I am 81 years old. I remember a good bit from 1946, before my Dad got home from the Navy. Mom and I lived with her parents in a town that is now part of Nashville, TN. The ice man would come down the alley twice a week and put a 25 lb block of ice in the top of my Grandmother's old oak icebox. In summer, all us little kids would follow the iceman around the neighborhood to get the little chips of ice that landed on the flat bed of his truck when he ice picked off the chunks of ice. There was a grocery, tiny by today's standards, that served our community. Everyone walked to the store and hand-carried home their purchases. Everyone lived within about 1/8 mile of the store and thought nothing of this. In season, a produce truck came through the neighborhood a couple of times a week. The Jewel Tea truck, with about anything needed for kitchen (except food) and bath, came around a couple of times a month. Then there was the Watkins man and the Fuller Brush man. We got by very well.
I live in Ireland and suggest wwofr Ireland. Wwoofers are the name given to people who register to work on organic farms to learn how to farm in return for their labour or sweat equity, bed and board are provided by the host. You can stay from 2 weeks to even a year. You get to choose what type of farm you go to and the skills involved. You can visit places worldwide and learn by doing. Website explains how it works. Love the content of your conversations and applaud you for stepping g out of the modern norm to live your dreams. Wwoof stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms
l'm 86....grew up in SoCalif....so much more freedom than kids have today....Wartime shortage came soon after Depression shortages, so ''making do'' was a way of life.
I heard last week they are going to ban all organic foods. But they are making clued fake foods they now label kosher. Nothing makes sense… on purpose.
I think the prep movement is a result of the intense and rapid level of complexity that has happened in the U.S., but the fact that people live longer, there is far less infant mortality, the quality of life for the majority has massively increase is important to recognize. I have always loved the term Al uses “modern homesteader”, because it combines modern tech and true skills. It also is more appealing to a larger audience. There is a very small group who would like it to be 1850 again. The larger and growing majority wants a modern hybrid of living a healthy life. And … I don’t know anyone anymore that doesn’t know our corporate food system is irrevocably broken and causing major health impacts. Don’t look at TH-cam as an income stream, look at it as the vehicle you use to lead.
I grew up in a climate colder than and tons of snow. No electricity. Meat was in a community locker freezer which had generators for power outages. You could keep meat frozen in the back kitchen which was not heated for several weeks if you could not get out. We canned vegetables and fruit all summer as each came into season. You all do not take your gardens seriously enough. If there was an excess of something one year it was put up or shared with neighbors. Never wasted as the next year might be a bad year for that crop. We did not have freeze driers, food driers or any other conveniences of modern day. We always had meatn, potatoes and 2 vegemeant, with a side of pickles or relish and desert. Desert might be pie, pudding with fruit or just a small dish if canned fruit. The info is out there if you want to find it.old people have a great deal to teach if you are open to asking and willing to listen.
Did you all see video of grocery stores packaging meat? Another vomit story- they put 2 gases in those packages with the clear wrap and styrofoam. It keeps meat color and freshness they just re-wrap it for near 6 weeks with new gases pumped in pkg.. oh so gross, I miss the meat butchers that packaged right as you ordered it. Ugh
My granny was born in 1898. They had gardens, did alot of canning. Had chickens and a cow. And hunted as needed. Lots of meals with bread gravy and one dish meals
I heard roots and refuge yesterday ‘podcast. It was Jess interviewing the Jeremiah’s grandma from Newfoundland and it was very different when she was young. They had to barter veggies for meat. A worthwhile 45 min. To listen in.
Ben makes a very good point. Ask not what you'd want to do instead, ask what skills you have that you can trade or sell. Way back 100 plus years ago, people only needed hard cash money to pay taxes and the general store. The Dr could be paid in chickens, the hardware store in well made knives or baskets or fishing nets. Trust me, people have thrived for millions of years without the internet, some still do. Its not the end of the world, just another unexpected happening on the farm.
It's too bad people from my generation (I am 72) were not given much encouragement when they tried to live a sustainable life. We were kids who had a lot of skills because we had grown up with gardens and family farms. A lot were just called hippies and made fun of when they tried to live like you guys do! And there was no internet to make money. Someone had to "work for the man" away from the farm. From my POV, these young people were discouraged so they gave up and moved on to the greedy materialist life! So sad....
I think the back to the land movement in the 1970s may have saved a lot of the old ways because they were researching how people lived before and then wrote books about it. Not everything was in vain. Lots of good books with so much great knowledge came out of that! If it wasn't done back then a lot more would have been totally lost to us. I thank the sustainable pioneers from then for handing down so much information!
I don’t see Ben a market gardener with the list of things he can do. Welder, knife smith, butcher, carpenter and I’m sure there is much more that I’m not remembering😊…
Al could do a lot. Hes had so many jobs, even cop. All three will need to be "market underground gardeners" for local people, and "builders". If the internet goes down, society will be totally broken, so just switching to antoher trade that likely wont exist isnt going to work. Take care of yourselves and share by trade.
Lancaster PA here, we still have a nightly ice-cream truck during the hot months only and a basic ice cream cone is about $6. Trust me, the kids do not go running up to that truck. I was part of the 60s back to the land movement. Way back then there were no internet or cell phones. Everyone had at least one side gig either making goods for sale or providing a service. We connected through classified ads run in the monthly Mother Earth News and other niche magazines. The Whole Earth Catalog was a household requirement. I think the thing that broke our movement was a lack of a strong homeschooling system...it just wasn't there and defiance of the system meant jail time and maybe losing custody of your children. It was a different time. Love your podcast, thank you for spreading reality.
It was meat and potato diet in the north. They salted and smoked their meat. Stored their potatoes in an attic through the winter because it was cold there. You didn't butcher until winter for cold storage . They made ice houses. Got ice from the lake.
Most folks do not know that ice plants were a thing long before electric was readily available. Big Ammonia Chilling operations were dangerous places on good days and fully deadly on a bad day. Losing a limb was a fairly good day. Much better than an ammonia line break.
@@markpashia7067-My Dad told stories of his dad and his brother traveling 200 miles round trip with two horse drawn wagons to get ice and salt for the community every fall. Hard to believe doing that now.
Ben made such a good point about being in a grid down situation and how people scope out who they can go to in that emergency, instead of preparing for themselves. I'm preparing for my family, not for my neighbors, my extended family, anyone that wants to show up at my door. I just can not be that person, and I should never be expected to be that person. Hopefully people continue to wake up and see the importance of what that security means. Understanding that what i have done wasn't just done overnight, either. It's taken me two years to get six months of food stored up. Little bits at a time, and growing a decent garden in the city. I can't grow my own meat, so rely on other sources, which is costly for me. Preservation is a separate cost, buying enough canning supplies to get it all shelf safe. So much goes into the idea.
Excellent topic today! I'm gardening & canning and live in a Senior Park. Ben - several people have said to me recently "I know where to go so I won't be hungry". I had to think about my response. Give them a fish or teach them how to fish. If the internet and TH-cam weren't available, teach in-person classes on gardening & how to raise and process animals in the space they have now. Encourage them to learn now and build their physical library if the grid goes down for any length of time. Go to their homes and help them build a plan.
At 67 wish I had more time with my husbands grandparents. Every year we would go up to help on the farm for a couple weeks. They were in their late 80’s still farming with horses in New York. Grandma used a wood burning stove.(best baked goods ever) I would soak up as much information and skills as I could during those 2 weeks. To this day I will think I wish I could ask grandma/grandpa what they would do. Living in Florida cold storage/root cellar not an option. Wish some of the elders were here to ask. Good for you guys for realizing the value of what is being lost!
My ancestors were farmers for over 100 years, root cellars, canning, smoke houses, snow and ice. Before electricity, you put food in the stream and ice plants were everywhere. Everyone had a garden and families and relatives shared food. There are farmers that have the knowledge from their ancestors in America. I grew up without the internet, people get together and talk face to face!!!!!
My kids have always been on a rural road so this past summer while we were visiting my sister they learned how to flag down the ice cream truck. I think my sister had more fun sharing that experience with them because it did bring back a fond childhood memory.
I am 64. When I was very young I remember that my gramma had an ice box- she had a huge block of ice delivered to the house and it went in the top compartment like our freezer, but that kept the food cold. Also she had a metal box in back of the house and the milkman delivered it to the box
I remember we had an icebox when I was small. I also remember having to clean the ice out the freezer unit in the early days. I’m quite a bit older than you I think.
Hey guys Jon here from CRAZYDAYSHOMESTEAD. My grandfather was 93 when he died. He said when he was a boy his meal for the day was a Lard sandwich. 2 pieces of bread with lard in the middle. Salt is the only way to truly cure meat for long term without electricity. Freeze drying would probably be the next. St. Croix sheep are naturally parasite resistant. Great job guys keep it up
I'm 68 and grew up here in SW Virginia, close to Blue Ridge Mountains. My parents grew up even further into the Appalachian Mountains. I saw smoke houses for meat and tobacco (!) all my life. I've been served country ham, salt cured, many times. I grew up canning my entire life. It's interesting watching & listening to you guys (others) as you try to learn old ways. Personally for me, Joel Salatin is always a great source of how things were done. He's just a bit younger than me & he's rdone and/or researched many of the old ways.
I have a cook book from a middle school and it talks about how many logs you should have to bake something. It's pretty fun to read. Talks about medium fire and such.
This has been a very good conversation. You all have talents that would allow you to live fine if the word IF came out. That brings me to my grandparents and the store they use to have and grandpa being a butcher. I only wish I could have seen more of that with them but like I said before the big stores pushed them out of business. Great video today. I am in my late sixties and you brought back many memories. Great topic. God bless
You guys wont have problem if the internet goes down. Al has has an excavator and loader, All he needs now is a single axel dump truck. Jason can build and Ben can be a butcher and do his thing. I would recommend you all build a root cellar or bunker. Love watching you on youtube.👍
There are still plenty of people practicing old methods like north american indians,amish,mennonites,potugeese,italians and jewish cimmunitues. You can also start now and save videos to watch offline and cjeck out local libraries. Check out books like the lost ways etc. Thete are lots of videos on curring meats making sausage etc.
I remember when I was a child we did a lot of canning, and we had a Ice box for things that had to be kept cold. Once a week we would go to town and go to the ice house and buy a huge block of ice for the ice box.. We also canned most of our meat. I am 81 years old. We also did not do a large amount of processing chickens, we only killed what we were going to eat that day.
Let me suggest to you guys to take a joint family trip to Italy, in northern Tuscany and Emilia Romagna. So many people, farmers and non-farmers, hunt, cure their own meat, grow their own food, make their own cheese, wine, olive oil. It's just the norm out here. There are organic farms as well. Also there are agricultural organizations that could help you identify the right locations for the skills you want to learn. I live in Northern Tuscany.
Sorry Al I haven't seen your channel but will check it out. However Jason you are Totally a McGuyver I tell you just seeing that trailer freezer and helping Justin with their freezers I mean I would Pay good money for that help. I haven't gotten my land yet but you and your wife are SKILL RICH. Ben I am sure you would Never run out of students for your classes. I subscribe to All things Homesteading NC and people are moving her in droves and they are Always asking for some help. IT'S Unlimited. There Is talk about YT going down because of their censorship. The Bearded Buthcher on TH-cam does the mobile thing they are on yt and Instagram ❤
My thoughts on what did they do 100 yrs ago I think community was a bigger thing and one household would not have a whole cow…. People took a share(bought) and different animals were butchered at different times and again shared 🤔👍😎
The old folks who wonder if you are sane remember how hard life was back when they were kids. It is easy to remember the fun parts like free range kids, but most want to forget getting up before the sun to milk the cows by lantern and working all day until the sun went down with hard physical labor. And you had kids for free labor on the farm. Twelve to fifteen kids was not uncommon and kids at ten had chores that were really jobs. I have been there picking string beans, bucking hay bales, cutting firewood not for a fireplace but real home heating. Cows milked, garden tended, chickens cared for both meat and egg layers, When it is your day in day out job it is not always fun. An outhouse and honey pot for nights, hand pump hauling water for everything. That was why a Saturday bath in the kitchen was a thing with reusing the water for the kids because you had to carry the water in by bucket and heat on the stove and you had to haul out the old water by bucket from the wash tub in the middle of the floor unless you were rich and had servants. Who wants to give up running water and indoor plumbing? Step in the shower when ever you want. This all changed in my lifetime for most rural folks. My mom remembers having the last outhouse in her city for disease reasons they were outlawed but her mom was a widow and poor. The city finally helped with indoor plumbing for her family just for health board reasons. It was a hard life from sun up to sun down, but the whole family was a business. Chores divided by ability and age and everyone worked. Even in winter there were things that must be done like bringing in Ice blocks when the stream froze as those had to last into the summer. Timber was cut and made into boards or firewood. Had to stack lumber to air dry for next years use on outbuildings. No Lowe's around the corner. Once kids could read, write, and "cypher numbers" (basic math) they were needed on the farm. In our family the older kids left for the city as soon as they could. The boys WANTED to go to high school since that meant moving to the city and getting out of chores. Most went into the military and after coming home wanted nothing to do with the farm, but a couple carried on the family business. Husbands and wives were REAL partners in the family business back then. That is what I see with Al and Gina as they both pull to the same goals. Don't know about Jason and Ben as I have not watched their channels much yet. Love what you are doing but the old rule was it ain't a farm without forty acres and a mule. Less than that was a hobby, but I know this homesteading TH-cam works with less. Good luck guys. On education, my parents generation was expected to go to eighth grade local laws, my grandparents generation usually went to third or fourth grade until they got down basic math (less than algebra). My generation required sixteen years old but expected a high school diploma. My children are expected to have more and encouraged to do college. Kids today need an advanced degree to be anything much. The times, they are a changing. (song lyric for those who are too young)
Trapping and hunting could be a short-term solution in case of shtf, but there is not enough wildlife around to feed people for more than a few months. If I remember correctly, during the great depression, the deer population was decimated close to the point of collapse. As for feeding people that come to you, One or two people might be possible, but if things really get bad, it won't be limited to a few people, and if you get new people knocking on your door every day, or worse yet, become so desperate that they come and try to take food from the garden, even if it is not rip[e/ready yet, things become grim very quickly. I know that being TH-camrs makes it difficult, but I would work on becoming self-sufficient and having enough stored, but I would limit the number of people that know about it as much as possible. Use youtube to earn as much as possible while it lasts, and use that to invest in other, more resilient things.
You all are too young to know how we communicated pre home computers. Letters, Newsletters, catalogs, phone calls, group mailings, we shared cassette tapes with stories and messages. Maybe you three will need to come up a new kind of group sharing of information in a whole new way. Assuming computers would still work, maybe using little thumb drives like we send information on in our office would keep your platforms alive. You will always have an audience.
The Amish can meat. I grew up with an icebox for a fridge and a woodstove.. There was a drying rack over the kitchen table to dry clothes. We had a big field of rutabagas that were harvested in fall and taken by wagon to the waxing station 10 miles away on the wagon. Brought home and dumped in a big shored up hole in the side of thegravel pit hill. Covered with canvas then sawdust , boards and dirt. One room in our cellar had big vevetable bins using sawdust to keep them. Dad made his own maple syrup from a maple bush. The boys would go up to lake huron in the spring for the smelt run/ Small fish that were gutted and breaded and fryed. Yum
I grew up in rural Washington state back in the stone age on a subsistence type farm. Most of what we ate we grew or foraged. We did have electricity but it was common to lose power not only in the winter but even the summer for a few days or even over a week at a time. It wasnt a big deal if the power went out. Our heat was from wood and we had a "trash burner" in the kitchen right beside beside the electric. Grandma and Grandpa never transitioned to an electric cook stove. Sure wish i had her stove now. The longer outages were during the winter, of course. It would just be a case of moving the food from the fridge/freezer out to this one shed that was flimsy enough for water to freeze in it but it still protected it from wild animals. In the summer time if there was no power the next day we would start pulling meat from the freezer to cook or can so it wouldnt be lost. The worst part was it meant we were going to have fried smelt for breakfast 36:52 , lunch and dinner because smelt arent that great canned. Smelt is not a great fish. Gardening was more simple back then and so were menus. There was only one type of anything grown. Only one green bean and one dried bean, one tomato, one green pea, one carrot, etc. We didnt have taco tuesday, curry or asian cuisine. Mom wouldnt have known what to do with snow peas or jalapeno peppers. We had wells so if the power was out we had to use the hand pump to water the animals and ourselves. We didnt have an indoor toilet so nothing was different about that. We never said there was a storm coming and had to rush to the store for bread and milk. Weather reports were very inaccurate. The best weather reports came from the neighbor who had an uncle who lived close to the coast. When a storm hit there he would make a collect call to our neighbor. He would give a fake name. Each fake name meant something different so our neighbor would be given a heads up about different situations without having to pay for the call. It would be nice going back to sending and receiving letters. Email and texting isnt the same.
Jason nailed it. Posting flyers at the library. So much of life revolved around the library and the churches. And bulletin boards were a physical thing with thumb tacks. This was true until about 1990 when the interwebs were born. You went online to local networks and sometimes connected to the WWW. Personal Computers only came in the eighties. Sometimes we forget how recent it was. I first wrote a computer program in high school in the sixties with a remote connection to a main frame computer at a defense contractor connected by phone to our school. Most schools did not have that.
The mobile butcher idea is good. It would seem much better to "harvest" your animal in their familiar place while they are maybe eating a nice snack than to haul them off alive to a traumatic end at some off site, unfamiliar slaughter house.
Interestingly yesterday the local tech school announced a semester course to become a butcher. We have such a shortage you almost need to book a year in advance. This is at MSTC in central Wi.
Here's an idea for a topic.......let the audience ask questions in previous videos to whomever that want to ask a question to and then whenever there's enough questions to split up between the three of you, y'all can take turns asking and answering the questions during the podcast. Another idea, occasionally let the wives do the podcast, instead. It would be a totally different perspective from their point of view on homesteading. Just something I thought I would mention to you guys. Either way, I love the videos and content.
Jason I can see you being the solar cold room builder either mobile or in house. So many people now see cold rooms as a necessity more so then a root cellar. Ben could weld security screen for all those foodies that are trying to keep the slackers out. Al could grow a million chooks on his property and give one free with all his coffee sales. Lol
With no internet to make an income I think there will be a lot more farmers markets and festivals. My grandparents lived a very different life. They had a huge farm. They raised their own beef, pork and chickens and huge gardens. My grandfather plowed his fields with a team of mules. Water was carried in from their bubbling spring down the hill. Had an outhouse, smoke house, corn crib, oil lamps, no electricity, multiple fireplaces, a wood stove, no refrigerator but had root cellars. Washed clothes using a hand wringer maching and hung things on the clothes line. Clothes Iron was heated on the wood stove. They raised 6 boys and 2 girls. All went to a one room school house with a wood heater. Us grandkids from town loved going to the farm and especially spending the night and the food tasted so much better. Especially loved riding the mules and exploring the land. Then looking for Rabbit Tobacco to smoke as teenagers. 😂🤣
I live in Amish country here in Indiana even they use propane now for refrigeration and cooking etc . Bartering used to be a big thing. An exchange of skills to help each other in community.
What a great topic today! My grandparents - they used to cut huge blocks of ice out of lakes in the winter - and keep the ice cold with hay and get ice during the summer. Fast forward - when I was a kid - hand held calculators hadn't been invented yet, lol. I remember black and white tv too. I'm 67. I bought encyclopedias for the kids in the early 80s. Times have certainly changed.
Go visit the Mennonite or Amish communities. There are many that still live without electricity. See how they live without electricity. Al, I'll again suggest four season farm with Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch. They have a year round market gardening in Harborside, Maine.
I am 70 years old. I got married in 1974. I would cook all my bread, rolls. Make pickled goods. I never bought anything for my freezer…I made it. But then the ingredients got so expensive. It is now cheaper to buy a loaf of bread, even though food prices are going up and up. There are now people who can’t afford to feed their family.
Wen we went to DC we stayed in Alexandria & took the subway into DC. Subway was fun. Took the FBI tour. People I kno think its nuts that anyone would want to homestead "working for your food." My dads parents (in the 1920s) were city people but raised rabbits in the basement & grew berries in summer.
I'm so glad you guys are doing this podcast! Wow, what would you do if there is NO internet? Nice that you got your workshop floor epoxied Al. Wow, broke your door and mower! That hurts! Nice Jason, you and your family went to Washington D.C. and all those museums! Yup, I'm not used to the hustle and bustle of the major cities in my state anymore. It's too busy! I like the less hurried small town traffic much better. Cool, an old house in the museum and see how the people lived in it with the journal someone kept. Payphone in the museum. Sounds fun! Thanks for sharing that Jason. Wow, classes on butchering meat birds, pigs, and cows. That sounds like a busy Fall for you Ben. Closing out the garden too! I think you would be successful doing wood projects Jason. I'm glad you have that to fall back on! Interesting, the ice cream truck idea! That could work. You've got to have some dry ice that's handy. Cool, vegetable or milk wagon. For you Al, maybe you could do a meat locker for the local people for deer and other animals. The mobile truck sounds great too! I think all of you could be great at doing butchering and showing how to process animals. I'm not sure it would be great as a job. Yes, harder to sell stuff when you can't put it online. It's good you can work at a machine shop again Ben. Craft shows for soap and knives sounds like another option. I think in the old days we had more fermentation of vegetables and storage of potatoes, onions, carrots, and cabbage to get through the winter. Harvesting the animals right before winter we had to preserve the meat to eat during winter so lots of salt curing or smoking. Everyone did a lot of canning. Everyone had a smoke house. We have lost a lot of knowledge. Wow, that's a scary comment to say to you Ben that you are a place to go for food. Nope! We always think we would rent out spots on our field for people to grow their own food if we had to. We wouldn't rent it out for much. We have a parking lot near our field because our barn had a store in it years ago. We have a garden big enough for us near our barn so it's removed from the field. It would help us and help people at the same time. I'm glad you are all making a living from TH-cam! I like real books too! I love my ChickLift! This was fun to watch. Thanks guys!
Well I'm 75 and I can tell you Ben how my Mom cooked and what we ate back then. It was mostly simple foods. The basics. The occasional pastry or cake. We ate much less dairy than I eat now. And my Mom always had a small garden. She would grow tomatoes, berries, cucumbers, green and yellow string beans, potatoes, carrots, and onions mostly. We would all go strawberry picking in early summer at local farms each year. Also we went to apple farms. So Mom made jams with white sugar and used melted wax at the top of the jar after the jam was cooked. We ate stews or some main staple like meat, chicken, and fish occasionally with two vegetable sides. No pasta. No desserts unless we had something to celebrate. The worst part about living in rural Canada in the 1950s was that by that point, all the mothers used margarine, and were brainwashed into thinking Wonder Bread was full of vitamins haha. It's a miracle I survived haha, thank God.
Check out the historical sites. Locally we have the Shakers, Sturbridge Village, Pioneer Valley here in New England. My diet has changed drastically since the 50's when I was a child.
There was a lot of butchering for demand. No freakish Cornish crosses in large batches for the freezer... just the dual purpose flock where broody hens raised chicks, and harvesting a bird or two happened all the time. Rabbit was another... right sized butcher animal. No huge freezers needed.
This is a subject that can be seen from a business and life perspective. We rely so much on infrastructure (internet, automated banking, business services). The more we go automated, the more people forget the manual ways. If you don't have a backup, you can lose your business or way of life. I worked in Disaster recovery/contingency from an IT perspective. Just from a bad storm, people need to be prepared. Just common sense things people need to remember. My contingency brain is always working in my personal life now because of working in that field. It's a thing that everyone needs to think about. Even from simple power failure issues. What will you do?
Jason, I remember you built a cold room for the Rhoades family and would think you could make a decent living doing that and Al, you would be a great shop teacher in any high school in the North East. Now Ben the guy that has all those Young men growing up on that wonderful homestead, I say every week teach those young men how to use tools safely and include Sister with the group. This old MaDeare so enjoys watching your channels. You guys, put your families first, love your wives well and are training your children well. Some work is hard but you, #PressOnRegardless.
I am in my 70's . . . raised in a family of eight. Lived up in wintery Cape Breton Island. The old folks used to say "ten months of winter and two months of bad skiing". Never was hungry. Looking back, the people lived in a circle. Summer, grow the winter food (garden), harvest the winter hay & oats. We had sheep, cows, horses, chickens, a pig and a dog. A nine month pig provides a lot of food, when they were butchered they were huge. Lambs can be harvested anytime, but we usually sold our lambs and calves to a butcher who drove around the country buying animals. My parents used ice as a means of storage, plenty of ice in Cape Breton, in the summer a shed over a shaded open spring, very cool. It was all very normal to my family, I never recall people fretting about hardship. I must admit, for me the one who at the time was most interested in the homestead life, it was a lot of work, no leisure time, I soon found out that there were easier paths in life. - Jason is right back then there was a real community, I see, none of that today. -Al, there was very little dependence on hunting, yes my dad would do a bit of hunting during deer season and us boy would snare some rabbits but it was more sport or pastime as fishing. -Ben very good point on food shortage, get an army, they'll come.
Don’t think that you can’t grow a years worth of food to feed a family in a northern climate - I do every year and have all my 70 years of life. I live in central Canada zone 3a and we have at most 3 months plus in a good year another week on either side of June to August. In a 1 acre garden, plus 4 greenhouses , I grow enough food to share around 5000 lbs of food with our local food bank, plus feed my family (7) until the next harvest season. My grandmother taught us how to garden, and how to preserve the meat by smoking and canning. Build an ice block refrigerator to keep food cool. Build a root cellar to store veg that can last all winter. Forage for plants that can be used for food and medicine. I have also added some modern technology to assist with food preservation - freeze drying - meats, vegetables, fruits, meals, herbs, spices - that if done correctly can last 25 years - no refrigeration required.
When you try to imagine life a hundred years ago, the first thing to consider is technology. In 1920 you most likely owned no tractors or motorized machinery. Typically to run a farm you would need six to eight horses and much of your land would be in hay. You would raise the majority of what you ate and there would be limited variety. Most Americans relied on potatoes and bread for much of their diet. Young people (like my grandparents) starting out spent several years in cities like Detroit working and saving. They lived as meagerly as possible in shared housing. In a few years time they moved back to the family roots and paid cash for forty acres. The next few years would be spent in a one room shack until a “proper” house could be built and fully paid for. I could tell you more from my ancestors memoirs…..
Its definitely important for people on social media who can/harvest meat, etc. to NOT show all of their food resources because it would put the family in danger of theft/raids or other unrealistic expectations that they are somehow entitled to a portion of the fruits of your labor. So, I would encourage everyone to "turn their waiting rooms into a classroom" - whether it's growing herbs, microgreens, patio gardens or larger plots, as well as chickens, etc. Learning to can produce from farmers markets (buying their seconds for better pricing), etc.
Im 70 and growing up one of my Mamaw's lived in the country in southwest Virginia at the base of the Appalachian mountains. She died when I was 5 (1958). This is what I remember. She had no electricity, so she cooked on a wood stove and heated her house with fireplaces in every room as well as oil lamps. She had no running water, so drinking and cooking water came from walking to a mountain stream close by and would fill 2 stainless steel buckets with good cold spring water. Because she didn't have running water there was an outside toilet for the bathroom. Didn't have a refrigerator since no electricity though she had a stone dairy outside her backdoor that had a little cold spring running through it that she stored milk and things that needed to be kept cool. When we ate lunch, she had a white table cloth that she covered all the leftover food from lunch and left on the table. At suppertime, she and mama would reheat the leftovers that were covered in the dining room with that white cloth on Mamaw's woodstove. I remember if I got hungry after lunch, I would reach my little hand underneath that cloth and get a chicken leg to eat! She raised 2 hogs every year. Don't know who butchered them, but she had a big smokehouse to store the cured hams. She also canned chicken and pork as well as all the vegetables she raised. Sometimes my mom and I would go there so mom would help her can. There was no canner like we have today. You would build a fire, then set a big wash tub filled with water over the fire and can veggies, fruit and meat in that wash tub filled with hot water over a fire. The wash tub held 21 quarts per canning. Took all day and they had to keep fire going all day to maintain boiling water to can. I'll forever remember the simplicity of how my Mamaw lived. I loved going with her to gather eggs. Papaw died when I was a baby so I never knew him. Oh, Mamaw had no telephone, so no way to reach her. She and mom wrote letters to each other. Sweet memories.
One thing that is glossed over is that before states put in game commissions, many animals were hunted to near extinction. In the late eighteen hundreds as they clear cut Missouri Ozarks for the rail ties they also over harvested deer to the point you could not live off the land hardly. Now we have too many and CWD is a thing that means we must kill off more with special seasons in some areas. This means that in SHTF times everyone counting on hunting might be surprised how fast that can go south. Get use to some squirrel and rabbit as there are finite deer and elk and turkey. Seems like we have.a lot, but not when you have to feed everyone that or starve. Sounds like Al had an Irish season with the blight. Remember that many Irish families came here because of a failed crop of potatoes and the famine over there. Local is good but our current system with all it's flaws does have redundancy for drought and famine. Texas would have been in worse shape back a few years ago with the drought causing failure in their hay and pastures. I remember when they were trucking Iowa hay to Texas on semi loads of round bales. Interstate commerce can be a life saver. Lots of cattle ranchers suffered and had to sell off their herds. Not sure what is going on down there this year with the heat wave. I am sure it is not good.
i was only born in 1964 and i remember going to friends farm and planting potatoes and all under ground foods like beets, carrot, parsnips they grew tons and canned like like crazy it was great fun and still remember it 59 yrs later hugsss
I also thought of some other resources that would make great homeschool field trips, your local historical societies! Every town in the Finger Lakes of New York has one, and believe me those folks love to share what they know! Besides the Smithsonian there is Colonial Williamsburg, We have gardens and Longhouse museums here which show how things were made and a complete village just outside of Rochester NY that has people in each house to tell about the people who lived in it, what they did, what they ate and raised and how it was built! I think you guys should ask your wives to check it out and go as a family! There is nothing new under the sun!
Get chicken breeds that tend to go broody. There won't be any chicken hatcheries. We were all given the warning in 2020 when there were "shortages." If you haven't thought about that you are behind in your learning.
Roaming produce trucks were a thing in parts of NC up to the laye 70's. My grandma used to flag the guy down every day for fresh tomatos and any other produce that was in season. I think the guy spent 4 days in his gardens and 2 days riding his route.
I'm looking forward to a more simpler time. And having the righteousness of God in the land because the systems that we have now will fail and it will be different praise God
Something any of the three of you could do is what I saw as kid growing up in the 50’s. There was a farmer in a neighboring community who grew vegetables and would load his station wagon up one day a week and drive through our neighborhood selling veggies out of the back of his station wagon. I don’t know if it could be done at a profit but at the cost of organic foods these days it might be profitable.
Grandma in rural Iowa had no electric, candle lite, cellar to store food eggs and ice wrapped in gunny sacks, no running water, and to out house eat out in back, cooked on wood cook stove and summer a two burner kerosene little stove, heated water for Saturday night bath in big oval copper bucket, I am so glad I got to see that because now I know how to survive if need be, canned and fill the cellar shelves with her garden bounty, grandpa butchers the chickens best fried chicken in my life.
Ben, you might find that local butchers would be glad to have your help during fair season when they are swamped with all the animals coming in from 4-H auctions.
I'd like to see you discuss from the guy's point-of-view what projects or items you have built or considered for food storage. Because we all know that it's great to grow your own food, but you need to seriously consider where you are going to put it all once it is harvested.
You asked how did they make it 100 years ago? My great uncle and his father in law went out in winter and cut blocks of ice and sold it to people for $. 25
Where I live the mobile butcher is the only way they do it, but they book out over a year in advance. We need more large animal butchers here. We ended up butchering our two pigs for the first time since I couldn’t find someone to do it.
I am not sure if it was ever shown on USA tv but you might like to look at the Victorian Farm there is also The Edwardian Farm as well might give you ideas on what to make to make a living if the internet went down and how people lived in the olden days
When I was young I worked as a meat rapper for an older butcher it was quite a lesson that I still use. when we get a large butt of meat, or wild game that came or way being able to process the meat is always a good thing.
If the internet went down, how long would it take for other things to go down, if we depend on non-homesteaders to buy our products and services, that is another angle to look at things
Greg Judy does no worming & the sheep are a breed that are resistant but it’s also management in that the sheep are moved often and kept off that pasture long enough for any parasites present to die
All righty then another great podcast,I didn't get to see this one live shame on me but it was still great as a video y'all have a nice week and stay safe. See ya soon
I have been doing it for years. I’m 57 and I grew up with no tv and no internet, we used to have a pantry, and a butcher a fish monger and a milk man come round weekly and daily. We had a fridge and never missed out. Fruit in England was plain apples plums and pears, oranges were rare in my house. My mums dad bought home a banana once and all the 10 children they had wanted to try it so he peeled it ate it all to himself. Mum used to roll food in balls and stuff it down the turkeys neck, when she was a kid. There was a lot of black market stuff too. Lol. That was before the war, and I can remember helping my mum in the garden with the twin tub and the mangle. 😊. What would kids do today with out their phones. We used to catch tadpoles and disappear all day playing. 😂😊
Honestly I have to say these podcast videos with 3 dif homesteaders bouncing ideas off each other is actually super cool!! It’s always neat to get someone else’s views on how they would do something or maybe neat hacks to help the homesteader, or just simple minded homestead conversations. This to me is what is needed by homesteaders more than anything, is let’s air out the dirty laundry of it all and get to the nitty gritty of what do we really need to focus on when we’re doing this for a living. Meaning the things that really matter!! Keep pumpin out the neat videos guys👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I am 81 years old. I remember a good bit from 1946, before my Dad got home from the Navy. Mom and I lived with her parents in a town that is now part of Nashville, TN. The ice man would come down the alley twice a week and put a 25 lb block of ice in the top of my Grandmother's old oak icebox. In summer, all us little kids would follow the iceman around the neighborhood to get the little chips of ice that landed on the flat bed of his truck when he ice picked off the chunks of ice. There was a grocery, tiny by today's standards, that served our community. Everyone walked to the store and hand-carried home their purchases. Everyone lived within about 1/8 mile of the store and thought nothing of this. In season, a produce truck came through the neighborhood a couple of times a week. The Jewel Tea truck, with about anything needed for kitchen (except food) and bath, came around a couple of times a month. Then there was the Watkins man and the Fuller Brush man. We got by very well.
I live in Ireland and suggest wwofr Ireland. Wwoofers are the name given to people who register to work on organic farms to learn how to farm in return for their labour or sweat equity, bed and board are provided by the host. You can stay from 2 weeks to even a year. You get to choose what type of farm you go to and the skills involved. You can visit places worldwide and learn by doing. Website explains how it works. Love the content of your conversations and applaud you for stepping g out of the modern norm to live your dreams. Wwoof stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms
l'm 86....grew up in SoCalif....so much more freedom than kids have today....Wartime shortage came soon after Depression shortages, so ''making do'' was a way of life.
we were not allowed to use the car in town
We used to buy items from what we knew as the Jewel T man. That was back in the 70's
I heard last week they are going to ban all organic foods. But they are making clued fake foods they now label kosher. Nothing makes sense… on purpose.
Good talk, guys. Interesting to listen in in your phone call😊
I think the prep movement is a result of the intense and rapid level of complexity that has happened in the U.S., but the fact that people live longer, there is far less infant mortality, the quality of life for the majority has massively increase is important to recognize. I have always loved the term Al uses “modern homesteader”, because it combines modern tech and true skills. It also is more appealing to a larger audience. There is a very small group who would like it to be 1850 again. The larger and growing majority wants a modern hybrid of living a healthy life. And … I don’t know anyone anymore that doesn’t know our corporate food system is irrevocably broken and causing major health impacts.
Don’t look at TH-cam as an income stream, look at it as the vehicle you use to lead.
Good morning fellas hope all is well
Morning
I grew up in a climate colder than and tons of snow. No electricity. Meat was in a community locker freezer which had generators for power outages. You could keep meat frozen in the back kitchen which was not heated for several weeks if you could not get out. We canned vegetables and fruit all summer as each came into season. You all do not take your gardens seriously enough. If there was an excess of something one year it was put up or shared with neighbors. Never wasted as the next year might be a bad year for that crop. We did not have freeze driers, food driers or any other conveniences of modern day. We always had meatn, potatoes and 2 vegemeant, with a side of pickles or relish and desert. Desert might be pie, pudding with fruit or just a small dish if canned fruit. The info is out there if you want to find it.old people have a great deal to teach if you are open to asking and willing to listen.
No internet? Got to Print
Did you all see video of grocery stores packaging meat? Another vomit story- they put 2 gases in those packages with the clear wrap and styrofoam. It keeps meat color and freshness they just re-wrap it for near 6 weeks with new gases pumped in pkg.. oh so gross, I miss the meat butchers that packaged right as you ordered it. Ugh
My granny was born in 1898. They had gardens, did alot of canning. Had chickens and a cow. And hunted as needed. Lots of meals with bread gravy and one dish meals
I heard roots and refuge yesterday ‘podcast. It was Jess interviewing the Jeremiah’s grandma from Newfoundland and it was very different when she was young. They had to barter veggies for meat. A worthwhile 45 min. To listen in.
Ben makes a very good point. Ask not what you'd want to do instead, ask what skills you have that you can trade or sell.
Way back 100 plus years ago, people only needed hard cash money to pay taxes and the general store. The Dr could be paid in chickens, the hardware store in well made knives or baskets or fishing nets. Trust me, people have thrived for millions of years without the internet, some still do. Its not the end of the world, just another unexpected happening on the farm.
It's too bad people from my generation (I am 72) were not given much encouragement when they tried to live a sustainable life. We were kids who had a lot of skills because we had grown up with gardens and family farms. A lot were just called hippies and made fun of when they tried to live like you guys do! And there was no internet to make money. Someone had to "work for the man" away from the farm. From my POV, these young people were discouraged so they gave up and moved on to the greedy materialist life! So sad....
I think the back to the land movement in the 1970s may have saved a lot of the old ways because they were researching how people lived before and then wrote books about it. Not everything was in vain. Lots of good books with so much great knowledge came out of that! If it wasn't done back then a lot more would have been totally lost to us. I thank the sustainable pioneers from then for handing down so much information!
I read Canada is removing all books published before 2008-
@@lindahubbs8146 What??? That's crazy!
@@StoneKathryn my thought was the same-it’s, wrong, sad, controlling and crazy-
I see Al as a contractor, Ben as a market gardener, and Jason as a wood worker/ homesteader. Really I would picture all of you still homesteading.
I don’t see Ben a market gardener with the list of things he can do. Welder, knife smith, butcher, carpenter and I’m sure there is much more that I’m not remembering😊…
@@sallyburkett-caskinette8723 Midwife err midhusband? He delivered Buggy after all.
AL could work for Ken's Carpentery
Al could do a lot. Hes had so many jobs, even cop. All three will need to be "market underground gardeners" for local people, and "builders". If the internet goes down, society will be totally broken, so just switching to antoher trade that likely wont exist isnt going to work. Take care of yourselves and share by trade.
Lancaster PA here, we still have a nightly ice-cream truck during the hot months only and a basic ice cream cone is about $6. Trust me, the kids do not go running up to that truck.
I was part of the 60s back to the land movement. Way back then there were no internet or cell phones. Everyone had at least one side gig either making goods for sale or providing a service. We connected through classified ads run in the monthly Mother Earth News and other niche magazines. The Whole Earth Catalog was a household requirement. I think the thing that broke our movement was a lack of a strong homeschooling system...it just wasn't there and defiance of the system meant jail time and maybe losing custody of your children. It was a different time.
Love your podcast, thank you for spreading reality.
How is it possible that my three favorite TH-camers are doing this?! Love y’all! I feel it all!
It was meat and potato diet in the north. They salted and smoked their meat. Stored their potatoes in an attic through the winter because it was cold there. You didn't butcher until winter for cold storage . They made ice houses. Got ice from the lake.
sounds good to me
Most folks do not know that ice plants were a thing long before electric was readily available. Big Ammonia Chilling operations were dangerous places on good days and fully deadly on a bad day. Losing a limb was a fairly good day. Much better than an ammonia line break.
@@markpashia7067-My Dad told stories of his dad and his brother traveling 200 miles round trip with two horse drawn wagons to get ice and salt for the community every fall. Hard to believe doing that now.
Ben made such a good point about being in a grid down situation and how people scope out who they can go to in that emergency, instead of preparing for themselves. I'm preparing for my family, not for my neighbors, my extended family, anyone that wants to show up at my door. I just can not be that person, and I should never be expected to be that person. Hopefully people continue to wake up and see the importance of what that security means.
Understanding that what i have done wasn't just done overnight, either. It's taken me two years to get six months of food stored up. Little bits at a time, and growing a decent garden in the city. I can't grow my own meat, so rely on other sources, which is costly for me. Preservation is a separate cost, buying enough canning supplies to get it all shelf safe. So much goes into the idea.
Excellent topic today! I'm gardening & canning and live in a Senior Park. Ben - several people have said to me recently "I know where to go so I won't be hungry". I had to think about my response. Give them a fish or teach them how to fish. If the internet and TH-cam weren't available, teach in-person classes on gardening & how to raise and process animals in the space they have now. Encourage them to learn now and build their physical library if the grid goes down for any length of time. Go to their homes and help them build a plan.
At 67 wish I had more time with my husbands grandparents. Every year we would go up to help on the farm for a couple weeks. They were in their late 80’s still farming with horses in New York. Grandma used a wood burning stove.(best baked goods ever) I would soak up as much information and skills as I could during those 2 weeks. To this day I will think I wish I could ask grandma/grandpa what they would do. Living in Florida cold storage/root cellar not an option. Wish some of the elders were here to ask. Good for you guys for realizing the value of what is being lost!
My ancestors were farmers for over 100 years, root cellars, canning, smoke houses, snow and ice. Before electricity, you put food in the stream and ice plants were everywhere. Everyone had a garden and families and relatives shared food. There are farmers that have the knowledge from their ancestors in America. I grew up without the internet, people get together and talk face to face!!!!!
My kids have always been on a rural road so this past summer while we were visiting my sister they learned how to flag down the ice cream truck. I think my sister had more fun sharing that experience with them because it did bring back a fond childhood memory.
I am 64. When I was very young I remember that my gramma had an ice box- she had a huge block of ice delivered to the house and it went in the top compartment like our freezer, but that kept the food cold. Also she had a metal box in back of the house and the milkman delivered it to the box
I remember we had an icebox when I was small. I also remember having to clean the ice out the freezer unit in the early days. I’m quite a bit older than you I think.
We had a milkman from a local dairy delivering milk in cans to our doorstep every other day. We had a large family (9) and drank a lot of milk.
Hey guys Jon here from CRAZYDAYSHOMESTEAD. My grandfather was 93 when he died. He said when he was a boy his meal for the day was a Lard sandwich. 2 pieces of bread with lard in the middle. Salt is the only way to truly cure meat for long term without electricity. Freeze drying would probably be the next. St. Croix sheep are naturally parasite resistant. Great job guys keep it up
I'm only 64 , and not giving up , don't give in to deciept, Show how to grow food , catch fish, hunt or grow a garden , just don't give up !!!!!!
It's really nice living in a place that has 4 seasons! And the knowledge is not completely lost- it's out there!
I'm 68 and grew up here in SW Virginia, close to Blue Ridge Mountains. My parents grew up even further into the Appalachian Mountains. I saw smoke houses for meat and tobacco (!) all my life. I've been served country ham, salt cured, many times. I grew up canning my entire life. It's interesting watching & listening to you guys (others) as you try to learn old ways. Personally for me, Joel Salatin is always a great source of how things were done. He's just a bit younger than me & he's rdone and/or researched many of the old ways.
Looking at antique cook books will help you see what folks used to eat. I have a mid-1880's southern cookbook which is quite fascinating
I have a cook book from a middle school and it talks about how many logs you should have to bake something. It's pretty fun to read. Talks about medium fire and such.
Root cellars, storage in a cold creek, salt preserving, fermenting, smoking meat, eat within season.
This has been a very good conversation. You all have talents that would allow you to live fine if the word IF came out. That brings me to my grandparents and the store they use to have and grandpa being a butcher. I only wish I could have seen more of that with them but like I said before the big stores pushed them out of business. Great video today. I am in my late sixties and you brought back many memories. Great topic. God bless
You guys wont have problem if the internet goes down. Al has has an excavator and loader, All he needs now is a single axel dump truck. Jason can build and Ben can be a butcher and do his thing. I would recommend you all build a root cellar or bunker. Love watching you on youtube.👍
We have a butcher shop that's been here for almost 100 years. They make their own sausage, bacon, and even process game that hunters bring in.
There are still plenty of people practicing old methods like north american indians,amish,mennonites,potugeese,italians and jewish cimmunitues. You can also start now and save videos to watch offline and cjeck out local libraries. Check out books like the lost ways etc. Thete are lots of videos on curring meats making sausage etc.
I remember when I was a child we did a lot of canning, and we had a Ice box for things that had to be kept cold. Once a week we would go to town and go to the ice house and buy a huge block of ice for the ice box.. We also canned most of our meat.
I am 81 years old. We also did not do a large amount of processing chickens, we only killed what we were going to eat that day.
Let me suggest to you guys to take a joint family trip to Italy, in northern Tuscany and Emilia Romagna. So many people, farmers and non-farmers, hunt, cure their own meat, grow their own food, make their own cheese, wine, olive oil. It's just the norm out here. There are organic farms as well. Also there are agricultural organizations that could help you identify the right locations for the skills you want to learn. I live in Northern Tuscany.
Sorry Al I haven't seen your channel but will check it out. However Jason you are Totally a McGuyver I tell you just seeing that trailer freezer and helping Justin with their freezers I mean I would Pay good money for that help. I haven't gotten my land yet but you and your wife are SKILL RICH. Ben I am sure you would Never run out of students for your classes. I subscribe to All things Homesteading NC and people are moving her in droves and they are Always asking for some help. IT'S Unlimited.
There Is talk about YT going down because of their censorship. The Bearded Buthcher on TH-cam does the mobile thing they are on yt and Instagram ❤
My thoughts on what did they do 100 yrs ago I think community was a bigger thing and one household would not have a whole cow…. People took a share(bought) and different animals were butchered at different times and again shared 🤔👍😎
The old folks who wonder if you are sane remember how hard life was back when they were kids. It is easy to remember the fun parts like free range kids, but most want to forget getting up before the sun to milk the cows by lantern and working all day until the sun went down with hard physical labor. And you had kids for free labor on the farm. Twelve to fifteen kids was not uncommon and kids at ten had chores that were really jobs. I have been there picking string beans, bucking hay bales, cutting firewood not for a fireplace but real home heating. Cows milked, garden tended, chickens cared for both meat and egg layers, When it is your day in day out job it is not always fun. An outhouse and honey pot for nights, hand pump hauling water for everything. That was why a Saturday bath in the kitchen was a thing with reusing the water for the kids because you had to carry the water in by bucket and heat on the stove and you had to haul out the old water by bucket from the wash tub in the middle of the floor unless you were rich and had servants. Who wants to give up running water and indoor plumbing? Step in the shower when ever you want. This all changed in my lifetime for most rural folks. My mom remembers having the last outhouse in her city for disease reasons they were outlawed but her mom was a widow and poor. The city finally helped with indoor plumbing for her family just for health board reasons. It was a hard life from sun up to sun down, but the whole family was a business. Chores divided by ability and age and everyone worked. Even in winter there were things that must be done like bringing in Ice blocks when the stream froze as those had to last into the summer. Timber was cut and made into boards or firewood. Had to stack lumber to air dry for next years use on outbuildings. No Lowe's around the corner. Once kids could read, write, and "cypher numbers" (basic math) they were needed on the farm. In our family the older kids left for the city as soon as they could. The boys WANTED to go to high school since that meant moving to the city and getting out of chores. Most went into the military and after coming home wanted nothing to do with the farm, but a couple carried on the family business. Husbands and wives were REAL partners in the family business back then. That is what I see with Al and Gina as they both pull to the same goals. Don't know about Jason and Ben as I have not watched their channels much yet. Love what you are doing but the old rule was it ain't a farm without forty acres and a mule. Less than that was a hobby, but I know this homesteading TH-cam works with less. Good luck guys. On education, my parents generation was expected to go to eighth grade local laws, my grandparents generation usually went to third or fourth grade until they got down basic math (less than algebra). My generation required sixteen years old but expected a high school diploma. My children are expected to have more and encouraged to do college. Kids today need an advanced degree to be anything much. The times, they are a changing. (song lyric for those who are too young)
Trapping and hunting could be a short-term solution in case of shtf, but there is not enough wildlife around to feed people for more than a few months. If I remember correctly, during the great depression, the deer population was decimated close to the point of collapse.
As for feeding people that come to you, One or two people might be possible, but if things really get bad, it won't be limited to a few people, and if you get new people knocking on your door every day, or worse yet, become so desperate that they come and try to take food from the garden, even if it is not rip[e/ready yet, things become grim very quickly. I know that being TH-camrs makes it difficult, but I would work on becoming self-sufficient and having enough stored, but I would limit the number of people that know about it as much as possible.
Use youtube to earn as much as possible while it lasts, and use that to invest in other, more resilient things.
You all are too young to know how we communicated pre home computers. Letters, Newsletters, catalogs, phone calls, group mailings, we shared cassette tapes with stories and messages. Maybe you three will need to come up a new kind of group sharing of information in a whole new way. Assuming computers would still work, maybe using little thumb drives like we send information on in our office would keep your platforms alive. You will always have an audience.
The Amish can meat. I grew up with an icebox for a fridge and a woodstove.. There was a drying rack over the kitchen table to dry clothes. We had a big field of rutabagas that were harvested in fall and taken by wagon to the waxing station 10 miles away on the wagon. Brought home and dumped in a big shored up hole in the side of thegravel pit hill. Covered with canvas then sawdust , boards and dirt. One room in our cellar had big vevetable bins using sawdust to keep them. Dad made his own maple syrup from a maple bush. The boys would go up to lake huron in the spring for the smelt run/ Small fish that were gutted and breaded and fryed. Yum
If it's a choice between feeding your kids and feeding other people, you feed your kids, right?
I grew up in rural Washington state back in the stone age on a subsistence type farm. Most of what we ate we grew or foraged.
We did have electricity but it was common to lose power not only in the winter but even the summer for a few days or even over a week at a time. It wasnt a big deal if the power went out. Our heat was from wood and we had a "trash burner" in the kitchen right beside beside the electric. Grandma and Grandpa never transitioned to an electric cook stove. Sure wish i had her stove now.
The longer outages were during the winter, of course. It would just be a case of moving the food from the fridge/freezer out to this one shed that was flimsy enough for water to freeze in it but it still protected it from wild animals. In the summer time if there was no power the next day we would start pulling meat from the freezer to cook or can so it wouldnt be lost. The worst part was it meant we were going to have fried smelt for breakfast 36:52 , lunch and dinner because smelt arent that great canned. Smelt is not a great fish.
Gardening was more simple back then and so were menus. There was only one type of anything grown. Only one green bean and one dried bean, one tomato, one green pea, one carrot, etc. We didnt have taco tuesday, curry or asian cuisine. Mom wouldnt have known what to do with snow peas or jalapeno peppers.
We had wells so if the power was out we had to use the hand pump to water the animals and ourselves.
We didnt have an indoor toilet so nothing was different about that.
We never said there was a storm coming and had to rush to the store for bread and milk. Weather reports were very inaccurate. The best weather reports came from the neighbor who had an uncle who lived close to the coast. When a storm hit there he would make a collect call to our neighbor. He would give a fake name. Each fake name meant something different so our neighbor would be given a heads up about different situations without having to pay for the call.
It would be nice going back to sending and receiving letters. Email and texting isnt the same.
Jason nailed it. Posting flyers at the library. So much of life revolved around the library and the churches. And bulletin boards were a physical thing with thumb tacks. This was true until about 1990 when the interwebs were born. You went online to local networks and sometimes connected to the WWW. Personal Computers only came in the eighties. Sometimes we forget how recent it was. I first wrote a computer program in high school in the sixties with a remote connection to a main frame computer at a defense contractor connected by phone to our school. Most schools did not have that.
The mobile butcher idea is good. It would seem much better to "harvest" your animal in their familiar place while they are maybe eating a nice snack than to haul them off alive to a traumatic end at some off site, unfamiliar slaughter house.
People would be eating a lot of soup! You would concentrate more on the garden and canning. Wild life, and things like that
Ben look for old cook books that will give you a lot of information on old recipes, Old way of doing things.
Interestingly yesterday the local tech school announced a semester course to become a butcher. We have such a shortage you almost need to book a year in advance. This is at MSTC in central Wi.
that is great! they are definitely not teaching butcher classes in L.A. lol
Are cows allowed in California. Lol
Here's an idea for a topic.......let the audience ask questions in previous videos to whomever that want to ask a question to and then whenever there's enough questions to split up between the three of you, y'all can take turns asking and answering the questions during the podcast. Another idea, occasionally let the wives do the podcast, instead. It would be a totally different perspective from their point of view on homesteading. Just something I thought I would mention to you guys. Either way, I love the videos and content.
Jennifer- great ideas!
Jason I can see you being the solar cold room builder either mobile or in house. So many people now see cold rooms as a necessity more so then a root cellar. Ben could weld security screen for all those foodies that are trying to keep the slackers out. Al could grow a million chooks on his property and give one free with all his coffee sales. Lol
Chooks are expensive to raise to he'd go broke! It's hard to sell stuff like that through the mail. Love the coffee idea though!
My dad always told us to be home by dark thirty. Lol, ya life is so different now
Love the podcast btw great talks
With no internet to make an income I think there will be a lot more farmers markets and festivals. My grandparents lived a very different life. They had a huge farm. They raised their own beef, pork and chickens and huge gardens. My grandfather plowed his fields with a team of mules. Water was carried in from their bubbling spring down the hill. Had an outhouse, smoke house, corn crib, oil lamps, no electricity, multiple fireplaces, a wood stove, no refrigerator but had root cellars. Washed clothes using a hand wringer maching and hung things on the clothes line. Clothes Iron was heated on the wood stove. They raised 6 boys and 2 girls. All went to a one room school house with a wood heater. Us grandkids from town loved going to the farm and especially spending the night and the food tasted so much better. Especially loved riding the mules and exploring the land. Then looking for Rabbit Tobacco to smoke as teenagers. 😂🤣
they are goingto maki itillgal to sell food to otherswtheglobal reset. you willsell black market.
I live in Amish country here in Indiana even they use propane now for refrigeration and cooking etc . Bartering used to be a big thing. An exchange of skills to help each other in community.
Bring back the milkman😊
What a great topic today! My grandparents - they used to cut huge blocks of ice out of lakes in the winter - and keep the ice cold with hay and get ice during the summer. Fast forward - when I was a kid - hand held calculators hadn't been invented yet, lol. I remember black and white tv too. I'm 67. I bought encyclopedias for the kids in the early 80s. Times have certainly changed.
Definitely very interesting topic & conversation. Al, I could see as a Contractor... Ben & Jason I don't know enough to say.
Go visit the Mennonite or Amish communities. There are many that still live without electricity. See how they live without electricity.
Al, I'll again suggest four season farm with Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch. They have a year round market gardening in Harborside, Maine.
I am 70 years old. I got married in 1974. I would cook all my bread, rolls. Make pickled goods. I never bought anything for my freezer…I made it. But then the ingredients got so expensive. It is now cheaper to buy a loaf of bread, even though food prices are going up and up. There are now people who can’t afford to feed their family.
Wen we went to DC we stayed in Alexandria & took the subway into DC. Subway was fun. Took the FBI tour. People I kno think its nuts that anyone would want to homestead "working for your food." My dads parents (in the 1920s) were city people but raised rabbits in the basement & grew berries in summer.
I'm so glad you guys are doing this podcast! Wow, what would you do if there is NO internet? Nice that you got your workshop floor epoxied Al. Wow, broke your door and mower! That hurts! Nice Jason, you and your family went to Washington D.C. and all those museums! Yup, I'm not used to the hustle and bustle of the major cities in my state anymore. It's too busy! I like the less hurried small town traffic much better. Cool, an old house in the museum and see how the people lived in it with the journal someone kept. Payphone in the museum. Sounds fun! Thanks for sharing that Jason. Wow, classes on butchering meat birds, pigs, and cows. That sounds like a busy Fall for you Ben. Closing out the garden too! I think you would be successful doing wood projects Jason. I'm glad you have that to fall back on! Interesting, the ice cream truck idea! That could work. You've got to have some dry ice that's handy. Cool, vegetable or milk wagon. For you Al, maybe you could do a meat locker for the local people for deer and other animals. The mobile truck sounds great too! I think all of you could be great at doing butchering and showing how to process animals. I'm not sure it would be great as a job. Yes, harder to sell stuff when you can't put it online. It's good you can work at a machine shop again Ben. Craft shows for soap and knives sounds like another option. I think in the old days we had more fermentation of vegetables and storage of potatoes, onions, carrots, and cabbage to get through the winter. Harvesting the animals right before winter we had to preserve the meat to eat during winter so lots of salt curing or smoking. Everyone did a lot of canning. Everyone had a smoke house. We have lost a lot of knowledge. Wow, that's a scary comment to say to you Ben that you are a place to go for food. Nope! We always think we would rent out spots on our field for people to grow their own food if we had to. We wouldn't rent it out for much. We have a parking lot near our field because our barn had a store in it years ago. We have a garden big enough for us near our barn so it's removed from the field. It would help us and help people at the same time. I'm glad you are all making a living from TH-cam! I like real books too! I love my ChickLift! This was fun to watch. Thanks guys!
Well I'm 75 and I can tell you Ben how my Mom cooked and what we ate back then. It was mostly simple foods. The basics. The occasional pastry or cake. We ate much less dairy than I eat now. And my Mom always had a small garden. She would grow tomatoes, berries, cucumbers, green and yellow string beans, potatoes, carrots, and onions mostly. We would all go strawberry picking in early summer at local farms each year. Also we went to apple farms. So Mom made jams with white sugar and used melted wax at the top of the jar after the jam was cooked. We ate stews or some main staple like meat, chicken, and fish occasionally with two vegetable sides. No pasta. No desserts unless we had something to celebrate. The worst part about living in rural Canada in the 1950s was that by that point, all the mothers used margarine, and were brainwashed into thinking Wonder Bread was full of vitamins haha. It's a miracle I survived haha, thank God.
Check out the historical sites. Locally we have the Shakers, Sturbridge Village, Pioneer Valley here in New England. My diet has changed drastically since the 50's when I was a child.
There was a lot of butchering for demand. No freakish Cornish crosses in large batches for the freezer... just the dual purpose flock where broody hens raised chicks, and harvesting a bird or two happened all the time. Rabbit was another... right sized butcher animal. No huge freezers needed.
This is a subject that can be seen from a business and life perspective. We rely so much on infrastructure (internet, automated banking, business services). The more we go automated, the more people forget the manual ways. If you don't have a backup, you can lose your business or way of life. I worked in Disaster recovery/contingency from an IT perspective. Just from a bad storm, people need to be prepared. Just common sense things people need to remember. My contingency brain is always working in my personal life now because of working in that field. It's a thing that everyone needs to think about. Even from simple power failure issues. What will you do?
Jason, I remember you built a cold room for the Rhoades family and would think you could make a decent living doing that and Al, you would be a great shop teacher in any high school in the North East. Now Ben the guy that has all those Young men growing up on that wonderful homestead, I say every week teach those young men how to use tools safely and include Sister with the group. This old MaDeare so enjoys watching your channels. You guys, put your families first, love your wives well and are training your children well. Some work is hard but you, #PressOnRegardless.
I am in my 70's . . . raised in a family of eight. Lived up in wintery Cape Breton Island. The old folks used to say "ten months of winter and two months of bad skiing". Never was hungry. Looking back, the people lived in a circle. Summer, grow the winter food (garden), harvest the winter hay & oats. We had sheep, cows, horses, chickens, a pig and a dog. A nine month pig provides a lot of food, when they were butchered they were huge. Lambs can be harvested anytime, but we usually sold our lambs and calves to a butcher who drove around the country buying animals. My parents used ice as a means of storage, plenty of ice in Cape Breton, in the summer a shed over a shaded open spring, very cool. It was all very normal to my family, I never recall people fretting about hardship. I must admit, for me the one who at the time was most interested in the homestead life, it was a lot of work, no leisure time, I soon found out that there were easier paths in life.
- Jason is right back then there was a real community, I see, none of that today.
-Al, there was very little dependence on hunting, yes my dad would do a bit of hunting during deer season and us boy would snare some rabbits but it was more sport or pastime as fishing.
-Ben very good point on food shortage, get an army, they'll come.
Don’t think that you can’t grow a years worth of food to feed a family in a northern climate - I do every year and have all my 70 years of life. I live in central Canada zone 3a and we have at most 3 months plus in a good year another week on either side of June to August. In a 1 acre garden, plus 4 greenhouses , I grow enough food to share around 5000 lbs of food with our local food bank, plus feed my family (7) until the next harvest season. My grandmother taught us how to garden, and how to preserve the meat by smoking and canning. Build an ice block refrigerator to keep food cool. Build a root cellar to store veg that can last all winter. Forage for plants that can be used for food and medicine. I have also added some modern technology to assist with food preservation - freeze drying - meats, vegetables, fruits, meals, herbs, spices - that if done correctly can last 25 years - no refrigeration required.
Wow! Fantastic. I hope your family also knows how to do this for future generations. Thanks for sharing.
When you try to imagine life a hundred years ago, the first thing to consider is technology. In 1920 you most likely owned no tractors or motorized machinery. Typically to run a farm you would need six to eight horses and much of your land would be in hay. You would raise the majority of what you ate and there would be limited variety. Most Americans relied on potatoes and bread for much of their diet. Young people (like my grandparents) starting out spent several years in cities like Detroit working and saving. They lived as meagerly as possible in shared housing. In a few years time they moved back to the family roots and paid cash for forty acres. The next few years would be spent in a one room shack until a “proper” house could be built and fully paid for. I could tell you more from my ancestors memoirs…..
Its definitely important for people on social media who can/harvest meat, etc. to NOT show all of their food resources because it would put the family in danger of theft/raids or other unrealistic expectations that they are somehow entitled to a portion of the fruits of your labor.
So, I would encourage everyone to "turn their waiting rooms into a classroom" - whether it's growing herbs, microgreens, patio gardens or larger plots, as well as chickens, etc. Learning to can produce from farmers markets (buying their seconds for better pricing), etc.
Ben, we've had several neighbors say the same thing about where to go for food! Ummm, no, please prep your own! (No chips in arms!!)
Im 70 and growing up one of my Mamaw's lived in the country in southwest Virginia at the base of the Appalachian mountains. She died when I was 5 (1958). This is what I remember. She had no electricity, so she cooked on a wood stove and heated her house with fireplaces in every room as well as oil lamps. She had no running water, so drinking and cooking water came from walking to a mountain stream close by and would fill 2 stainless steel buckets with good cold spring water. Because she didn't have running water there was an outside toilet for the bathroom. Didn't have a refrigerator since no electricity though she had a stone dairy outside her backdoor that had a little cold spring running through it that she stored milk and things that needed to be kept cool. When we ate lunch, she had a white table cloth that she covered all the leftover food from lunch and left on the table. At suppertime, she and mama would reheat the leftovers that were covered in the dining room with that white cloth on Mamaw's woodstove. I remember if I got hungry after lunch, I would reach my little hand underneath that cloth and get a chicken leg to eat! She raised 2 hogs every year. Don't know who butchered them, but she had a big smokehouse to store the cured hams. She also canned chicken and pork as well as all the vegetables she raised. Sometimes my mom and I would go there so mom would help her can. There was no canner like we have today. You would build a fire, then set a big wash tub filled with water over the fire and can veggies, fruit and meat in that wash tub filled with hot water over a fire. The wash tub held 21 quarts per canning. Took all day and they had to keep fire going all day to maintain boiling water to can. I'll forever remember the simplicity of how my Mamaw lived. I loved going with her to gather eggs. Papaw died when I was a baby so I never knew him. Oh, Mamaw had no telephone, so no way to reach her. She and mom wrote letters to each other. Sweet memories.
Great video you guys do an awesome job
One thing that is glossed over is that before states put in game commissions, many animals were hunted to near extinction. In the late eighteen hundreds as they clear cut Missouri Ozarks for the rail ties they also over harvested deer to the point you could not live off the land hardly. Now we have too many and CWD is a thing that means we must kill off more with special seasons in some areas. This means that in SHTF times everyone counting on hunting might be surprised how fast that can go south. Get use to some squirrel and rabbit as there are finite deer and elk and turkey. Seems like we have.a lot, but not when you have to feed everyone that or starve. Sounds like Al had an Irish season with the blight. Remember that many Irish families came here because of a failed crop of potatoes and the famine over there. Local is good but our current system with all it's flaws does have redundancy for drought and famine. Texas would have been in worse shape back a few years ago with the drought causing failure in their hay and pastures. I remember when they were trucking Iowa hay to Texas on semi loads of round bales. Interstate commerce can be a life saver. Lots of cattle ranchers suffered and had to sell off their herds. Not sure what is going on down there this year with the heat wave. I am sure it is not good.
i was only born in 1964 and i remember going to friends farm and planting potatoes and all under ground foods like beets, carrot, parsnips they grew tons and canned like like crazy it was great fun and still remember it 59 yrs later hugsss
Outside of Aline, OK..there is a log cabin..it sits over a Sod house.. gives history of them, the early settlers ..it's so neat!
Build a building over a stream. Which would stay cool in the summer. Winter I don’t know
I also thought of some other resources that would make great homeschool field trips, your local historical societies! Every town in the Finger Lakes of New York has one, and believe me those folks love to share what they know! Besides the Smithsonian there is Colonial Williamsburg, We have gardens and Longhouse museums here which show how things were made and a complete village just outside of Rochester NY that has people in each house to tell about the people who lived in it, what they did, what they ate and raised and how it was built! I think you guys should ask your wives to check it out and go as a family! There is nothing new under the sun!
Get chicken breeds that tend to go broody. There won't be any chicken hatcheries. We were all given the warning in 2020 when there were "shortages." If you haven't thought about that you are behind in your learning.
Roaming produce trucks were a thing in parts of NC up to the laye 70's. My grandma used to flag the guy down every day for fresh tomatos and any other produce that was in season. I think the guy spent 4 days in his gardens and 2 days riding his route.
I'm looking forward to a more simpler time. And having the righteousness of God in the land because the systems that we have now will fail and it will be different praise God
Something any of the three of you could do is what I saw as kid growing up in the 50’s. There was a farmer in a neighboring community who grew vegetables and would load his station wagon up one day a week and drive through our neighborhood selling veggies out of the back of his station wagon. I don’t know if it could be done at a profit but at the cost of organic foods these days it might be profitable.
Grandma in rural Iowa had no electric, candle lite, cellar to store food eggs and ice wrapped in gunny sacks, no running water, and to out house eat out in back, cooked on wood cook stove and summer a two burner kerosene little stove, heated water for Saturday night bath in big oval copper bucket, I am so glad I got to see that because now I know how to survive if need be, canned and fill the cellar shelves with her garden bounty, grandpa butchers the chickens best fried chicken in my life.
Ben, you might find that local butchers would be glad to have your help during fair season when they are swamped with all the animals coming in from 4-H auctions.
I'd like to see you discuss from the guy's point-of-view what projects or items you have built or considered for food storage. Because we all know that it's great to grow your own food, but you need to seriously consider where you are going to put it all once it is harvested.
Spring house and root cellars
You asked how did they make it 100 years ago? My great uncle and his father in law went out in winter and cut blocks of ice and sold it to people for $. 25
Where I live the mobile butcher is the only way they do it, but they book out over a year in advance. We need more large animal butchers here. We ended up butchering our two pigs for the first time since I couldn’t find someone to do it.
Cool idea. Instead of a food truck where you go and buy a meal you sell fresh produce, eggs, etc. that you grow on your homestead.
In the 80’s in NorCal we raised pigs & a steer and the kill guy came to our place, did the deed then took the carcass to the processor of your choice.
I am not sure if it was ever shown on USA tv but you might like to look at the Victorian Farm there is also The Edwardian Farm as well might give you ideas on what to make to make a living if the internet went down and how people lived in the olden days
Subscribed to all your channels and always recommend them to others. Getting ready to start my own
You kids are going through the same thought process many of us went through in the time of the Cold War.
When I was young I worked as a meat rapper for an older butcher it was quite a lesson that I still use. when we get a large butt of meat, or wild game that came or way being able to process the meat is always a good thing.
As a young kid in the 50’s and 60’s you learnt to be aware of your surroundings because nobody new where you were, but off we went gone for the day.
If the internet went down, how long would it take for other things to go down, if we depend on non-homesteaders to buy our products and services, that is another angle to look at things
Greg Judy does no worming & the sheep are a breed that are resistant but it’s also management in that the sheep are moved often and kept off that pasture long enough for any parasites present to die
All righty then another great podcast,I didn't get to see this one live shame on me but it was still great as a video y'all have a nice week and stay safe. See ya soon
I have been doing it for years. I’m 57 and I grew up with no tv and no internet, we used to have a pantry, and a butcher a fish monger and a milk man come round weekly and daily. We had a fridge and never missed out. Fruit in England was plain apples plums and pears, oranges were rare in my house. My mums dad bought home a banana once and all the 10 children they had wanted to try it so he peeled it ate it all to himself. Mum used to roll food in balls and stuff it down the turkeys neck, when she was a kid. There was a lot of black market stuff too. Lol. That was before the war, and I can remember helping my mum in the garden with the twin tub and the mangle. 😊. What would kids do today with out their phones. We used to catch tadpoles and disappear all day playing. 😂😊
Do your best to obtain the Foxfire series of books. All the old skills. 13 or 14 books, soft-bound, great reference materials.
I am going to say that learning to make a spring house on each of your properties may be a thought.
Honestly I have to say these podcast videos with 3 dif homesteaders bouncing ideas off each other is actually super cool!! It’s always neat to get someone else’s views on how they would do something or maybe neat hacks to help the homesteader, or just simple minded homestead conversations. This to me is what is needed by homesteaders more than anything, is let’s air out the dirty laundry of it all and get to the nitty gritty of what do we really need to focus on when we’re doing this for a living. Meaning the things that really matter!! Keep pumpin out the neat videos guys👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼