by Rowan O’Malley, The Organic Prepper:
In every family, there seems to be one member who has a particular interest in the family’s history and the way things were in the past. If you guess that I’m that person in my generation, you would be correct. I love hearing stories from my mother about her childhood, and I even have done some research on our Irish ancestors. Even though I’m in my fifties, I also have a number of older friends who are in their eighties and even nineties. I love to hear their stories about their childhoods and the wisdom they gained over the years.
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As I chatted with one of my friends, born in 1941, this week, I thought about the coming Fourth of July celebrations and the current debates in America. I was struck by how valuable his stories were and how they harkened back to some days in which Americans faced challenges with remarkable resiliency. I got his permission to share some of these stories with you, in the hopes that they will inspire you to look back to your own ancestors and the elders in your own communities for lessons on how to be prepared.
Waste Nothing
My friend’s parents lived through the Great Depression and raised ten children. According to him, while he grew up through the 1940’s, it still was the Great Depression, at least in his parents’ minds. He said he felt they never fully recovered from that experience. If you are interested in learning more lessons from the Great Depression, here is an article about hobo culture and a look at a diary from a lawyer living through the Great Depression.
Nothing was wasted in the house. George (I’ll call him) said that his mother saved everything. She had a drawer where bread tags were faithfully stored. The drawer was full! There must have been more than a thousand of them in there. When George asked his mother why she was saving them, she simply replied, “I’ll find a use for them.” (Here are 40 of them, if you’re curious.)
When George was a child, he remembers, his father was trying to sell an old cow that must have been about 15 years old. When he was only offered three dollars for the cow, his father slaughtered her instead. Without proper refrigeration, the family hung her from the center of the high rafters of their barn in October. The carcass was covered with a sheet to keep the pigeons off. The height prevented other animals from getting to the carcass.
When his mother needed meat for something, George, the youngest, was sent out with an older brother. An improvised ratcheting system for the rope made from a log allowed them to raise and lower the carcass. His brother would cut off some meat, and then back up the carcass would go. George said that, with the winters back then in US Climate Zone 4, the carcass was frozen solid all winter. When spring came and there was still some meat left, George said that his mother promptly canned it. George couldn’t help but smile when he remembered how tasty his mother’s canned beef was.
A Good Day’s Work
I thought my mother, who grew up on a dairy farm, had a great story about how all the children in her family started driving tractor the moment their feet could reach the pedals. Well, George has her beat! His father would attach some wooden blocks to the pedals so that the children could drive tractor even earlier.
As a result, at the age of seven, George was driving a tractor and plowing fields. All ten children began working on the farm at the age of seven. George said that they all did the same work, boy or girl, driving tractor, plowing, milking, throwing bales. George can recall plowing a twenty-acre field by himself at the age of 7 in one day with a set of discs that were only six feet wide.
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