BigMike Loc: yerington nv

I lived with my grandparents for 6 years in Bryceville, FL...pop. 350.

We were a mile down a dirt road with people's properties on only one side. 5 acres was the smallest.

Behind those...miles of hunting preserve and Brandy Branch which eventually found its way to the St. Mary's.

On the other side of the road...Carey State Forest.

We raised hogs and chickens and planted a spring and fall garden every year.

Soft White Underbelly interview and portrait of Elmer aka "Wabco", an Appalachian man living in Leslie County, Kentucky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqwy0dPRVOw

One time I noticed these big, black caterpillars with bright red heads completely devouring a tree next to the hog barn.

I plucked one off and heard my granddad from the porch tell me "Mike, don't pull those worms off that tree."

As it turns out those caterpillars are foul tasting things...even chickens won't eat them. But they make great bass bait and people plant those trees to have those caterpillars.

Just for scientific purposes I tossed one into the chicken yard. All 80 chickens made a beeline for it and a few pecked at it but I'm telling you, if chickens could make a face those ones would have screwed up their beaks and said "YUCK!"

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

“And that purty much covers that!” 👍👍👍👍👍👍😎

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

Different day. I can make sausage with a gut casing and I can make good hogshead cheese. I can smoke meat. I can make a decent fish trap out of chicken wire. I even canned some tomatoes and blazing hot sauce that I made myself. I learned a lot I didn't appreciate then.

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

That isn’t something that many men can claim in this day and time! Most kids don’t think past the grocery shelf!

There was so much that kids learned when they had to work with their hands and learn how to feed themselves by planting gardens and raising animals or hunting or fishing. They learned about life! Something that they aren’t learning by staring at a iPhone or computer all day long!

FallenOak Loc: St George Utah

I don’t think you should blame only the electronic gadgets kids have today. Moving into cities away from farms is what has destroyed America. Here in Utah there are still many small towns where kids still learn to care for themselves. When we moved to Utah the first days of hunting season the schools closed so kids could go hunting. I am amazed that so many people even my age cannot build anything with lumber, cannot weld anything if broken, cannot lay a straight furrow, cannot ride or drive a horse and wagon, cannot dress an animal, the list becomes endless. Seems to me people are relegating themselves into obscurity with their machines. Sad that American’s are so willing to become so dependent on others or even those computer machines. If you don’t have the sk**ls even the best directions will only give you an indication of ‘how to’ build something or repair a broken item. Of course the upside is that using the computer machines means you never have to get dirty.

EN Submarine Qualified Loc: Wisconsin East coast

I can remember events that occurred when I was five. Milking 'my' cow, gardening, preparing and canning produce, feeding livestock, house cleaning, sawing, splitting wood for the kitchen range, taking out the ashes, carrying water from the spring, weeding flowerbeds, garden.
I actually pity kids who never had the opportunity to share in this. BTW, all of this without running water or electricity. And catch the school bus at 7 am, continue chores after school.
I am 86 today and have enjoyed most every day to the fullest. Thank you, Lord.

Peewee Loc: San Antonio, TX

I think those are called Sphinx caterpillar. The infant moth eats the leaves of the Catalpa Tree. People around where I grew up would pick the worms and freeze them in water and take them in an ice chest when they went bass fishing. Trees were kept short so they produced more limbs and leaves making it easier to reach them. A nice childhood memory of mine also.

https://www.allaboutworms.com/catalpa-worms

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

Yep. I'm as ready for a return to the stone age as anyone.

We set trot lines and bush hooks. Sometimes we'd go flounder gigging at night. I'm tall and have long arms...I can throw a shrimp net like no one's business.

I hunted rabbits and squirrels. My cousins just north of the state line lived on the edge of the Okeefenokee. They raised sugar cane and had an ancient cane press with two big stone wheels. We made our own cane syrup in a 66 gallon cast iron boiler.

They grew the biggest peanuts I've ever seen! Humongous things the size of my thumb and practically every one had three big nuts.

We'd go where the produce was. If we wanted strawberries we'd go to Lawtey (I went to prison in Lawtey ). Cabbage - Hastings; peaches - Georgia...onions too; oysters - Apalachicola; mullet - Cedar Key. Always get enough to share, too.

If we wanted blueberries or field peas or butter beans there were places along the byways we could go and pick our own by the peck or bushel.

The Farmers' Market in Jacksonville is like nothing I've ever seen anywhere else.

Soon as I start losing circulation to my extremities and feel cold I might move back but I ain't that old yet.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

Related, I'm sure but if my memory isn't faulty (rearranged a lot of brain cells since then) these were jet black with a bright red head. No horns, no hairs, no yellow color. I'm trying to find a pic of one.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

That's why people are being taught to rely on "experts". Someone wants them dependent and insecure.

Peewee Loc: San Antonio, TX

Okay, ours had a red stripe I believe and were mostly green. Different critters used for the same thing, catching fish.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

That is a great testimony and I appreciate it. Thank You Lord, indeed.

I still have to cut and split firewood but we have short growing season here, I'm at 4500 feet, so I don't have to plant two gardens.

I suppose it's an OK trade-off.

When I cut wood a friend and I go into the Pine Nut mountains just west of where I live.

Sunrise Pass road goes over the mountains into Carson Valley but it's up there....9000 feet maybe at the top so it's snowy and impassable in the winter.

It's a good place to go for pinyon pine, though, and unlike CA, we have the common sense here to LET people cut dead wood.

Pretty wild up there. Last time we went there was snow on the road but it wasn't as bad as it was going to get and if we wanted wood we had to go!

So we went. After cutting a couple of cords of wood I told my friend, "Hey man, your rear tire is flat!" (His tires were $ht).

"Not to worry!" says he. "I have a spare, a jack and a tire iron!"

What he didn't have was the anti-theft socket!

We had to drive 17 miles down the mountain w/o our wood on the rim. The tire came off after a mile or so...thankfully off the truck and not in where it would screw up the brake lines!

It was slow going and we made a short pit stop about halfway down.

"Hey man!" he says. "Mountain lion tracks?"

Mountain lion tracks in the snow going up the road in the direction we'd just come from. Deer tracks too. All since we went up earlier.

There's 12 or more mountain lions in this valley and the surrounding mountains.

We made it back OK and when we went back to get our wood we grabbed the tire that came off his truck not wanting to litter.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

I'm sure they're related.

Tug484

My grandmother did a lot of those things, plus more.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

Cleaning intestines for sausage casings is a CHORE!