Mission Endure 75: Book Review of Country Wisdom & Know-How, Everything You Need to Know to Live Off the Land
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This is a another great book that teaches us to be more self-sufficient. I got lucky when I bought Country Wisdom & Know-How two years ago, back before the COVID lockdown. I bought it for two reasons:
I was interested to see what I could do to prepare our family and our home to successfully endure a shut down of our economy or a natural disaster. I bought it as a reference book, unaware that we would be hit by the COVID pandemic not long after I bought the book. It turned into being a great purchase for us. It helped us to become more self-sustaining and gave us lots of advice on how to handle unusual situations.
I longed for the days when we lived in a Do It Yourself (DIY) society. My GrandPa and my wife’s GrandPa and my Dad all grew up on farms and learned how to solve problems and fix broken things as a DIY expert out of necessity. Today we call someone to fix what ever our problem is instead of learning how to fix our own problems. I want to learn more DIY problem solving skills, and this book fit that need very well.
Country Wisdom & Know-How is jam packed full of useful skills and step-by-step instructions on how to do things the old school way. There are articles on animal and pet care, cooking, crafting, gardening, health and well-being, and home planning, building and maintenance. It is 480 pages of old school learning. I feel like I have my GrandPa over my shoulder giving me helpful suggestions whenever I take on a project. One of my favorite sections is the on on Preserving, Pickling, Canning, and Distilling. We can a lot of what we grow in our garden and have a supply that we can live on for several months now after following some of the directions in this book. There are lots of good articles offering advice on canning, warning you of pitfalls, and even lots of great canning recipes.
One section in the book that I have used extensively to prepare for a disaster is titled, “What to Do When the Power Fails.” It walks you through a step by step process of planning ahead before the power fails to locate your electrical box, make sure everything is clearly labeled, gathering wood supplies if you have a fireplace or if you want to cook your food outdoors, it provides you with cooking alternatives, and goes over how to purify water to it safe for drinking and to store. Over the last week we had a very powerful storm bring several inches of snow and ice to our area and although we did not lose power over 100,000 people in our town lost power for many hours with outdoor temps in the 20s. If you are not prepared it would be very dangerous. There is a great checklist of items to do if you lose power in a situation like that. There is also a nice list of items for a First-Aid kit.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who desires to live more like our grandparents did, when they could fix anything that broke around home and we were more self-reliant. However, there is so much information in this book, that it is not something you can read like a novel. I open the book up when I have a problem or a question and use it to help me brainstorm, and then it goes back on the bookshelf. It is not entertaining, but it is a great resource that you should have in hard copy format for when the internet or the power are out and you want to fix something.