I should have paid more attention. I wish I would have listened to Grandmas stories a little more. Grams was born January of 1900 and loved us until she was 96. One day she simply said “This old body has had enough, I miss grandpa. I love you.” And she was gone. My grandparent spent 71 years together. I sure so do miss her sitting across the counter from me and my cousin, telling us stories of life in her cabin before the state made her and grandpa put in electricity. That was in the late 1960’s, if memory serves me correctly. She was upset about the whole deal, Grams loved the cabin just the way it was. My Dad and Grandpa built this home for their retirement. Lovingly put together from the trees on the property. Nestled next to an old dirt road, the log cabin faced a pristine body of water. At the time it was built there were no other houses around that crystal clear lake at all. It was peaceful and serene.
During my working days I spent many years caring for old people. Some in nursing homes, some in Care Facilities and some in their own homes. Old people are so full of information if you take a moment to listen. To an old person you are a new set of ears to spill their world of experience on for as long as your young ears are available. Their stories come from a different time and an entirely different world than we have experienced. I wasn’t about to lose another opportunity to learn what I could. I took copious notes of their stories.
On Tuesdays and Fridays I was scheduled to visit a ninety year old newspaper owner named Louie. This delightful senior has a forever spot in my heart. There are just some personalities you simply never forget and Louie was one of those guys. So full of life and charm, he was as sharp as a whip. Louie loved to talk about his religion. Louie was Jewish. I knew nothing about Jewish people or the Jewish religion in those days, but he trusted me with his most beloved possession, a look inside the Jewish faith. I accepted this gift with open ears.
Often we chatted while we went through his care routine, but this one particular day he had a cheese pizza delivered along with a 2 lt. bottle of Pepsi. We sat at his kitchen table and talked that whole shift about what it was like being a Jewish person and life in the newspaper business. He was so proud of his daughter who became a stage Opera singer. It amazed me how just listening to someone who is passionate about who they are can open up a whole new found respect for them and their life. I just loved Louie.
Then there was a dear lady named Melvina. She loved to watch Lawrence Welk on Tv. Petite Melvina loved ballroom dancing in her younger days. Even then, at 98, I can still see her in my memory standing at her walker when the music started and toe shuffling to Welk’s bubble music of the 1960’s and 70’s. On one delightful care visit Melvina began our day telling me a story about her birth. She was born at home, premature. That was in 1916, before the widespread use of electricity. So what did Melvina’s mother do to keep her tiny baby warm? When the new mother needed a moment to herself she put the fragile baby in a basket, opened the oven door on the wood cook stove, and set basket and baby on the oven door to stay warm. The heat from the oven kept the baby warm much like an incubator does for modern premie’s. Obviously it worked. I don’t know that I would have thought of that. I guess necessity is the mother of invention, so they say.
And of course, dear Josephine, she was also 90. Her story went like this; “We carried water from a spring about a half mile away.” She spoke as her memory carried her to another time. “Carried it in a pail. We used that spring as our refrigerator. Kept the butter and things like that cool.
You took your Saturday night bath in a tub. It was a good thing if you wasn’t the fourth or fifth one down the family, because you had to use the same water. You weren’t going to change water when you had to carry it half mile!”
Many books into my learning about the old ways, I discovered that in ancient times women were the keepers of the hearth. Grandmothers were the teachers and caregivers of the the children so their parents could hunt and forage for the tribes daily sustenance. Life was hard, actually borderline brutal sometimes. It was during these ancient times that soap was discovered purely by accident.
Many, many, many long years ago there was a cooking fire. It was a time of the big feast, this group was celebrating a successful hunt. The women prepared the meal and cooked the mighty beast on the central outdoor cooking fire. Men sat on blankets on the ground waiting for the meal to be served and enjoyed bragging about their part in the hunt. While these hairy fellows were enjoying reliving the days escapades, grease from the prized fat animal dripped down into the hot ashes. That night after their stories were told, everyones bellies were fed, and the joyful group headed off to into their sleeping tents, it rained. The next morning an observant early riser noticed bubbles coming from the cold cooking fire. Well-ah, this smart person played with the substance and soon soap was invented. Ash + water + grease = a crude soap.
When very ancient people traveled they carried hot coals in carved out stone carefully placed inside an animal pouch. These life saving coals would be the start of the next campfire. Grass reeds fashioned into cups and slathered with sticky tree sap became drink cups. These ingenious folks took hot rocks from the fire, shook off the ash and put them into the water in the grass cup to make a hot beverage of tea.
What I also learned is there are 4 basic things that humans need for survival in every human generational cycle. We all know about food, water, and shelter but we need each other too. Humans were meant to live with other humans. Rare is the human who lives isolated, it happens, but not often. Small groups of about 10 to 15 people seemed to hold the most survivability. More people than that, a splinter group broke off. The second most dominate male, chose his few and a new group was formed.
Drying and fermentation were one of the earliest means of food preservation. Meat, fish and some vegetable matter were dried over a smoky fire pit. Fermentation goes back to cave dwellers when it was discovered that they intentionally made a crude alcohol beer.
Traditional jerky making video
How to begin with fermentation video
Living without running to the grocery store is going to be a big adjustment. Below you will find a list of things to know about fending for yourself when our changing world turns off what we think is our normal.
*Growing enough to get you from one harvest season to the next harvest season is going to take some planning. An absolute must is putting away at least 2 years worth at a time because a good harvest every year is not guaranteed. Do you have the room to store 2 years worth of your labor? Can you save seeds? Yes, again, it takes years of planning and acting. It’s hard work to keep the belly fed.
*Living without refrigeration. Cooking every meal fresh. What to do with leftovers if there are any. It is well worth looking into “Spring Houses” and “How the Amish keep lake ice all summer long.” My grandfather dug a hole into the side of a hill. He called it a cold room or root cellar. It was a pleasure to run to the cold room on a hot summer afternoon to retrieve a quart of grape juice grandmother had made. The juice was cold by default. Yummy!
On the farm 'spring house' video
*Washing clothes is another story. Do you take them down to the creek and beat them on a rock? You have an old scrub board right? Check out Lehman's Country store for more clothes washing ideas.
This is ridiculously hard work washing a families weeks worth of clothes by hand. In the warmer months the washed clothes can be hung outside to dry, but what about the winter months? Where do you dry them?
If you are lucky enough to have two very large pans, you can put them on metal legs and build a fire under the pans to heat the water. This makes for an easier wash day since you have the clothes line handy. You have a clothes line, right?
*Oh, and another thing, when they quit making waxed paper or even plastic bags, or at least when the price is too high. What changes will you need to make? Great grandma used waxed 12”x 12” cotton squares to cover her food. Good luck finding beeswax. That reminds me, bees wax will be valuable barter item. Honey too!
*What happens if toilet paper makes a run for it? Or feminine products? Do you know what to do when the toilet no longer flushes? Remember, you will most likely have to haul water. My mother recounts a story of her outhouse days of her youth. Everyone was assigned a cotton rag. There were nails strategically placed in the outhouse with your name on it and a rag hung there for your use. You were responsible for that rag and cleaning it after use. There was be a bucket of water under the rags to clean your rag after use. The bucket was changed daily as part of the kids chores. No fair using someone elses rag if you didn’t clean yours.
*Do you know how to make baby diapers, diaper rash cream, and baby formula? Do you know how to NOT get pregnant when the world is in Mad Max? Can you give birth without the doctor?
*What are the first diseases seen after a crisis? Is that water safe? Can you disinfect it? We have forgotten many of the common water borne illnesses that 3rd. world countries deal with everyday. Diseases like Cholera, Dysentery, Leptospirosis to name a few. Then there are things like Typhus, Pellagra, Hantavirus, food poisoning, Bubonic and Pneumonic plagues, heart attacks from stress, and overexertion from eating junk food and sitting every day. Are you familiar with these and can you safety treat them without professional medical people?
There is so much more to consider on the dark side of the superstore going away and what that means to all of us. I need not go any further with explanations on that subject, I think you can figure out the rest.
I’m sure this article has given you enough to digest at the moment. Should you feel inclined to ask questions, I will be here to answer them best I can. Your future depends on what you know and the skills you can learn quickly. Books will be your best insurance. Having a well stocked how-to hard copy library is something you can pass around, too. And don’t forget to check in with your grandparents, just have a notebook handy and plenty of time.
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