I moved to the country five years ago. I didn’t know how to garden, can, raise any kind of animal, and defiantly nothing about processing any kind of animal. I knew nothing about greenhouses, cisterns, rain barrels, wood burning stoves, or smokehouses. I knew nothing about homesteading. All of this learning has been on hyperdrive, a whirlwind of books, you tubes, and asking neighbors. An on the fly education that is usually learned by first doing it wrong, and learning from mistakes. And I am okay with that. That is what I signed up for with this back to our roots dream of mine. But still I wonder, how did it come to this? How did all this knowledge get lost in two (maybe three) generations? Back before freezer dinners, and McDonalds we used to know all this stuff. We as a people tapped trees, stretched hides, and wintered over potatoes. We used to make our own soap, and grind our own flour. We used to homestead when all there was was homesteads. And now, children have no concept of what food even IS. Food comes from the store, or a restaurant and that is all they know. That is all they know because that is all their parents know. Now we are here. We have gotten to the place that our entire existence relies on someone else’s system. I am sick of it. I am ready to get back to knowing some stuff! I want to teach my kids how to get a chicken from the barnyard to the table. I want them to know how to save seeds, milk a cow, and tend to a hive. Maybe they will move to the city and never use these skills again, maybe they will stay and take over the farm, but at least they will KNOW. I can’t say we will ever be completely self sufficient, or live completely off-grid..but I am going to try to find this thing they call homesteading, and I encourage you to find it too.