Share your Rural Wisdom

Owen Rogers wrote:I grew up in the 50's in Ky. We got electricity when I was 12 and our equipment was a team of mules, a single bottom plow and assorted hand tools. We cut all our fire wood with ax or crosscut saw and used a dogwood wedge. We raised and slaughtered all our meat. I never tasted ham until I was older. We sold all the sugar cured hams to the rich city people and ate the shoulders and middlings.. The bartered eggs and chickens for salt, coffee, sugar, flour at the grocery. Our entertainment was popping popcorn on pot bellied stove with generous topping of homemade butter and salt.We parched field corn in cast iron skillet in some lard, in the winter peanuts were baked in the old cookstove. Sweet potatoes were always in the oven that we kept rubbing butter or lard on to keep them soft. Pinto beans were bought in 25 lb bags and was always on stove with some hog jaw in it. Our entertaiment also  was pet flying squirrels, gray or fox squirrels that we found out in the woods as babies and
occasionally we would catch a baby raccoon.My dad could descent baby shunks and they made good pets. It was a hard life but everyone else was in the same boat so we survived. I must have crawled 50 miles on my knees in a burley tobacco patch priming the bottom leaves(they are the most valuable) I always got the top tier in the tobacco barn because I was the smallest just under the hot tin roof on a 95 degree day. I couldn't wait to leave the farm and said I would never farm again.  Then 15 yrs later my wife and I had saved enough to purchase property and some equipment and my adventure has continued another 50 yrs.

Carla Burke wrote:Be a benevolent opportunist - if something is growing wild on your land (or was planted there, begotten you got there) take what you need of it, but be sure to leave the rest for the wildlife that has been depending on it. If you don't, they'll leave, and sometimes much of what you loved about your place will wither and die. I want given a choice - it was a rental. The county took out the huge bank of lilacs, along the road, which not only took away much of our privacy and sound barrier, it also took out the habitat of much of the wildlife on the 5.5acre parcel. The critters who lived in there left, and the flowers, trees, shrubs, and my formerly prolific garden all suffered for it.

Janet Reed wrote:

Carla.....so very sorry...a good lesson for us to remember.

Dave Keck wrote:If you’re building a home yourself start with building a shop. Keep your tools in a designated place.  Have shelter for materials you are gathering so that they don’t end up being damaged by the weather, and be able to store the free stuff until you can use them. I ended up spending twice the time needed to build by moving materials around the house as I was building.