Was your grandpa a prepper?

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It wasn't a choice back then. Almost everyone had root cellars, barns, wood stoves, gardens, etc. My grandparents also had some livestock and horses. Many of those who didn't have livestock knew someone who did and got their farm fresh produce and meats through a friend or neighbor.

Back then, if you weren't responsible enough to do it yourself and plan for the future you suffered the consequences. That's back when common sense was a "thing" and your poor choices would come back to haunt you. Our current social programs have eroded that common sense and forward thinking.
 
That is also back when the kids took care of their elderly parents and not put them in a warehouse. They had the time and funds to do this because they were not trying to keep up with the Jones', Schmidts and Kowalskis.

They were happy with what they had and were not envious of others and what they had. That is also about the time churches started to lose members
 
Yes.

What we call prepping today was just normal life, from back before history began. People created villages so that they could farm and ranch. In a very real sense, prepping is the start of civilization. Today the stores have just in time stocking and most people do as well. This will help the stores loose less in case of a riot or other disaster but our friends and neighbors are going to learn a hard lesson.
 
Our ancestors had to prep to keep living. Here is a short list of the prepping skills that they had, dehydrating, pickling, corning, fermenting, cheese making, sausage making, meat curing, smoking. In recent centuries they added canning. Much of our history is based about the production and preservation of food. My grandfather? Certainly, and his grandfather before him.
 
i remember when we went to our paternal grandparents, my grandmother would kill a chicken for us to eat. she was alwys canning something, or milking the cow and making butter and buttermilk. i loved helping and she always had time to teach us. my grandad's cash crop was cane syrup. i always enjoyed my visits there. i didn't get to go as much as i would have liked,because my other grandmother needed someone to help her and i was the only grandchild who would help her without stealing from her. she had lost 3 sons in an army jeep wreck and kinds lost the will to live for a long time. it took about 3 years to get her back on the right track.
 
best thing about going to the grandparents was my grandmother made huge cathead biscuits and we would put a hole in the middle and pour in some of grandad's syrup and a cold glass of milk, which we had to haul out of the well. . that was our snack.
 
I remember my granddad plowing the field with oxen. He brought home gopher turtles to eat. My grandma shot quail and squirrels for dinners. They had goats, chickens and raised meat rabbits. Also grew pineapples. I remember picking buckshot out of quail breasts. My grandma made salt rising bread, guava jelly and seagrape jelly as we lived in Central FL near the gulfcoast. Sure miss them and wish I had had the sense to spend more time with them when I got to be a teenager!
 
My paternal grandfather (never knew my maternal grandfather) was born in 1860 - on a dairy farm. He farmed all his life, except for one hitch in the Vermont legislature, when my par had to cover for him some. As other posters have said, what farmers did back then wasn't called 'prepping', it was called living.
 
My Grandparents raised most of the food they ate.
It was just the way it was back then.
They wouldn't call themselves preppers.
They were just folks that had to live as best they could.
Grandpa always said the store bought food wasn't as good.
As they got older they had to rely less on their own and more on purchased goods.
Like others I really wish I had spent more time with them.
All their knowledge has been lost to time and that is sad.
My Grandpa was a blacksmith before I was born and I had no idea until I was in my late teens.
Makes me sad and a little ashamed.
 
My great great gran father was a homesteader.
My grandfather & father were farmer, we put things up for the winter because it cost less & we had plenty to spare.
We used & reused everything, because it was cheaper & we do not waste anything.
We do not waste because home stead folks,who came before us, taught us that it meant life or death.
 
My Grandparents raised most of the food they ate.
It was just the way it was back then.
They wouldn't call themselves preppers.
They were just folks that had to live as best they could.
Grandpa always said the store bought food wasn't as good.
As they got older they had to rely less on their own and more on purchased goods.
Like others I really wish I had spent more time with them.
All their knowledge has been lost to time and that is sad.
My Grandpa was a blacksmith before I was born and I had no idea until I was in my late teens.
Makes me sad and a little ashamed.

Backlash, that story makes me sad too. Blacksmithing is a skill set that is apt to be very much in need if a medium-to-big shtf happens. I'm wondering if it's "around to be found".
 
Backlash, that story makes me sad too. Blacksmithing is a skill set that is apt to be very much in need if a medium-to-big shtf happens. I'm wondering if it's "around to be found".
yes , we have a blacksmith that lives in the next city up from us. he doesn't do it for a living, but he sets up a booth a "farm day" and is very willing to teach it to anyone who is interested. i always find it fascinating to watch him.
 
Backlash, that story makes me sad too. Blacksmithing is a skill set that is apt to be very much in need if a medium-to-big shtf happens. I'm wondering if it's "around to be found".

Gotta be some, you see them at the fairs all the time.
 
A lot of Blacksmith's today are found as farriers at rodeo's and such. There are folks that blacksmith for a living much as in olden times, but can be hard to locate.

I have started buying old style forging equipment ( coal fire) and am now down to getting a decent anvil. At that point I plan on trying to find classes or even better an individual willing to teach me the craft. I feel like it times get bad as many expect at some point, a blacksmith would be invaluable to a group of survivors, or a small community.
 
@VThillman and @Bacpacker my hubby is a blacksmith. He is also a custom metal fabricator. It's what he does for a living. Often times he uses a combination of old and new skills. He doesn't care to make knives which is all the rage due to TV, but loves making tools and other useful things. If you are interested, there are blacksmithing guilds. The international blacksmithing guild is a forum but might help you make a contact in your area.
When people try to call us preppers, I tell them we aren't but that we live traditionally. We aren't actually prepping for teotwawki but to survive until the next harvest. My paternal g-parents were from the Azores. Everyone had a pig run in their yard. That's where all the scraps went. I remember my gpa sitting at the table salting pork. Also, my Gma (who is still alive, 95 yrs) says chickens were easy to butcher. You just rub their neck and they stretch it out, when they do that you chop their head off. She would also climb the rafters in the barn when pigeons were hatching and tie the chicks' legs together. When they were big enough to try to fly, they would fall and she would get them, wring their necks and eat them.
 
In my youth, my hometown was also home to several families whose parents immigrated from eastern Europe 'between the wars'. Some of them would raid the nests of pigeons to take the half-grown squabs. They would be fed on bread and milk for a couple weeks - to 'sweeten' their meat - before butchering.
 
@VThillman and @Bacpacker my hubby is a blacksmith. He is also a custom metal fabricator. It's what he does for a living. Often times he uses a combination of old and new skills. He doesn't care to make knives which is all the rage due to TV, but loves making tools and other useful things. If you are interested, there are blacksmithing guilds. The international blacksmithing guild is a forum but might help you make a contact in your area.
When people try to call us preppers, I tell them we aren't but that we live traditionally. We aren't actually prepping for teotwawki but to survive until the next harvest. My paternal g-parents were from the Azores. Everyone had a pig run in their yard. That's where all the scraps went. I remember my gpa sitting at the table salting pork. Also, my Gma (who is still alive, 95 yrs) says chickens were easy to butcher. You just rub their neck and they stretch it out, when they do that you chop their head off. She would also climb the rafters in the barn when pigeons were hatching and tie the chicks' legs together. When they were big enough to try to fly, they would fall and she would get them, wring their necks and eat them.

I have found some blacksmith groups around the area on a website. It's unfortunatly bookmarked on my now dead old laptop. Hopefully I can get it going at least enough to recover my bookmarks, I have a ton of them on there. I \'m sure I could find it again, but gonna wait until I have the time to devote to the craft before starting. I'm barely keeping up with the pitiful garden I have out right now.
 
A lot of Blacksmith's today are found as farriers at rodeo's and such. There are folks that blacksmith for a living much as in olden times, but can be hard to locate.

I have started buying old style forging equipment ( coal fire) and am now down to getting a decent anvil. At that point I plan on trying to find classes or even better an individual willing to teach me the craft. I feel like it times get bad as many expect at some point, a blacksmith would be invaluable to a group of survivors, or a small community.

Maybe youtube, we learned all kinds of things on it.
 
@Bacpacker as far as videos might look up Black Bear Forge. Hubby enjoys them and he does a good job of not trying to talk over the noise but in between so you can actually understand what he's saying (I'm often in the room so get to hear them too;-)

I will do that. I'll also share some of my favorites I've found.
 

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