Generations

I have heard a statement, though I can't recall the source. That given a large enough disaster learning and technology would be lost in a single generation. Leaving our descendants in a quasi stone age of technological discards and crude amenities. Sounds terrible right? Your kids would know some things to help them, but their kids wouldn't have a full enough education to repair or utilize our current technology properly. Common everyday knowledge would be lost and they would have to reinvent it or discover something new.

I am sorry to say that this has already happened! The current craze is to "Go Green" or "Eat Local", "Seasonal menus". Your grandparents and theirs before them for generations all knew that stuff. They knew how to cook healthy meals that would feed their families, sometimes for days. The skills and everyday knowledge about the natural world that our grandparents had, died with our parents.

My little family wants to homestead, live closer to the land, grow some food and raise some livestock for meat. We probably won't have pigs or cows, but we just ordered chickens for eggs and meat. I discovered that my mother used to help pluck and butcher chickens, she told me that she hated the plucking. She never told me anything about chickens growing up, we got it from KFC or had it on the grill. In the "modern world" there was no room for those skills, fast food, pre-made dinners all trumped raising food. We had a small garden when I was a kid, but it never grew much and we certainly never canned anything.

I intend to relearn those lost skills, thankfully there has been a great deal put down in books, sadly that takes a long time to find, read, try, and perfect those skills unaided. My wife and children will be there learning along side me. Hopefully my children will teach their children and so on so that the skills I am so patiently relearning don't get lost again.

I Urge those who read this to go out and find a lost skill and preserve it in yourself and your family. Thus armed they will have a chance in a world where gas is too expensive for all but the wealthy and fresh preservative and chemical free food is out of reach.