Are we losing it??

[PotterWatch]

You are correct, knowing how to provide for ourselves outside of using a credit card to buy mass produced food at the grocery store is falling by the wayside for many Americans. Maybe this article will make you feel a little bit better though: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/story/2011-12-24/young-people-farming/52163914/1 .

 

[Capvin]

What concerns me the most is how anyone can connect this horrific, nightmare inducing story with making a case for "losing our rural roots." I see no connection and even if I did I would never seek to trivialize this terrible event by comparing it to the ability to plant seeds or raise chickens. The only thing I can think about when I do think about this story is the terrible suffering and fear those little girls had to endure before succumbing to death. While the OP may have a point to make, this event is not comparable to anything he is trying to say.

 

[PotterWatch]

The farm next door to us does school tours. It's amazing some of the things parents, teachers, and kids say during those tours. Many of the kids who go there have never seen a cow, horse, pig, sheep, or goat in a real life setting (other than perhaps at the yearly county fair where they walk through the petting zoo and maybe see a machine milking demonstration). They are amazed to see vegetables pulled out of the soil. I remember one chaperone who pointed at the sheep and excitedly told the students "Look kids! That's where the cotton that makes your jeans comes from!"

Sometimes, however, there are good surprises. We have had people show up while we are processing birds who have never set foot on a farm and far from being disgusted or disturbed, they were interested in the process and happy that their kids could see exactly how their food gets to their table. Many people simply don't have the opportunity, or don't know where to look for the opportunity to be exposed to a more rural way of life. If you had told my husband 6 years ago that we would be living on a farm, raising chickens for a living, he would have had you committed! He grew up in the suburbs and certainly never had contact with farm life or animals, but he is managing very well with our new existence. When you give people a chance to learn, and they will often step up to the plate.

 

[teach1rusl]

Just this morning DH (age 51, grew up mostly rural, great at carpentry and can rebuild just about anything mechanical) was talking to me in amazement about the Internet...how so much knowledge was right there at your fingertips. He's been rebuilding a 50 Chevy truck we bought last summer and has had that thing broken down to the smallest component. He has several old manuals to help guide him, but was pondering how much longer things would have taken without forum sites and online parts companies (many across the country in CA).
So these changes are not all bad. Kids can do things with technology that just baffles me, at least as much as most of them are baffled by how to milk a cow or build/tend a fire. The times they are a'changin...some for the good and some not so much. Where I grew up (rural WV), it was fairly common practice by old timers to control unwanted pet populations simply by drowning them (as tiny pups/kittens) in a bucket. There was no malice in it, it was just a way of "culling" them. I'm guessing that was mostly a rural practice. That's a change I hope has been long lost.

 

[mandelyn]

I was guilty of taking my knowledge for granted for a long awhile, easy to do when you're homeschooled and not out in the general public that often. As an adult... I'm realizing more and more everyday how lucky I was to learn all that. Forget building and maintaining a fire safely... I can read a road atlas AND balance a check book.

Then I see my peers... most times I only talk about animals and leave everything else alone unless they're asking advice. When I talk to little kids... most of the kids from our social circle are like 8 years old on average.. they look at me with the biggest eye balls ever!

It's not even our peers... it's people in their 30's and 40's that can't grow a tomato, maintain their appliances or water heater, know what that ticking sound is under the hood of the car, change a flat tire, start a fire without cheater tools, it's... amazing?

Sheeple are funny. The knowledge will never be totally lost... just... increasingly uncommon. Depends on where you live, how you grew up, what you get to experience, what you try to make of yourself, and if you ever learned how to use your brain instead of the latest app.

Why use your brain at all when there's an app for that?

 

[Stacykins]

That tragedy is just that, tragic. It was an accident that could have been prevented by proper disposal of ashes, which seems to me to be a common sense part of fireplace or wood/coal stove management. Apparently not. I don't think the OP is trying to belittle the fact that it was tragic at all, just imply that something associated with country living, such as safe ash disposal, was lost in this case.

It has been studies that with the widespread use of the internet, we're loosing retained information since our brains have learned we can readily 'google' an answer. So information that isn't 'needed' gets backlogged in our brains. I guess common sense is getting put on the backburner, too.

 

[woodmort]

Quote:
Exactly--thank you.

 

[SkyWarrior]

Yes, we are. Not all changes are bad, but I feel that a fair portion of the country doesn't "get it."

My own childhood was in suburbia. Yeah, I knew where food came from and my mom had a garden, but I've had to relearn skills. So did my husband.

No one taught us to split wood. After watching my husband split it, it was obvious to me that there's a sweet spot on the wood at the edge that splits it faster. I told him this and it makes splitting go much faster.

I've had to learn about cold frames and gardening again from books. Chickens, geese, ducks and turkeys? Well, that came from books, the internet and forums.

Llamas? Yep, books and internet.

So, information is out there, but you have to be curious enough to look for it and have enough training in critical thinking to be able to sift through good information and bad.

Most people don't know where meat, vegetables, milk or eggs come from. Where I live, it's a rural community, so people do know. But I really wonder what they teach kids in the city.

 

[CluckyJay]

I try so hard to keep teaching my son the old ways. All the stuff I have learned from growing up country from generations of dirt poor family members. Grandmother and gramps and my mum are excellent teachers in these ways.

We grew just about everything and always had our own eggs. They never got into larger livestock though. I am grateful that they helped me learn all they knew and encouraged me to learn more. Now my boy has chickens and goats a yard full of hunting dogs and other pets. He loves helping me save seeds too! Its so important to pass all this down to the next generation. He is also learning herbal medicines and I hope he can really hold his own when he is older.