Everything you need to know, in order – part II

By Sharon Astyk, originally published by Casaubon’s Book

July 28, 2008

Society

Ok, I’m going to try and work some more on the list of necessary skills. So five more entries on this subject – and more coming. Last time was the absolute minimum – but I’m still working on a list of everything you might ever need to know.

  1. How to have a sense of humor about stuff, and how to shake off your distress and go on.  How to be kind when you are pissed off and grumpy, but it isn’t anyone’s fault. 

    We just had a massive flood here – 7 inches of rain in a few hours. My garden was under 2 feet of water – and I had just spent five days painstakingly planting all the fall garden in the blazing heat.   My basement was full of water and I was sumping at 2 am.  The unprintable people who fixed our roof 3 years ago and did a bad job, and came back this year after we threatened to sue and said they’d fixed it were wrong – we removed 17 *QUARTS* of water from various vessels in our dining room – and that doesn’t include what ended up on the floor.  So I have been practicing this skill set.  It really does make a big difference, both to the people around you and also to the person forcing themselves not to be a jerk (of course, I am not talking about me…;-)).

  2. How to wring the most out of everything.  Extreme thrift

    3. a. How to minimize waste and minimize expenditures – reducing need, using care and good management skills.

    b. How to take care of your stuff so it won’t break, how to repair and patch it if it does

    c. Repurposing of now useless things, making do, creative compensating for things you lack.

  3. How to have sex well.

    4. a. How to navigate sexual dynamics and power relationships so that everyone is safe, having fun and acting consensually.  Teaching children the same – when to, when not to, what consent means, etc…

    b. The risks of pregnancy, how not to get pregnant when you don’t want to, and the simple fact that no strategy is perfect if it involves heterosexuals and the most commonly used orifices, so – how to be prepared to have a child.

    c. How to make your partner happy, if you’ve got one – this will only help in tough times.

     

  4. How to Grow Stuff

    5. a. How soil works, basic botany, plant identification, a general understanding of the conditions specific plants need and how to create them, a general understanding of plants that will do well in your conditions.

    b. How to use basic tools – physical skills for gardening. Hoeing, shoveling – these can be done well or badly.

    c. How to recognize diseases and pests, how to recognize when things are ready to harvest, how harvest correctly.

    d. Seed saving and basic plant breeding and genetics.

    e. Composting and maintaining soil fertility.

  5. How to Handle Water

    6. a. How store water, use it thriftily, reuse it safely and thriftily and not contaminate it

    b. capturing water for use or reuse as many times as possible, and as efficiently as possible, using swales, run off, etc…

    c. Source of contamination and how to purify water

Ok, more coming…handling wastes, cooking, health, arts, building…

Sharon Astyk

Sharon Astyk is a Science Writer, Farmer, Parent of Many, writing about our weird life right now. She is the author of four books: Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front, which explores the impact that energy depletion, climate change and our financial instability are likely to have on our future, and what we can do about it. Depletion and Abundance won a Bronze Medal at the Independent Publishers Awards. A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil co-authored with Aaron Newton, which considers what will be necessary for viable food system on a national and world scale in the coming decades, and argues that at its root, any such system needs a greater degree of participation from all of us; Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Preservation and Storage which makes the case for food storage and preservation as integral parts of an ethical, local, healthy food system and tells readers how to begin putting food by, and the newly published Making Home: Adapting our Homes and Our Lives to Settle in Place, which "shows readers how to turn the challenge of living with less into settling for more".

Tags: Building Community, Culture & Behavior, Food, Fossil Fuels, Oil, Population, Water Supplies

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