We talk about traditional skills, but have we thought about what that really means?
When I think of traditional skills, I think of my grandmother who was born in 1901 and raised 10 children during some really hard times.
I think of my great-aunt Ettie, standing in her kitchen with the woodstove, wearing her apron, and going into her walk-in pantry for some homemade cookies for my kids.
I think of my mother-in-law, who grew up in Hungary (also during hard times) and could put together a feast as a normal meal, cooking everything from scratch and with nothing going to waste.
I think of my parents, working hard on the farm, growing food to eat and to sell, and my mom making quilts and sewing dresses for me to wear, all in her “spare time”.
And I picture them all happy, content, empowered, strong, capable and independent.
The Traditional Skills
What did our ancestors have to know in order to be happy, healthy, wise, capable, and independent?
How to grow and raise food
How to harvest food (both vegetable and animal)
How to preserve food and animal hides/fleece
How to cook the food they preserved
How to make their own lard
How to extend a little food to feed a lot of people or make meals last for multiple days
How to make clothes
How to build and repair structures
How to take things apart, fix what was broken and repurpose what couldn’t be fixed
How to prepare for and survive harsh winters and summer droughts
How to hunt and fish
How to cut a tree, stack wood, and make a fire
How to make do with what they had
How to spend an evening with family, without tv or the internet
And a bonus: how to read and write and do math in their head
Many of the skills have been lost for families, today. Many tips and tricks of our ancestors are having to be re-discovered, as the passing down of knowledge and experience has been broken.
But, we begin again.
We reach out to those who still know. We honour and respect the lives they have lived. We are seeking the old ways. We are (re)learning. We are discovering and sharing the tips and tricks of the traditional skills, to help others with their learning curve experiences.
And we create community, like Homesteadian.com, to support, empower, inspire, teach, and learn from each other, as we build our simpler lifestyles of happiness, empowerment, capabilities, independence, and community-sufficiency.
Homesteadian.com: where we share what we know and learn about what we don’t.
