What Are Your Skills?
I’ve been thinking of writing about this for a long time. I don’t talk much about preparedness on this blog but it is something I am very well informed on and we have been prepared for anything since the late 90’s. I’ve been reading many different preparedness blogs for the past year and I always get a sense of urgency when I read those posts and that urgency for me is based from fear. I won’t live my life in fear mode but I do live by the old saying of “tie the camels” which means to be prepared for anything but live your life normally.
Here is where I’m at with all of this: yes, we all need to have some preparedness skills in our tool box of life skills and supplies at our homes in case there are going to be food shortages or if there’s even a chance you or your spouse will be laid off from your job while prices are rising and winter will be here soon.
There are many blogs and websites to read up on all the details of what to store and how much, etc so I’m not going to go into all of that here. One thing I will touch on that those sites do not is to add sprouting seeds to your food storage because many sprouts are so easy to do in just a couple of days and only require a glass jar with mesh screen lid or even cheesecloth with a rubberband and water and only cost you pennies. The vitamins, enzymes and just life force energy you will get from sprouts is very important in my opinion. You could live on sprouts if you had to.
What I wanted to really talk about is actual skills. What can you do? What do you want to learn about but rely on others to do for you instead? This comes up for me a lot because my husband is one of those renaissance men that really can do anything – he’s got mad skills both the blue collar and white collar type. I, on the other hand, have learned many things from him over the years in terms of developing my own sustainability life skills and being pretty much a city girl, this was big for me. I always have a little fear of what if he’s not around and I have to take care of everything myself for me and my son in bad times? This drives me to keep learning even the stuff I don’t really like but it’s all good because it makes me more confident and feel self-reliant and like I can survive anything but in a good way!
So, can you work with power tools or even manual hand tools? Can you make a fire in a fire pit or a wood stove or even a fireplace? Can you cook basic foods like grains and beans correctly and store them properly? Can you sew? Do you have camping skills/basic wilderness skills? Can you fix a flat tire on a car or a bike? Can you grow food? Do you know CPR and basic first aid? I can go on and on but you get the idea. I still have more to learn in different areas but I try to watch and observe as much as I can and try to practice some things or just file it away in case I need to use it by myself or get someone to help me if for some reason he’s not around. That is a gloomy thought, I know but anything could happen and we all need to be responsible for ourselves.
When I first moved to Colorado to transform my life and become an Herbalist 14 years ago, I became obsessed with permaculture and self-sustainability and medicine making, too. I did not know my husband then but I read and learned and surrounded myself with others on this same path and learned more from them. For my graduating final project (almost like a mini-thesis, we worked on it for a long time) I did an entire very detailed permaculture design for a piece of land my friends and I wanted to buy in the mountains of CO. Once I graduated, I went right into getting a permaculture certification and worked for a year with a landscape designer that also did xeriscape and permaculture designs in her work so I got hands-on training, too which taught me even more.
At the time, many people I knew thought this was fringe and unnecessary – everything in our country was going so well, life was easy, etc. I felt differently, kept having visions of a different way of life and also felt that it was the most natural way for a human to live in harmony with all of nature. I still feel this way and thankfully, so does my husband. I kept expanding my skills and knowledge and still to this day I keep pushing myself to learn more and more – even if I don’t really like what I’m learning! I feel that bartering for goods and services is going to become something big in the not too distant future and people with needed skills will be in high demand.
The first book that I bought for myself when I went to herbalist school to start learning the “old ways” of self sufficiency was Reader’s Digests’ “Back To Basics” book. I highly recommend this book as a good place to start to learn if you are just getting started and you can usually find a copy in a used bookstore – that’s where I got mine. My husband got to grow up with a mother that basically embodies this book – she is a real homesteader and this is where he’s learned the majority of his life skills. Not a bad way to raise your children and something we are trying to slowly teach to our son in our daily life. I was raised the exact opposite way and really felt like a fish out of water a lot of times. So much about our consumeristic society always bothered me and feels shallow and pointless, really.
So, if you are starting to feel worried about the economy or natural catastrophies possibly happening in your area, let that fear drive you to prepare with the basics in taking care of yourself and your family better. If nothing happens then great, you can still use all of your stored vegan foods which are healthier for you anyway, having extra warm clothes, blankets, flashlights, solar-rechargeable batteries, water, firewood, etc is all going to be used and you have saved money in the long run, too. The life skills you aquire will always be put to good use, too and makes you feel better about yourself. If nothing else, it will give you more to talk about at a party!
Live your life with joy and consciousness in harmony with nature but always remember to tie the camels, just in case.
September 23 2008 09:09 pm | food and food storage and gardening and green living and nature and society and sustainability
