[Artemisia] A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern Plague

[Padruig]

 Holy Crap, KyneWynn, we need to talk about this more... I thought I was reading about me (except for the cabin in Idaho). We had remarkably similar childhoods, at least where this kind of stuff is concerned.

 I still do a lot of the stuff that my mom taught me. I home can (I do, not Allegretza), have gardened, although not as much recently (that will change), and was well acquainted with the "Fruit Room", as my parents called it... wall to ceiling shelves, in the entire room, with only enough room to squeeze between shelves... Learning how to rotate goods, etc. We ate what we preserved, and I can remember going completely on our storage for 6 months, so we could donate funds to church building fund. Ran out of toilet paper, so my Dad had to buy more (he groused quite a bit about that, as I recall, and we had large boxes of toilet paper in the garage from that day forward.

My dad also tried to teach us how to recognize edible plants, and mushrooms, but after a bad experience eating a not-so-edible mushroom (it was accidental... I was only 10 or 11), I decided to leave that to others.   ;-)

We have lanterns and fuel stockpiled, as well, enough to last for quite a while, and definitely enough to last long enough for us to acclimate to a sunrise to sunset schedule.

Allegretza makes an awesome whole wheat bread, as well as cornbread.

Padruig

 


Dr. Raymond Zentz
 
It is better to die a free man, than to live, a slave.

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: KyneWynn/Sue <kynewynn at gmail.com>
To: Kingdom of Artemisia mailing list <artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org>
Sent: Sat, Sep 18, 2010 11:28 pm
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern Plague


This has been a great thread. When I started thinking about it, I realized
that I learned a lot of survival skills when I was growing up, that most
kids don't.  When I was a kid, we went on a camping trip once, "the old
fashioned way" -- my uncle's hobby was restoring wagons, and so that is what
we took.  It took us more than half a day to get to our camping place, which
normally only took an hour or so. We also cooked over a fire, and slept in
the wagon or in tents.  It was an eye opening experience for a ten-year old.
My family also has a cabin up in the hills in Idaho -- no electricity, but
it does have a mountain spring, and we spent time there in the summers.

I guess the plus side of my experiences, is that from a young age, I've been
exposed to how to do things without electricity.  I learned to trim a wick
for the kerosene lamps, how to build a fire without matches, (and how to
make a fire that is good to cook on), how to tell if a berry is poisonous or
not, what plants are edible (huckleberries, chokecherries, watercress, etc.;
how to tie knots and do lashing, how to build a shelter -- basically, lots
of survival skills. My parents were big on having food storage. We had a
room that was dedicated to it. They stored wheat (and an non-electric
grinder), rice, beans, sugar, and oil, plus lots of canned fruits and
vegetables.

We also ate what was stored -- my mom made whole-wheat bread, rolls, and
even pancakes (I rebelled at those, and convinced her to do them with half
white flour); And she ground cornmeal for corn bread.  I remember her
telling us that if we got used to eating our storage food then if there came
a time when we only the stored food, it wouldn't be hard for us to eat it,
because we would be used to it.

My mom always had a HUGE garden, and I was part of the labor force. (So many
LONG rows to weed before we could play.)  I also had to help with canning,
drying, and freezing -- all good skills to have, and skills I've used in my
own family.  For a time, she also had a root cellar where she stored
carrots, potatoes, squash, and apples. They keep in a root cellar for quite
awhile. We had a cow and chickens, so we had milk, and I learned how to make
butter, and I learned how to pull the feathers off and prepare a chicken for
cooking (I hated that, and haven't done it since.)

I've tried to keep a food storage program going on a regular basis (mine has
never been as extensive as my mother's), and there have been several times I
was so glad to have it, because it's what we lived off of when Kelly got
laid off and was out of regular full-time work.

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