[Artemisia] A suggested reading list

Sun Sep 19 19:40:26 CDT 2010

I am primarily a lurker here, but this discussion has caught at my imagination and also my experience.  Prior to Y2K, I was a moderator for a Women's Preparedness group.  The books I recommnded for everyone to have in their library were the following:

An Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery
Making the Best of Basics by James Talmadge Stevens
Back to Basics:  A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills by Abigail H Ghering (and other books by the same author)
The Foxfire Series

I'm sure there are other, newer, books that are just as good, but those are the books I always recommended.  Carla Emery's book alone has pretty much everything you need to know about, well, everything.  Stevens' book is focused on building food storage and knowing what and how to store what you need properly.  The foxfire series is a multivolume series that is a collection of everything from how to find food in the forest to how to make your own ammunition to how to build a log cabin!  The thing I like the most about these books is that they aren't alarmist books.  They are good solid information that would allow someone to feel like they are prepared to face the challenge of extreme circumstances with knowledge, confidence, grace and dignity.

Jelena di Gioia
(Michelle Isasi)

--- On Sun, 9/19/10, artemisia-request at lists.gallowglass.org <artemisia-request at lists.gallowglass.org> wrote:

From: artemisia-request at lists.gallowglass.org <artemisia-request at lists.gallowglass.org>
Subject: Artemisia Digest, Vol 84, Issue 27
To: artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org
Date: Sunday, September 19, 2010, 10:59 PM

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern Plague
      (Richard Samul)
   2. Re: A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern Plague (Allen Hall)
   3. Re: A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern Plague (Redhawk)
   4.  SCA  Modern Plague (BENGTA1 at aol.com)
   5. Re: A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern Plague
      (BENGTA1 at aol.com)
   6. Re: A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern Plague (Padruig)
   7. Re: Artemisia Digest, Vol 84, Issue 22 (Padruig)
   8. Re: A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern Plague (Padruig)

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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 15:47:40 -0600
From: Richard Samul <scascot at mac.com>
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern
    Plague
To: Kingdom of Artemisia mailing list
    <artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org>
Message-ID: <19D2DD7C-C196-4F47-9FB8-7A4595B99522 at mac.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes

Wild yeast spores are present everywhere. One merely needs to provide  
a suitable medium and enough time, and they will colonize and start  
doing their thing on their own. The trick is to keep them alive once  
you get a culture started, cultivate them, and get them to do your  
bidding.

Lard is easy, but not very intuitive. After rendering the pork, you're  
left with the melted fat. From there, it's a matter of skimming off  
the stuff that floats to the top and the bits that sink to the bottom.  
Then comes the "washing" - basically, you melt the cleaned fat (not to  
boiling, just to melt) and mix in an equal amount of water. All the  
stuff that gives the pork fat it's flavor and other unsavory qualities  
is soluble in not only the fat, but the water as well. So, basically  
what you have is a reduction by half, every time you do this - decant  
the water (or peel off the fat once it sets), and repeat. Eventually,  
you'll get to a fraction of solubles that is so low, it's non-existent  
for all practical purposes. It's at that point that you have achieved  
lard.

Charcoal is basically cooked wood. Using a heat source, you indirectly  
heat wood to vaporize the water and volatile compounds and drive them  
off. Once that's accomplished, you shut down the fire by starving it  
and the newly created charcoal of oxygen. Once everything cools, you  
open up the kiln, and you have charcoal.

-- 
Earc

Good gods, please don't tell me that the "wealth of useless  
information" I have in my head isn't actually useless.

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 22:02:45 +0000
From: Allen Hall <dukealan at q.com>
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern
    Plague
To: Kingdom of Artemisia mailing list
    <artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org>
Message-ID: <COL115-W5443889D048922227D3102D97D0 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

> Earc
> 
> Good gods, please don't tell me that the "wealth of useless 
> information" I have in my head isn't actually useless.
>

Earc,

Not useless at all!

There's an old saying, "chivalry isn't dead, it's just unemployed.  Same thing with knowledge that you just described.  Whether it gets employed again is up to speculation.  But it's still good to know!

Thanks for sharing.  I saw a good bit of info on making charcoal.  Basically take a 30 gal barrel, fill it with wood bits, but it in a 55 gal barrel with firewood and light up the 55 gal barrel.  As you said, in short order the wood inside the 30 gal barrel will be charcoal.  That will keep the dutch ovens going well!

Alan                           

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 15:38:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: Redhawk <sca_redhawk at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern
    Plague
To: Kingdom of Artemisia mailing list
    <artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org>
Message-ID: <91832.80500.qm at web52608.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

and if you have a collection device and use pine wood you leech out the sap.? just read that on the internet.? so a person would have two products.
Red

--- On Sun, 9/19/10, Allen Hall <dukealan at q.com> wrote:

From: Allen Hall <dukealan at q.com>
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern Plague
To: "Kingdom of Artemisia mailing list" <artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org>
Date: Sunday, September 19, 2010, 4:02 PM

> Earc
> 
> Good gods, please don't tell me that the "wealth of useless 
> information" I have in my head isn't actually useless.
>

Earc,

Not useless at all!

There's an old saying, "chivalry isn't dead, it's just unemployed.? Same thing with knowledge that you just described.? Whether it gets employed again is up to speculation.? But it's still good to know!

Thanks for sharing.? I saw a good bit of info on making charcoal.? Basically take a 30 gal barrel, fill it with wood bits, but it in a 55 gal barrel with firewood and light up the 55 gal barrel.? As you said, in short order the wood inside the 30 gal barrel will be charcoal.? That will keep the dutch ovens going well!

Alan ??? ???????? ?????? ??? ? 
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------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:34:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: BENGTA1 at aol.com
Subject: [Artemisia]  SCA  Modern Plague
To: artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org
Message-ID: <1660b4.6599a20.39c7ea0f at aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Your Grace,

How many people can you support on 30 acres?  

After you gather your family and friends, and reach that number, what do  
you do about all the SCAdians who  keep showing up at your front  gate??

Bengta

------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:47:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: BENGTA1 at aol.com
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern
    Plague
To: artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org
Message-ID: <166825.4c1a841d.39c7ecec at aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Nails...shoelaces (and the shoes to put them on),  chapstick, deodorant 
(we'll be a stinky bunch!).  Socks, underwear, work  gloves

I can make  shoe laces, socks, underwear.  I'll trade for other goods.

Who's got a root cellar, or knows how to build one  and what goes in it?

When I lived in Germany, I had the farmer deliver 200 lbs of  potatoes.  
They went into the dark, cool closet in the front hall under the  stairs.  
Lasted just fine.  At the end, if some sprout, use them to  plant with!

It was typical of older German farms that the barn and the living house  
were built like a side-by-side duplex.  The animal heat from the barn  helped 
to keep the house a little warmer in the winter.

In other countries, the barn was the bottom storey, the house above.

How do you guard your horses so they don't get  stolen? 

Surely that is one of the things dogs are good for!!

Bengta

------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:39:38 -0400
From: Padruig <rayzentz at aim.com>
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern
    Plague
To: artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org
Message-ID: <8CD2662AD2BE4A4-1330-1F68F at webmail-d078.sysops.aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

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.

Artemisia mailing list
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------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:50:37 -0400
From: Padruig <rayzentz at aim.com>
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] Artemisia Digest, Vol 84, Issue 22
To: artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org
Message-ID: <8CD266435CFD2C4-1330-1F87C at webmail-d078.sysops.aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Anton, I would be interested in those cart plans. Have you an e-version that can be emailed? How much for a copy? Or can you refer us to place where they may be available?

Padruig

Dr. Raymond Zentz

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

-----Original Message-----
From: regis at inav.net
To: artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org
Sent: Sun, Sep 19, 2010 8:48 am
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] Artemisia Digest, Vol 84, Issue 22

Greetings,

<snip>

very important.   
Some skills I can bring to the table and am willing to 
teach in the future if asked:   Silvers & Gold smithing 
and base metal working,  including casting, and wire 
wrapping techniques.   I can start a fire from flint and 
steel and have some skills at outdoor survival.   I have 
working plans for ?Mormon Handcarts? .  I am thinking that 
it would make a great camp item for that period look as 
well as darn practical if I have to load out my emergency 
storage items and trek out to join your village.   

<snip>

Yours in service,
Anton von Heidleberg,

Mka:  Regis Johanns
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------------------------------

Message: 8
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:58:47 -0400
From: Padruig <rayzentz at aim.com>
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern
    Plague
To: artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org
Message-ID: <8CD26655A291224-1330-1FA0E at webmail-d078.sysops.aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Regarding Water. There are available excellent filters, using ceramic media, that can be reused over and over. In addition, more temporary filters can be built, that are very effective at removing contaminants and bacteria. I have learned how to make these, and we have stored such modern filters, and additional media, but have never brought it up, since these are most definitely NOT period.

Work well, though, and if there is an interest, a class on this could certainly be offered.

Padruig

Dr. Raymond Zentz

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

------------------------------

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End of Artemisia Digest, Vol 84, Issue 27
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