My parents lived through the depression.
They were self reliant people and they taught me self reliance.
Because of my wonderful parents, I am somewhat prepared to go through these times. I now see why they pounded things into my head that I thought I didn't need to learn.
I blame nobody for the times we are in. Business cycles will happen as they always have. I do think there are things going on now that are unnecessarily extending this recession.
But I was taught to prepare for that. We can all get along on less. Maybe even live better and be better for it.
I certainly am not ready to ask another man to give up his for mine!
If nothing else, this forum gives people the skills to stretch the food budget, even when smoking might not be involved.
Grab your family and give them a hug!
Good luck and good smoking.
Sir, you are 100% correct. Well stated, and I bet your parents have been proud of how you have taken responsibility for yourself.
The economy is doing exactly what it will, which is what it does every time there is too much debt in the system. People (and governments) have to pay it off and the only way to do it successfully is to cut back. Unfortunately it means people get laid off or gets pay cut in the process, and things seem to go up at the same time. Fortunately, we can see it coming and what it is doing if we look.
We are fortunate enough to kill most of our own meat. Deer in season and wild hogs anytime. Lots of feral hogs. IOW, even though we dont pay for it, we have to WORK for it. This is especially true when we get the call on a Sat night "you want this pig we hit/killed?" or "there are hogs over here" and it we have something else planned, but it has to be gutted and strung up. We have chickens, but we can those - they seem to much go further that way (soups, etc). When we buy chicken it is on sale and off-cuts. We will butcher a cow every year or so but it has to be weighed out - if we take it to the butcher we dont get money for it. So what we end up doing is taking the sorriest ones to the butcher and selling the best; we still end up saving more money this way than buying meat at the store and selling the sorry slaughter steers.
In the past few years I have taken to training other men to shoot, trap, hunt, process and cook game. The whole process isn't as common as you would think anymore - most people will just shoot it (poorly), pull the guts out in a very sloppy manner and take it to someone. When they get to the point that they can do it on thier own I have seen them really feel better about the control they have, as well as thier status as the head of the household. Small thing, huge effect.
I have also taken to hunting for others who cannot and are short on funds. I dont do this often, and most of the time they have to have some skin in the game (call this a lesson learned).
All that said, we need a garden. And I suck at gardening...
Linepipe
