Country Living Skills

This is worth reading…  Hopefully many people have learned from their family history, or will learn from these people’s memories…  Prepare, people !

Via: CNN.com

Memories of salvaging and stealing to avoid going hungry are part of the legacy of the Great Depression. Some iReporters say they can’t help but look at the current economy and feel the past holds lessons for the present.

“Even ladies didn’t shy away from hard work,” says Sheila Elrod. Her grandmother is shown at a cotton loom.

Pam Van Hylckama Vlieg says her grandfather tried to steal chickens after being laid off from coal mining.

Donna LeBlanc of Waxia, Louisiana, says she carries no credit to this day as a result of the frugality and self-reliance instilled in her by her family. Her husband keeps the couple’s credit card and maintains a zero balance.

The Great Depression meant scary times for many households as a period of economic downturn spread throughout the world. Historians trace its start to the “Black Tuesday” stock crash on October 29, 1929, and argue that the resulting global desperation set the stage for World War II.

LeBlanc said her grandparents were fortunate that they didn’t have investments and could grow — or catch — their own food during the Depression years.

Her grandfather Lester was a “Cajun cowboy” often seen wearing a cowboy hat, and her grandmother Ida was a resourceful woman who spent much of the 1930s working as a store clerk. LeBlanc, always told never to keep credit card debt, heard frightful stories from Ida. iReport.com: See a photo of the happy couple together after all these years

“She remembered vividly the barrels of flour, the bolts of cloth and the hunger in the faces of people as they begged for store credit,” LeBlanc said. “The store must have been at least marginally successful, because my grandmother was able to purchase, a piece at a time, a complete six-person setting of Gorham Chantilly silverware for her trousseau, linens and even a Lane cedar chest to house her treasures.”

The couple would catch wild hogs, feed them corn for a year and eat them once the wild taste was out of the scavenging animals. They also took advantage of available squirrel meat, a common food in the South at that time.

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Via: Cleveland.com

Q. What are the most important considerations?

A. Know the square-footage of your home, or the room to be heated, to get the right size unit for that space. Buy the highest quality that you can afford, and have the unit installed by a professional who knows the system and can make sure the clearances are correct, the chimney system is proper, and the installation is in accordance with the owner’s manual.

Q. Wood-burning stoves are commonly made from cast-iron, welded steel, soapstone or porcelain. Is there an efficiency and/or price difference among the materials?

A. Steel stoves are typically least expensive, and heat is released from steel quicker, so it cools down more quickly.

A cast-iron stove is the next step up in price. It releases heat more slowly, which means it stays warm longer.

Soapstone is usually the most expensive. The material releases heat slower than cast-iron.

Porcelain stoves are cast iron with a colored porcelain finish.

Q. What’s the price range of wood-burning stoves, and what do you get for the least and most expensive?

A. The least expensive start at about $800 and are small, heating less than 1,000 square feet.

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Via: iStockAnalyst .com

Water thoroughly and deeply

Watering can be the biggest task in August particularly if the weather gets hot. Vegetable gardens, most flowering plants and the lawn all need about 1 inch of water every week to keep them green and looking nice. Be sure to water thoroughly and deeply each time. When possible, do your watering in the morning or early afternoon so the soil has a chance to warm up before the cooler evening hours set in. Deep watering will induce the plant’s roots to grow deeper, where they are less likely to dry out. The added benefit is deep roots anchor the plant into the ground better. Light, surface watering actually wastes water, because the water never actually reaches the root zone of the plant, and the moisture rapidly evaporates from the top inch of soil. The best way to tell if your plants are receiving enough water is to take a trowel or shovel and dig down a few inches. The soil should be moist at least 3 or 4 inches deep to ensure that the water is reaching the root zone of the plants. Of course, if you planted drought-resistant plants in your garden, you won’t have to water as often, but the principal of deep watering still applies.

Gathering herbs

As your herbs mature, gather them for drying regularly. Harvesting once per week is ideal. Keep your basil deadheaded. For most herbs, a well-drained soil will give the most flavor and scent. Do you know the difference between a herb and a spice? A herb is from the foliage of a plant, while spices are from the seeds, bark or other parts of a plant; some plants supply both herbs and spices.

Fruit care

Strawberries should be thinned out before fall. Remove all but two or three runners from your main plants for abundant, large fruits. If you have diseases on your fruit trees, get rid of the affected fruit. Don’t let them sit under your tree as sources of infection for next year.

Finding late bloomers

Mid- to late-summer blooming trees can be hard to find if you move beyond crape myrtles. Some shrubby plants work well when pruned into small trees at providing height and later season interest. The old stand-by, PeeGee hydrangea with its large white snowballs makes a showy and distinctive small tree if trained upright when young. Butterfly bush can also be trained to a single trunk and grown as a tree. Look for vigorous-growing larger varieties such as Opera rather than the more compact Nanho forms.

Via: Countryside & Small Stock Journal

By Jerri Cook
Countryside Staff

I discovered that drying is a fast, economical and safe way to preserve food. It wasn’t long before dried fruits and vegetables found a place in the pantry. Tucked beside the jars of French-cut green beans and corn were one-gallon plastic bags full of corn, green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, apples, strawberries, raspberries, leeks, summer squash, dried beef and fruit leathers galore.

Dried food takes up considerably less space than canned food. It wasn’t long before the number of Mason jars in my pantry waned, and the shelves begin to fill up with bags of dried food. I began seeing less of my pressure canner and leaving the screen door unlatched more often.

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