I learned that it is better to patch with denim than muslin. Makes sense, but I was learning on the go. Or darning socks.... It makes sense to darn nice wool socks, but all my socks are cheap athletic socks, which would be hard to darn (I think). It is funny though, that my mom taught me to sew new clothes (well, costumes, but the skill is the same) but not repair. Of course, that's what she knew. I can knit, but only flat rectangles. I can spin yarn, but not thread.

A skill I think is far more lost though, is weaving. I can weave, but to weave something that would be particularly wearable, and in time to have new clothes by the time my old ones wore out? I'd be wearing rough lingerie and nothing else. My weaving really is art/placemats etc, based.

I can cook pretty much anything, and figure out almost anything from scratch if I have an ingrediants list or idea of whats in it, but I haven't tried canning yet. (purely a didn't have the money for canning equipment last summer thing. I want to try it). I can lacto-ferment (like sauerkraut, etc), I'm sure I could figure out drying fruit, and future DH knows how to smoke meat apparently (I can't WAIT for him to teach me.)

I really want to learn plants (edible and medicinal) I know some, and I can garden and stuff, but I want to wildcraft. I'd love to learn to hunt, but its over two hours to the nearest hunter safety education classes, and the fact of the matter is, I won't be getting up there any time soon, even if I wanted to.

Honestly, on the topic of things they should teach in school, I think it goes beyond just cooking and woodworking and mending, and such. There are modern skills that are vital too. How do rent an apartment, how to balance a checkbook, WHY to balance a checkbook, how to make a resume, how to get a job, how to set up a bank account (not a credit card but a bank account).... Honestly, all except the last two, I don't really know at all, and the second to last, despite having gotten a part time job in high school, now that I'm trying to find a job to support myself, I'm much shakier on. What kind of job am I qualified for? How do I get the seemingly impossible qualifications for the entry level jobs? How does an entry level job lead into something that I could actually stomach doing for most of my life? How do I really get that job, since it seems much harder now than it was then? How do I deal with the monotony of a boring job for years? That is what they need to be teaching in school, more than calculus, organic chemistry and us history.

[Krisis]

Today I learned how to sew! Kind of. I broke out the sewing machine I got for Christmas and after 10 billion frustrating tries, loaded the bobbin and got it going. I was starting to sew DS a stuffed dog, but I think I bit off more than I could chew this time around so maybe I'll go back to sewing up my quilt squares

But I'm really proud of myself! Of course if we ever lose power I'm screwed, but DANGIT, I sewed something! And it wasn't my finger!

[Tangled Hill]

Originally Posted by Magelet

Honestly, on the topic of things they should teach in school, I think it goes beyond just cooking and woodworking and mending, and such. There are modern skills that are vital too. How do rent an apartment, how to balance a checkbook, WHY to balance a checkbook, how to make a resume, how to get a job, how to set up a bank account (not a credit card but a bank account).... Honestly, all except the last two, I don't really know at all, and the second to last, despite having gotten a part time job in high school, now that I'm trying to find a job to support myself, I'm much shakier on. What kind of job am I qualified for? How do I get the seemingly impossible qualifications for the entry level jobs? How does an entry level job lead into something that I could actually stomach doing for most of my life? How do I really get that job, since it seems much harder now than it was then? How do I deal with the monotony of a boring job for years? That is what they need to be teaching in school, more than calculus, organic chemistry and us history.

Absolutely. Why weren't we taught how to do taxes in school? I mean, really. Everybody has to pay taxes. I remember when I filled out my first 1040EZ as a teenager, and I was totally lost. Couldn't they teach basic things like this (and check writing and balancing, budgeting, saving, investing, etc.)? Not everyone will use trig, but everyone needs to know how to manage their money. I think it's quite possible that children who are better off are getting at least some of this information at home, while children who are from working class and poor families may not have access to it. It would really make a difference in lots of kids' lives.

Same goes for job hunting. Resumes, cover letters, interview etiquette, etc. These are things kids need to know. It's just common sense to me.

But, hey. What do I know? We don't use the schools (and this is one of the reasons).

[flowers]

Originally Posted by Tangled Hill

Absolutely. Why weren't we taught how to do taxes in school? I mean, really. Everybody has to pay taxes. I remember when I filled out my first 1040EZ as a teenager, and I was totally lost. Couldn't they teach basic things like this (and check writing and balancing, budgeting, saving, investing, etc.)? Not everyone will use trig, but everyone needs to know how to manage their money. I think it's quite possible that children who are better off are getting at least some of this information at home, while children who are from working class and poor families may not have access to it. It would really make a difference in lots of kids' lives.

Same goes for job hunting. Resumes, cover letters, interview etiquette, etc. These are things kids need to know. It's just common sense to me.

But, hey. What do I know? We don't use the schools (and this is one of the reasons).

This is so true! I remember graduating from college and getting really overwhelmed with trying to make a resume w/o much professional feedback. I'm thinking you shouldn't be able to graduate college without a 2 credit resume writing course. You should leave with it in your hand!

I was never taught how to balance a checkbook or anything! We did have a life skills class in hs that went over questions to ask your partner before getting married, basic set up for college etc. That was the most interesting part of the year.

[Harmon-knee]

We make our own wine and beer. When times get bad, that's the only skill we need.

[smeisnotapirate]

Originally Posted by Harmon-knee

We make our own wine and beer. When times get bad, that's the only skill we need.

Remind me to befriend you if TSHTF.

[Bluegoat]

I read recently that there is a new trend in cookbooks - they have to tell things like where to get frozen veg, or how to hard boil and peel an egg. I know a lot of people who only get their meals from M&M or eat out. Most of them have two parents working and kids in hockey or something, so the whole family is rarely at home.

I think it's great for kids to learn that stuff, but I wonder about the amount of time they would be there - they have so many subjects to cover now and hours of homework. I wonder if they might not learn more if we reduced the school work and sent them out into the world. That being said, I had a boss who grew up in the Cotswolds and he learned gardening at school as a child. Sounds great to me, esp for smaller kids. It would combine a lot of biology with exercise and fresh air.

I have some knowledge of a number of skills; I can can, cook from scratch, hook a rug, make butter, milk a goat and make a simple cheese, grow veg, and raise chickens from the egg. But I can't sew for beans, and I can only knit a scarf. Dh can hunt and fish.

[rhiandmoi]

Originally Posted by Bluegoat

I read recently that there is a new trend in cookbooks - they have to tell things like where to get frozen veg, or how to hard boil and peel an egg.

I read a lot of cookbooks, and have only seen this in a small segment of them and it is more of a "bachelor chic" or "college cuisine" subset of cookbooks vs any thing widespread.

As far as learning about banking and money, apparently I'm the only one here that got a bank account for their 10th birthday? I am actually surprised that the rallying cry here seems to be "They should teach this in school", that is not the MDC I am familiar with.

[Krisis]

I got a savings account when I was 10. My parents took all the money out of it and used it for... whatever. : But honestly, I DO wish I had had the opportunity to take a money management class. Or at least someone had sat me down and made me read Dave Ramsey or something! I was such an IDIOT with money, and I don't claim to be good with it now, but I am so much better than I was before! Ugh, I was such a moron it makes me mad.

I confess I have no idea what to do with vegetables and I often have to look up how to cook them on the Internets. Today I bought an eggplant(aubergine) because it was cheap(ish? it was 77 cents) and I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with it. It's kind of... scary looking.

[Storm Bride]

Originally Posted by Belleweather

I really believe that we're coming up on the time when those sorts of laws and covenants are going to be about as enforcable as the ones about how it's illegal to drive a red car down main street for fear of scaring the horses, you know?

I really hope so. We don't have the clothesline idiocy here (but the next municipality over does have it), but I've always found these rules really weird. We kept ducks when I was a kid. They weren't legal, but none of our neighbours ever complained. It just seems a bit messed up to me that it's against the law to keep an animal that can provide fresh eggs to your family (and yet, my sister wasn't breaking any laws in owning a python?).