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20 skills from my grandma
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Jul 17, 2024
Honoring Heritage: 20 Old-Fashioned Skills From My Great-Grandmother (That I Still Do) In today’s fast-paced world, the old-fashioned skills of our ancestors often hold the key to a more grounded, fulfilling life. My great-grandmother’s way of living was self-sufficient, from gardening and raising livestock to quilting and preserving food. These old-fashioned practices, passed down through generations, enrich my daily life. Join me as I share 20 enduring traditions that connect me to my roots and can inspire your own journey towards a simpler, more rewarding lifestyle.
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Hi, welcome. Today I want to share with you 20 skills, old-fashioned skills, that
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my great-grandmother used every day, that I still use. In today's fast-paced world
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I find that these skills can help us lead a more grounded, more fulfilling
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life. Her way of life was one of self-sufficiency. Of course, it wasn't any
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big thing back then. That was just the way of life. These have been passed down
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through generations in my family and other homesteading, what we call homesteading today, was farming men families. So join me as I share 20
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enduring traditional skills that connect me to them, and I hope to inspire you to
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start your own journey or continue your own journey toward a simpler, more
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rewarding lifestyle. I was blessed to know my great-grandmother. She passed away when I was nine or ten, but her influence has carried on through me
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because of my grandmother, who was her middle daughter. As you know, my
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grandparents are the ones who taught me to embrace and love this lifestyle. To
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them, it was just a way of life. It was all they knew. What we learned, what they
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learned from their parents, my great-grandparents, they passed on to us. Their way of life for us, like I said, they're simpler. My grandparents recorded
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their life stories for our boys. You can find those stories on the
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Farmer's Lamp in our Voices of Heritage series. They are audio recordings, and
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then I transcribe them for you, their own words, their own stories. So that's a
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really fun and interesting thing if you'd like to go listen to that. Now we're going to talk about these 20 skills. I'm going to just skim over them
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and you can go over to the companion article for this video and read more in
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depth about them and how you can put them into practice there on the Farmer's Lamp. You know, I realize her way of life was much harder than mine. I had the
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modern convenience of electricity and running water. One of my grandmothers had
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electricity and running water by the time I was born. She didn't when she was
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raising her children. My grandmother, Brown, had two light bulbs in her house
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one in the middle of the living room, which was also two bedrooms, and one in
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the middle of the kitchen, and she didn't have running water until I was 12. So I
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understand more about how hard their lives were than I would have had not had
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that experience. Even though I have these things, I'm still humbled when I think
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about the resilience and the strength of our ancestors. In spite of these
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differences, I do find immense value and satisfaction in practicing some of the
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same skills that she did. Okay, we're gonna start with food production
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Gardening, of course, is the number one thing. Her garden was her pride and joy
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and it was that way for my grandmother. And as a young child working in the
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gardens with them, I didn't realize they were teaching me. You know, as a kid it's
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just fun to be out there with granny doing different things, but as you know
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we do garden and raise most of our food that way. On the Farmer's Lamp you can
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find all kinds of gardening articles. We're here to help you in any way we can
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Composting. Now, nothing went to waste in my great-grandmother's house or my
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grandmother's house. They had a slot bucket out the back door, and they had a
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compost bucket out the back door. And what didn't go into the slot bucket went
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into the compost bucket. The slot bucket was for the pigs, the chickens, and the
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dogs. So, there was never any kind of waste there. Composting is a great way to
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improve your garden soil. The resulting rich soil can be incorporated into
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raised beds, into the traditional row gardens, into containers. So, if you're
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interested in diving deeper into composting, of course, we have a lot of
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soil health information over on the Farmer's Lamp. Raising chickens and eggs
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for meat. Their chickens free-range. They'd be in the woods. They would be, you
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know, everywhere. They put themselves up at night. She would go, of course, and
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close the coop after they had gone to bed. But with over 45 years of chicken
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keeping experience from over at least seven generations, I don't even know how
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far back our chicken keeping goes, I've come to realize that chickens contribute
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a lot to the homestead. They clean up the garden. They give us free fertilizer, eggs
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of course, and meat, entertainment. They do help control some forms of insects. So
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there's always that. We raise heritage-free chickens, which you can read more about that on the Farmer's Lamp, why we do that and what they are. It's a
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connection between us and our past and our ancestors. Dairy cows, pigs, and poultry
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Okay. My great-grandmother and my grandmother were great milkers, and they were very particular about who touched their cows. And I was, I don't know, 11 or
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12 before my grandfather was allowed to milk the cows, in my memory. Now, I'm not
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saying he ever did, I'm just saying. But I do that. We have an A2 Jersey cow
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They weren't concerned about A2 back then. They did have, mostly, have Jerseys. They did have some Guernseys. And I seem to recall a couple Holsteins
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but they always had a dairy cow for milk, butter, cheese, and, of course, the meat
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from the bull calves. They raised pigs and turkeys and guineas. They ate the
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guinea eggs if they could find them. And, of course, the guineas are just
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fantastic soldiers at pest control. So, I do not make my cheese. We don't really
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eat a lot of cheese, but it's something I want to do. I just haven't taken the time
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to learn that skill. And that's one of the great parts about this
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lifestyle is there's always a skill to improve. There's always something to learn
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from other people. And as Papa said, even if it's just to learn what not to do, you
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have to learn those things. We also raise these...we raise pigs and cows and
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guineas and turkeys. Turkeys are just fantastic to have, but they require a
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commitment. It's a commitment to have livestock. So, be aware of those
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things. And then we have some articles, of course, on the farm saying from scratch, especially in today's world. It's really important to cook from scratch. There are
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so many toxic chemicals and additives and preservatives in our food, and they're
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high under so many labels. Did you know there are over 200 names for sugar? It's
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just mind-blowing. But when you cook from scratch, you can control the ingredients
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you can control the nutrition, especially if you produce a lot of your food. Not
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everybody can have cows. Not everybody can have pigs, but you can work with local
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farmers. You can go to farmers markets and all those things to take advantage. But
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cooking from scratch saves money. It does take some time, but it's also a skill
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that you will need. And we have a lot of recipes on the Farmers' App there for
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you. Making bread. Saturday was my grandmother's bread making day. She also
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did her cookies, her pies, her cakes. Anything she was going to bake, that was
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her Saturday, my great-grandmother. My grandmother, she baked whenever she wanted to, of course, she had the convenience of a gas stove, and she also
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had a wood stove that she used in the winter. But, you know, she had other conveniences that my great-grandmother didn't have, so she just baked whenever
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she needed it. Saturday works for me. As I record this today, it's Saturday, and my
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bread for this week is on its second rise, and I'll give it a bake when I'm
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done speaking with you about this. So, there's just something so satisfying
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about making bread. It's just, you know, a few basic ingredients. Start with a
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simple recipe. We use anchor flour, if you're interested in learning about that
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and why we use anchor flour, you can find that on the Farmers' Lab. I'll try to
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remember to put all these links in the article, but if you go to the article for
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this video, you'll find all this information. Hunting and fishing. Now, traditionally in our family, it was the men that did the hunting and fishing, and
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the women stayed behind to process it, but we were taught as girls to hunt and
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fish. I don't really care for it. That's just me, so I prefer to stay behind
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and do the processing and the preserving. My uncle Stanley loved to fish, and he
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would take us fishing, and it was great fun because he was great fun, but if the
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fish weren't biting, I didn't really enjoy it. Okay, now we're going to talk
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about housekeeping. Hand-washing dishes. I know that a lot of people prefer
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dishwashers because they say it saves water, and of course it's a time-saving
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device, but I have always preferred, I don't even remember the last time I had a
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dishwasher. It's probably been close to 15, 20 years or longer. It's just
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something I like to do. Using a clothesline, unless it's rainy or snowy or
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there's something else, something that I don't like to put on the clothesline
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that needs special care, which I don't really have any of those things, everything
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goes on the clothesline. It saves us money, and there's just nothing that
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smells as good as that. Sewing, quilting, and knitting. I am NOT a seamstress, as
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anyone who knows me will tell you, but I can do basic sewing. I can make curtains
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and tablecloths, and I can do mending. My grandmother taught me to quilt, and I do
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enjoy quilting. I don't have the time to do it as much as I would like because we
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have the option to buy blankets and different things. I do have some of my
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great-grandmother's quilts. I have some of my grandmother's quilts, and I have
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made a quilt. I made two or three quilts, but it's not something I specialize in
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Knitting, I love knitting. It's just a great activity. I do it in the winter. Socks
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and hats, scarves. I'm trying to learn mittens, but I mean I'm just a basic
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knitter. I'm not a specialist in any way, but she did all those things, but she did
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it to make clothing for her family. Sweaters and underwear. They made
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all that stuff. So food preservation and sustainability. Canning and preserving food. We can our meat, and we can tomatoes. Everything else we dehydrate. I have
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pictures of my grandmother's pantry, and I can remember my great-grandmother's pantry just from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, in the back room
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That was just everything was canned. Peas, beans, tomatoes, pepper. I mean
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everything was canned, and meat. She did preserve her meat that way. So we have
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some articles on the Farmer's Lamp to help you with that, with dehydration and
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with canning. Using a root cellar. Now she had a great root cellar, and I loved
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going in there as a kid. All the smells, the earthy smells. Now we right now use a
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part of our basement as a root cellar, and it does a good job, but we're looking
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forward to having the dedicated root cellar finished. Better temperature control. Better humidity control. Natural medicine, natural home remedies, and herbs
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She had an herb garden that as a child I didn't understand the significance of
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her medicine garden. That's what she called it, my medicine garden. But I love
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being there. I love the smells of the herbs and the earthiness there, and I
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helped her make some tinctures. Now I realize as I'm older and trying to
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learn, you know, more about these things. She was making salves. I can remember her
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soaking peppermint leaves in whiskey, and we always got that when we were sick as
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children. So there are lots of ways to learn about herbal medicine. We have in
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the companion article for this some links to some places that we recommend
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Community life and family life. Storytelling and oral history. Every evening we would sit on the porch at my grandmother's house and share stories
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and I can remember sitting in my great-grandmother's porch. I don't remember the stories, but I do remember the adults talking and just sitting
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there enthralled with what they were talking about, listening to them. The
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Farmer's Lamp Voices of Heritage series is one of these things. I encourage you
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to keep a journal, make a video for your family of your lifestyle. Go and
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interview your grandmothers and your great-grandmothers if you're still blessed to have them, and get those stories down because they are really
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priceless. Bartering, sharing with their neighbors if there was too much. They
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shared if they had something, if a neighbor had something they needed, they
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would barter. We still do that towards the end of our growing season. We
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open up our garden to our family or to those in our neighborhood who are in need
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and they can come and pick everything they need if or want. If they're not
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physically able to do it, we do pick for those who can't do it for themselves and
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take it to them. So if you have a surplus of home goods, that's a great
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thing to do. And the last thing I want to share is a failing thing in our
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country at least, is front porch sitting. Now my grandmother and my great
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grandmother lived at the end of a dirt road, and my parents still live at the
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end of a dirt road. They're the only people on that road. My great-grandmother
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had two of her daughters that lived down that dirt road with her, but she was at
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the very end. And they ended every day by sitting on the front porch. You know, the
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night shades were coming in, the animals were bedding down. You could hear the
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calves and cows blowing out their breath as they laid down, and the whippoorwills
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would be singing, and they would tell stories. And my grandmother Brown loved to tell us scary stories. That was her thing. You know, even in the daytime, sitting on
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the front porch, shelling peas, just doing all kinds of different things, sowing. The
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neighbors would pass by. They'd see you there. My grandmothers, the neighbors
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didn't pass by my great-grandmothers, they just came there. But the road ran past my
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grandmother's house, the dirt road, and they would stop, have coffee, share
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stories, help you with some work. It was just a place where work felt like
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leisure. I have so many great memories of front porch sitting. We do sit on our
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front porch. Nobody can see us, but we get to see all the animals and the land
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around us and enjoy it. If you have a balcony, sit on your balcony and watch
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your neighborhood. If you have a backyard or a front yard, if you have a front porch
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sit out there. And, you know, you may be surprised who may stop and talk with you
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I know in our time, it's an unheard of thing, but take the time to enjoy it
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Look around, relax, just being outdoors is great for you. I hope you've
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enjoyed these 20 skills that my great-grandmother used that I did, that I
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still do. And be sure to go check out the companion article for this video, and
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you can learn more there. Until next time, safe and happy journey
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