What if We all Cared?

When we lived in our own house (an even before that in our apartment) we worked on learning as many pioneer/homesteading skills as possible. There are several reasons why we began this path. The most important is that I felt God leading me . . a gentle nudge over and over to get back into the woods . . back to hiking .. learn the names and uses of plants . . remember how to fish . . learn home canning . .

So we began to learn wild edibles and I bought a neat laminated wild edible flyer from Barnes and Noble. This was a bare bones reference material but enough to get us started!! Eventually I bought a book that we keep in the car. It has such a wealth of information I may never fully learn it all.

We practiced fishing using only a fish net. The kids dubbed this “ghetto fishing” and it was a blast watching them wade through cricks chasing fish, frogs and tadpoles!!! When Matt got into Cub Scouts we began to learn (for me it was remember) how to properly use a fishing pole. You should’ve seen Matt’s face when he caught the first fish at one of the events!! 👨🐟 🎣

I bought an old tent and we set it up in our backyard . . that began our love of tent camping. Once it hit 42° at night we knew it was time to put up our tent for the summer and we would sleep out almost every night until the temperature dropped again for winter. Summer was a season of staycationing in the backyard . . sleeping in the tent . . cooking over a campfire . . garden on our land plus foraging in the woods. . canning and dehydrating our best treasures . .

We installed a cute basic wood stove and gathered free firewood everywhere we could find it!! Our gas bill stayed at $15/mo year-round and we were so toasty!!

We were having a blast . . writing this makes me miss those times . .

We were living like it was post-collapse! We were living well. . . quite spoiled in our lifestyle actually. As we move forward I will be looking for was to incorporate as much of this as possible into our new lives!!