[Artemisia] SCA Skills in a Modern Plague

[Kimi Pollett]

This is a very interesting topic, thank you Duke Alan for starting it!
 
Growing up, I had the interesting experience of living 'semi-off-grid'. My parents bought a chunk of land in the Pacific Northwest and transported our family onto it. Over the next eight years we built our house by hand. Lighting was kerosene lamps, 'refrigeration' was icebox with ice purchased from town once a week, we raised chickens for eggs, rabbits for meat and had a short lived experiment with a goat for milking. Water for everything but drinking came from rainbarrels, heat and cooking was from a wood stove, the privy was an outhouse that was dug by us kids and showers were a five gallon bucket with holes punched in the bottom (cold in the summer and heated on the stove during the winter).
 
We would cook all meats as soon as they were purchased because the cooked meat stored safer than the raw meat did. The question has been briefly touched on, but safely storing food seems like it would be a huge issue. If you butcher your cow, what are you going to do with the 1500-ish pounds of meat? If you open a five gallon bucket of wheat how are you going to ensure that pests don't get in? Do you have a hand grinder to process that bulk wheat? Recipes to utilize it? If you open a #10 can of fruit do you have means to store it so it doesn't spoil before its used? Do your food stores just put food in your stomach or are they actually supply the nutrition you need?
 
Firewood should ideally be seasoned for a few months before it is burned to allow the moisture to dry out. It burns cleaner and more stable that way. While green wood can be burned for survival, eventually you would need to have enough manpower to be able to plan ahead and not be scavenging day to day.
 
Because we lived so far out my Dad (who has basic emergency medical training as a police officer) always had a copy of the PDR and basic medical texts on hand so that he could handle any minor emergencies that came about. Medications would only be effective if you knew what to take for what ailment and how much/how often to take.
 
Based on my experiences as a child, I know that I am capable of handling all kinds of things that a lot of my peers couldn't even imagine!
Sofi the Crabby