[sittinguy]

My grandmother told me a story about her dad, my greatgrandfather. He said when they were kids one year him and the other kids got an orange for x-mas. makes you think.

[SpringCreekFarm]

My dad was born 2 days after black tuesday, October 29, 1929. He grew up during the depression and always made reference to it when ever I whined about not being able to have something I wanted. He raised me with the fear that we would see another great depression some day. I guess my dad was right although he never lived to see this one.

Maybe that is why I like to pursue the homesteader lifestyle, I don't know but I'm ready for this upcoming downturn at least in the way that I won't be surprised if we have to do without. I did without a lot when I was a kid.

My mom got sick when I was a kid and ended up in a nursing home while I was just a little boy. My sister that is 2 years older than me went to live with my grand parents so it was just my dad and I living at home for most of my childhood. He really believed in living with less because of the depression. We didn't have running water at our house until I was in grade 8 back in 1979. I had to use the outside toilet 365 days a year and wash in a porcelain basin heated on a gas stove. We heated with an oil furnace until my dad lost his job and then it was back to the woodstove and kerosene heater which never did heat the house properly. The water pail in the kitchen would have a film of ice on it on some of the coldest mornings and you ran around the house in the morning to hurry up and get to school where there was some heat. I know a little about getting guidance from GD1.

My dad told me that since they were farmers, they always had food to eat but not much else. There was no retirement, or pogey or welfare back then. If you were starving, you were helped by the neighbors. I grew up on depression era food to some extent. Some of the recipes were, oatmeal and eggs mixed together for breakfast, bacon fat gravy, flour gravy, potatoes all day long, side pork, soda biscuits with hot water poured on and smothered in butter, hominy soup, navy bean soup and when it was cold you made sandwiches out of the pasty slop leftovers.

Speaking of fridges, you kept your perishables down the well in a bucket or box. You moved the wood stove out to the porch for summer time cooking.

My dad and I didn't see eye to eye on this forced education on living in preparation for hard times, but these days I marvel at what people think is owed to them and maybe it did me some good afterall.

[galacticsurfer]

my folks were are depression kids. Alway saving stuff and being real stingy. This has formed my mind set. I won't have much trouble slipping into extreme recycling mode, just become my father. Still I hate the idea of always buying black bananas and only wearing second hand clothes and never having new furnitur except dirt cheap from a sears catalogue. 40 -60 years after the war you would think tey would get over it but no way, so what the hell, they were rright after all, prosperity was a 50 year head fake, a passing phase, just testing to see if we were ready for die off.

[patience]

SpringCreekFarm,

I know the feeling about that sort of living. Dad got out of work as a carpenter in 1953, at the end of the Korean War. Mom was terrified we'd starve, and insisted that we move to the country, although we had new home on 10 acres at the time, and raised up to 200 head of hogs a year. So, Dad traded even up for 80 acres. The 80 was in real poor shape. It took Dad a while to get something going there, so for the first few years we used an outhouse, cooked on gas, but heated with wood and had a bath by the wood stove in a washtub. We did the whole lifestyle, making butter and cottage cheese, smoking meat, hunting and trapping, and grew practically everything on the table. It WAS one heckuva education. Hand pump on the kitchen sink and all.

Dad was intent on improving our lot. He cut timber and got it sawed for buildings, built miles of fence, fixed up the barn and machinery, modernized the house, and then sold insurance on the side. Never owned any power tools, just a handsaw and hammer.

The next ten years were steadily better, but to the day Dad died, he had a garden, and never wasted a cent. One of my pet peeves from back then was the lack of tools for fixing farm equipment. I think that is the root of my tool addiction to this day, that has me surrounded by tools now.

[SpringCreekFarm]

Patience. You mentioned trapping...

That reminds me of another thing we did. We trapped muskrats along the creek here at SCF. We were the only ones doing it in the 1970s and I think we got about 3 bucks apiece for them. We'd check our trap lines daily and would club the poor things to kill them. Some had chewed their own legs off trying to get away. Then we'd skin 'em and stretch out their hides on these wire stretchers, clean them up so we'd get the whole 3 bucks for them. The meat went to the dogs.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SpringCreekFarm', 'P')atience. You mentioned trapping...

That reminds me of another thing we did. We trapped muskrats along the creek here at SCF. We were the only ones doing it in the 1970s and I think we got about 3 bucks apiece for them. We'd check our trap lines daily and would club the poor things to kill them. Some had chewed their own legs off trying to get away. Then we'd skin 'em and stretch out their hides on these wire stretchers, clean them up so we'd get the whole 3 bucks for them. The meat went to the dogs.

[Blacksmith]

As a child I rarely had back pockets on my jeans.

[Quinny]

Not from gd, but plastic bags over socks before putting shoes (or wellies with leaks) will at least keep your feet warm.

My great gran and grandfather used to make chain meals ie waste from meal 1 becomes starter for meal 2! I did this when I went to uni and was initially laughed at by other students. They all ended up being fans and buying nearly all my food in 2nd year at uni.

Something like:

Monday : roast a chicken and spuds and veg
Tuesday : Boil chicken carcass for stock; chicken bits and roast spuds made into super spanish omelette and rice
Wednesday:Ham shank with baked onions and rice and lentil soup,
Thursday: Onion(/lentil) Soup and ham with chips

[patience]

blacksmith,

Me neither. Mom took the back pockets off to make patches for the knees!

[cudabachi]

Learn the fine art of begging.

[CarlinsDarlin]

Wonderful thread. My dad was born at the beginning of WWII, but even from that time, daddy told me stories of how they lived. When he was a kid, they lived in a house without running water, and it was his job to haul the water from the well everyday. He said it wasn't so bad, except on wash day, when grandmother would go through buckets and buckets of water. My grandad was a sharecropper then when my dad was little. Later on, he ended up moving the family to the St. Louis area and got hired on as a machinist for MacDonnel Douglas. He retired from there. After they moved, life was much more middle class. After he retired, though, they moved back to Arkansas, and bought a small farm. Till the day he died, my grandad always planted at least an acre garden. Even when he lived alone, after my grandmother died. He would sell the excess at the farmer's market. My own pantry is modeled after my grandmother's. That pantry with its rows and rows of home canned goods is one of my earliest memories.

My other grandparents had similar stories to tell. Grandpa was a child during the depression. He grew up in Baltimore, MD. He worked as a pin boy at a bowling alley from the time he was 7 years old. I don't know why, but his father was not in the picture, and he and his brothers all worked to help the family out. His mother was disabled. When he was 15, my grandpa lied about his age to join the air force. He served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. He didn't talk much about his experiences during the war.

Grandma grew up in Alabama. They were quite poor, and it affected grandma to the day she died. Grandma saved EVERYTHING. Grandpa used to joke that he'd have to add 1000 square feet to the house every year just to keep up with the stuff grandma saved. She could make do with just about anything, and would re-use anything at all that had any life left in it. People often give me grief because I am a lot like grandma. Family members teased me when we tore down a deck and re-built it here at our home. Rather than tossing bent nails, I spent time hammering them straight. No need to spend money, in my mind.

After my grandpa retired from the air force, he bought the land we live on now. At the time, the house that came with the land could barely be called a house. It was a 4-room shack, complete with hand drawn well and outhouse. But grandpa and grandma worked to make it what it is today. Beautifully pastured land, fenced and cross fenced with ponds and plenty of hardwoods. We harvest fruit yearly from the trees grandma planted.

I learned much from my grandparents about re-using and making-do. Those lessons will serve us well in the future.
kathy

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', 'A')lso, take clean bricks and put em on the wood stove an heat em up. After a spell, wrap em in newpaper. They make great bed warmers.

[seldom_seen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('patience', 'W')hat can you remember from what survivors of GD told you?

[hardtootell]

a few more-

Shop at thrift stores, get things off of craigslist or kijiji or freecycle

turn the sofa over for change

plan your trips

learn how to haggle and barter

dual purpose expenses whenever possible

roll your coins

don't eat out

and most importantly-

Make sure everyone knows the difference between a WANT and a NEED. There is always a cheaper way. Dont assume the future will be as prosperous as the past (talk about preaching to the converted here!) Adopting this philosophy really helps get your head straight

[Pops]

I was talking to the neighbors that own the dairy the other day and they talked about how the recent unemployment figures reminded then about how when milk prices were so low they were paying as much for feed as they were getting for milk - the usual break even is milk at 3x feed.

They ate culled cows and from the garden canning and didn't go to the market except for staples.


One of the reasons I talk sometimes here about trying to be somewhat food independent is they were talking about ca. 1974.

The Man said it will get worse before better and I believe him. I'd think digging up that flower bed in preperation for spring and building a surreptitious chicken coop and rabbit hutch would be worthy projects this winter.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'b')uilding a surreptitious chicken coop

[gnm]

Pops I thought you were out of suburbia already, why would you need to be secretive about a chicken coop? What you haven't dug up the flower beds already?

-G

[hardtootell]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gnm', 'P')ops I thought you were out of suburbia already, why would you need to be secretive about a chicken coop? What you haven't dug up the flower beds already?

-G

[patience]

gnm,

Oh, I'm sure Pops is alluding to others who haven't made the move yet, encouraging them to do so.

On topic, grandpa had a shoe last, and used it to half-sole and replace heels on their shoes until there was nothing left of the uppers. A lot of people put metal heel plates, called "taps" on heels to make them last longer, but they scratched floors, so women hated them.

True to form, I use a heavy darning needle and upholstery thread to mend our leather shoes, and Barge cement (shoe goo) or Goo brand flue to mend synthetic/plastic shoes. The Army Surplus store has good deals on shoes for work, and are far better quality than many commercial shoes.

NOT reccomended, but I've seen grandpa's shop wiring, the old single wires on ceramic insulators, spliced with re-used friction tape (cloth tape soaked with tar, the pre-plastic product). The tape was so old it was not sticky any more, so he tied it in place with string!!! It's a wonder the whole works didn't go up in flames.

Broken furniture knobs were most often not replaced, or, people used wooden spools from sewing thread for knobs. A common item at the "five and dime store", was a small metal sprinkler head with a cork attached that fit a soft drink bottle. Women used this on a bottle of water to sprinkle clothes for easier/better ironing results. Also at the 5 & 10, was a card with assorted sizes of soft aluminum washers with a tiny screw each, used to mend hole in pots and pans--the old cheap graniteware stuff that chipped and rusted through. They sold bottles of mucilage glue, with a slotted rubber top, used to smear it on paper. This was standard stuff for repairing old books, and re-using envelopes by gluing a piece of clean paper over the addresses, then gluing it shut. (They steamed envelopes open over the teakettle, to avoid tearing.)

Tires of all sorts were patched until they developed holes too big to patch, and then had a "boot" put inside--a huge canvas reinforced patch. This caused the tire to be out of balance, so, either you paid to get it balanced, or you drove real slow. I have seen farm tractor tires with baseball-size holes, showing the tread of an old car tire on the inside that was cut up for a boot.

My 96 year old mother in law, to this day when she cracks an egg in the skillet, wipes out the inside of the shell with her finger to get the last drop of egg white. Her Christmas gifts of jams and jellies are noticeably short on sugar, and she still works as much as she can on knitting and crochet work to avoid spending for gifts. You will get offered butter for your bread at her breakfast table, or jelly, but not both. After Thanksgiving this year, my wife's sister gave the turkey leftovers to my wife for soup stock, but grandma got there first, and had stripped the bones, had the meat in the fridge in a container, and had the bones on the stove boiling for soup already! She still has her "darning egg", an old ceramic doorknob that she uses to put inside a sock while she mends holes with thick thread, woven in with a hand needle.

She says drinking buttermilk and using it is biscuits was just a way to keep from using so much whole milk, which could be sold. Whole milk was allowed to sit overnight to let the cream rise to the top, which was either sold, or made into butter. The remaining skimmed milk was given to the kids to drink. She seldom used milk to make gravy, used water instead and added more flour. Cornmeal mush was standard for breakfast, seasoned with a bit of pork fat, salt and pepper. The left over mush, while still soft, was patted down into a pan of some sort and allowed to congeal into a cake. My wife says this was sliced into strips and fried to add to the next meal, which often was cornbread and beans, seasoned with any fat pork scraps and a bit of onion, sometimes with a side dish of greens picked in the yard--lambs quarter, dandelions, and pokeweed, if the garden wasn't up yet.

[Laurasia]

Over the years, on my trips home to England., I've gleaned bits and pieces of stories of the Depression from my Mum. Her Dad, my grandfather, was one of the few lucky men in the village to have a job. He had travelled from the city and got the job, then moved his family to the village. He was indeed fortunate to have a job, and for the first couple of weeks, he had the flu and could do nothing. He HAD to show up to work (travelled on the bus), but the other fellows there put him on a camp bed during the workday and let him rest, while they covered for him. They knew he would lose the job if he couldn't 'hack' it. He never forgot their help at that crucial time, and repaid the debt by helping them out over the years, whenever he could. My grandmother made everyone's clothes, including trousers and jackets for the menfolk in the family, and they had a veggie garden behind the house. Women in the village would help each other out by passing over the fence bowls of used, warm soapy water (for the laundry) to their neighbours who hadn't enough fuel to heat the water. I'm not sure how my Mum's family would have fared in the city, with seven children to feed and no job. I suppose the lesson to be drawn from this (a point that has been made many times on these forums) is that people helped each other out on a most basic level, and in doing so perhaps helped more people survive those rough times. Later of course, the village was bombed during the War, and my Mother's family was made homeless. But once again, people stepped in and helped them.

Regards,

L.