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| Photo: http://tinyurl.com/Floridaytodayphoto |
Friday is Pioneer Day in Utah - a day of celebrating Utah's heritage and the arrival of the first band of Mormon Pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Pioneers survived without many of the comforts and technologies that we live with today. In honor of the great pioneers of the past, here is a list of a few of the skills that were everyday to them that you may want to learn as a way to be better prepared for disasters:
1. Gardening. Grow your own fruits and veggies, know soil conditions, get water to your plants, getting rid of garden pests, keeping an ongoing supply of food, saving seeds, etc. Check out the Farmer's Almanac for some basic gardening tips.
2. Canning. Now that you have grown the food, how will you preserve it? Check out Pioneer Settler's How to Can Food in 13 Easy Steps.
3. Bake Bread. Do you know how to bake bread? Do you know how to do it without your fancy bread machine or oven? Check out Pioneer's Settler's How to Bake Bread and learn how.
4. Make a Fire. Sure you can do it with matches, but the Pioneer's didn't have matches. Could you make a fire using sticks? Try these 7 methods from Field and Stream.
5. Cooking Over a Fire. You may have other methods to cook your food available, like a solar oven or BBQ grill, but an open fire is the most primitive and one of the most common means of cooking in a grid down emergency.
6. Building a Home/Shelter/Fence. Knowing how to use hand tools and simple machines will go a long way if you’re having to rebuild.
7. Wash & Dry Clothes by Hand. Pioneers didn't have machines to toss dirty laundry into, they washed their clothes by hand. Here's some tips from Better Homes and Garden for washing your clothes by hand.
8. Shooting/Fishing for Your Dinner & Making it Edible. If you had to shoot/catch your dinner and prepare it for your family, would you know how?
9. Sewing Clothes. Do you know how to sew or even mend torn clothes? Check out these sewing hacks from DIY Ready.
10. Creative Fun. Pioneers didn't have cell phones with games to keep them entertained, they were creative and made games from things they had available. How many games can you invent with materials you have on hand? How will you keep your kids entertained?
The Pioneers didn't have an option to learn these skills or not, they did what they had to do to survive. What other Pioneer skills do you think are important for us to learn as a way to better prepare for a disaster?
*Some information from: http://foodstorageandsurvival.com/13-pioneer-skills-you-may-need/
