For a little background, look at part 1 and part 2 of this
series. They will explain why I think
building skills like this is as or more important than just ‘having
preps.’
What kind of things can I learn if I’m not a hammer swinging
or wrench turning type of person?
Home Ec. Skills
“EJ, that doesn’t sound very prepperish. Are we going to fight off the golden hordes
with a sewing machine and a cook book?!”
Nope! But I’m dead serious when I
say that your life will be better, good times or bad, if you have these skills.
Cooking from scratch (or close to it)
If you want an education go to a grocery store and look at peoples carts. Look at a cart full of convenience foods and see how much it totals at the cash register. Now go look at what it costs to get the basic ingredients for all of those things. Dollars to doughnuts says it costs a lot less to buy the ingredients than it does the frozen dinners!
I’m not saying there aren’t valid reasons to buy convenience
foods, but they are just that: a convenience!
If you’re struggling to pay the water bill and put gas in your tank then every extra dollar you spend is an INconvenience. Don’t make your situation worse by paying a factory somewhere to do your cooking for you (and don’t
expect those factories to keep producing in the event of some serious economic
downturns.)
My point is, you can eat for better and for less if you know
how to prepare your own food from scratch.
It’s not that much more difficult than using prepackaged food
either. I bet if you do a little looking
through cookbooks (those paper things people used to find recipes before the
internet) you can easily find a dozen recipes that take no more than 30 minutes
to prepare. Look a little closer and
you’ll find that many recipes that take longer don’t require you to actively do
anything during most of the cook time, so you can effectively do two things at
once.
So how is this about prepping again? Well for one, you’ll be able to better able
to feed yourself if the grocery store starts looking like Mother Hubbard’s
Cupboard or if you’re growing your own food.
Two, even in bad times there’s usually a job available in a kitchen
somewhere, maybe not a great job, but a job that likely comes with some free food for the cook.
Three, food has value to almost everyone. Maybe it’s not enough for a full fledged
business, but you might make a few dollars and a few friends at the local
farmers market.
Do your neighbors a favor by taking them food once in a while, it will help build a sense of community. Have you ever asked your friends to help you move? You fed them right? Same thing with your neighbors. Offer food in exchange for help, or supplies, or whatever else you need. No money has to change hands.
It works for more than just your neighbors too. I know a builder/handyman who has more work
than he can keep up with. Guess which
jobs he’s more likely to take: the ones where he gets fed well! Now try to tell me that a repairman who’s
struggling to make ends meet isn’t going to factor in a hot meal when he quotes
you a price. Does he have kids at
home? Tell him you’ll wrap up food to
take home. He gets something he wants,
you get a better price.
Brewing
I would of course be remiss if I didn’t mention skills like
beer and wine making. Now you can’t go
around selling your homebrew because…well…government. Similarly you’re probably not allowed to
distill any fermented products into hard alcohol either. That’s a shame because
it would be really handy for making products like hand sanitizer. Or gut sanitizer; I won’t judge. That said, beer and wine can make a lot of
friends in hard times, and remember what I said earlier about getting something
welded up in exchange for a 6-pack?
Mind you, if you’re having to go buy barley and hops chances
are making beer will end up actually cost you more than just buying it. However, if you have access to inexpensive
grape juice or honey, you could become very popular for very little money.
Sewing!
I mentioned before that a major economic crisis could
seriously disrupt the flow of cheap imported goods and I think it’s safe to say
that clothing would be hit pretty hard by such a situation. Like so many other things, the clothes we
wear have become disposable because, for the most part, they are cheap. Suppose those supply streams dwindle down to
a small portion of their current level.
Prices are going to go up and people will want to keep what they have as
long as they can.
Being able to patch up shirts and jeans will not only keep
you and yours in serviceable clothing, but chances are you’ll be able to trade
repair work for food, supplies, or cash.
Of course under normal conditions (whatever those are) there’s no money
to be made in ‘patching up’ of clothing, but there’s a possibility of doing
specialty work and alterations for money.
Whats more, if you’re a bit creative, online outlets like etsy make it
fairly easy to sell specialty items, most of which could be made with an old
sewing machine that you pick up at a thrift shop. I have to wonder how many homemade masks were
sold at the beginning of the pandemic at highly inflated prices. Judging by the scarcity of elastic in the
stores I would say quite a few.
That reminds me, take a moment to look up and print out
instructions for making t-shirt yarn and stop throwing away old t-shirts unless
they’re ripped to shreds. If anyone asks
why you’re looking up sewing articles
you can tell them it’s for field craft expedient cordage.
If you really want to get into heavy duty stuff, don’t
forget that shoes wear out too. It’s not
quite the same skill set as darning socks, but being able to glue souls on
shoes and stitch patches onto work boots is not a bad skill to have in your
back pocket. There are even some
inexpensive, hand powered cobbler’s stitching machines available from
China. They need a little tweaking to
work smoothly, but they can work on moderate thicknesses of leather and denim
quite well. Plus they’re hand powered
you can brag to your prepper friends about how you’ll be stylin’ even when the
lights go out.
Last but not least…
How to cut hair
I have to admit I hadn’t really considered this before the pandemic but almost everyone needs a trim once in a while. If you know how to do some basic hairstyles that don’t involve a salad bowl, at the very least it save a few dollars by giving family members a trim from time to time instead of going to salon (assuming the salons are even open!)
If you actually put some time and effort into getting some
training you could potentially pick up a few hours at your local barber shop,
or if you prefer just work out a deal to cut the neighbor’s kids hair in
exchange for meal or a ride to town.
There are lots of possibilities.
Don’t forget, people typically talk while they’re in the chair. You might just find yourself in a good
position to gather up all the dirt…er…intelligence on your neighborhood.
In the last part of this series we’ll look at some of my favorite skills, because they are largely responsible for building civilization as we know it today.
No comments:
Post a Comment