Pioneer Self-sufficiency

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Silver
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Posts: 5247

Pioneer Self-sufficiency

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25 Forgotten Survival Lessons From The Pioneers Worth Finding And Learning
Tuesday, 26 April 2016 02:36 Bio Prepper
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"This article was originally published at Bio Prepper

Pioneer life has a special meaning in America. In less than 300 years, civilization spread across a vast continental wilderness.

From the first landings in Virginia and Massachusetts in the early 1600’s, American settlers kept pushing westward behind an ever moving frontier. Into wild country went hunters, trappers, fur traders, miners, frontier soldiers, surveyors, and pioneer farmers. The farmers tamed the land and made it productive."

Every part of America had its pioneers. Whatever their surroundings, the pioneers had to depend on themselves and on the land. Self-reliance was a frontier requirement. Game provided food and leather clothing. New settlers gathered wild fruits, nuts, and berries. For salt they boiled the water of saline springs. Maple sugar was made by tapping maple trees in early spring and boiling the sap until it thickened into a tasty sweetening. Substitutes for tea and coffee were provided by boiling sassafras root and brewing parched corn and barley. With an ax and adze for cutting tools, the pioneers made beds, tables, benches, and stools. They split logs into rails to make the zigzag fence that enclosed their clearings.

25 Forgotten Pioneer Survival Lessons Worth Finding And Learning

Soap Making

The pioneers used to make soap themselves using the copious amount of wood ashes, a natural result of their homesteading activities, with also a plentiful supply of animal fat from the butchering of the animals they used for food. Soap with some work and luck could be made for free. Soap making was performed as a yearly or semiannual event on the homesteads of the early settlers. As the butchering of animals took place in the fall, soap was made at that time on many homesteads and farms to utilize the large supply of tallow and lard that resulted. On the homes or farms where butchering was not done, soap was generally made in the spring using the ashes from the winter fires and the waste cooking grease, that had accumulated throughout the year. Soap making takes three basic steps.

Making of the wood ash lye.
Rendering or cleaning the fats.
Mixing the fats and lye solution together and boiling the mixture to make the soap.
Food Preservation

The food preservation played a very important role in a pioneer’s life. Not having a refrigerator his only way to maintain the food edible was to preserve it. The most used process to preserve the meat was smoking. I’m going to share with you an old recipe for curing and smoking hams. The process of smoking is still used by a few die-hards, but most folks take a shorter route to preservation – canning, freezing or diluted methods using “smoked” chemicals applied directly to the meat.

Old-timer Everet Starcher of Sinking Springs gave his directions to smoking hams in 1976. He was in his 80s when he shared his recipe." end quote

There's more at the link above.

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David13
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7072
Location: Utah

Re: Pioneer Self-sufficiency

Post by David13 »

All essential skills.
And I love history. And want to get my own one room cabin in the woods. That's what my grandfather had when I was a kid, and we never did get to spend enough time there. With no electricity, no running water, thus no tv, no radio, wood stove.
Today someone said, the pioneers made the trek west to Utah from all around the country and the world because they loved God. That's how much they loved God.
And that's how much we must love God to consecrate all we have been blessed with and all we may be blessed with to the building up of the Kingdom on earth.
dc

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