Old school skills, have any?

jocelyn wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

That's so awesome!

Hopeful Farm wrote:Well, I don't have any other skills that the rest of you don't possess, though as I already mentioned in another thread, I do run a pie making business. Most people actually don't know how to make a delicious, flaky pie pastry anymore. My Nana taught me and I've been doing it for about 10 years. I sell around 50 pies per week, but it is very seasonal. Like now, for example, I probably won't sell much at all until Easter. Then it's pretty full-on right through summer till next Christmas.

My hubby, however, revolves his life around an old-school skill! He is a full time blacksmith (NOT farrier, the two are very different). He hand forges hot iron over the anvil to create works of art or functional "stuff" that people commission. You can check out his website for fun. But now the forum will not let me post an external website. Strange. Anyway, the web address is reimerandco.com but I cannot post the link here.]

Awesome work. "A book is like a garden carried in a pocket" -- beautiful.

Well I guess I'm a third generation carpenter ? I'm getting out of that though .I am a outdoors man , love cutting tree's down as well cutting it up on my band saw mill .I'm planning on building a cabin in a few years ( reason for buying the mill ) .I was taught the old way of proccessing pig's , cattle etc and that seems to be a dieing art as well ! I have trapped , hunt regularly , constantly looking for old books to learn more about the "" Old Ways"" and such .Fish , smoke fish ........smoke almost anything really !I would love to live on the fringe or completely off the grid ........but the wife doesn't think so !! Theres more I'm sure , but I'll have to think about that , we take for granted what we know ..........

Thanks, guys, for checking out my hubby's website and the kind words. It is a pretty cool profession. He's done it for about about 20 years.

Most people my age think these things are weird but i really don't care and love knowing i can do them

In the last 3 years since i moved to the farm i think I've learned the most "old school" skills.

I can kill and butcher a rabbit duck or chicken

I can milk a goat and make soft cheese and yogurt.

I can hand weave place mats and rugs and cross stich

I have a couple of other probably useless things like i can identify aprox 200 breeds of dogs and know what a good show guinea pig should look like (along with other useless things).

Some things i want to do this year are:

Tan enough mini rex hides to make a small blanket. (I have lynx MR and the color is beautiful)

Make soap and candles from goat milk

butcher a turkey

Great post, it cetainly makes one think. Napoleon Dynamite comes to mind here, "You've got to have skills!"

I suppose growing up with my grandfather's influence helped a lot here;
Jack of all trades, master of none.

My first vehicle I got at 17 was in the shop the day I bought it. That was it. I had it 12 years. I started driving for a living 22 years ago, and have maintained my trucks myself.

Working for Grandfather in his marina, we built our own docks. From 15' to 1000' we built them all by hand, starting from a log in the water. We plumbed them with water, ran cablevision for our customers, and of course, 220 amp power to keep these 100 foot plus boats coming back.

We re-roofed the store a couple times, plumbing was always a job to be done. Hmmm, fixing our washers and dryers, as it took an hour and a half to get anyone to come look at them - of course charging a ridiculous travelling fee.

Most of us on farms do our own construction of buildings etc. So I suppose, rough carpentry could be added to the list. When I had spare time, I used to carve things from wood as well. Building little things like jewelry boxes and other small trinkets.

Falling trees, cutting and splitting firewood. We do roughly 13 cords a year.

We also do most of our own vet care for our animals. We've put the odd stitch in a horse, and the usual cuts and scrapes and hoof care.

I have always had a problem paying someone to do a job that I could do myself. So, I have learned either from trial and error, or bookwork how to do whatever was needed, as the only thing that holds us back from developing a skill, is the knowledge of how to do it.

Adding more...
Hunting, and of course, the butchering of game meat.
Gardening of course, and the making of the soil itself.

Here's one that I may never use again, we used to get about 15 people together, rent cross country skis, and go camping in the mountains for a few days. I quickly learned to build igloos, and snow caves. They are amazingly warm!

I've been thinking about this post.

I don't know if I could exactly call them skills that are old school, but there are some things that I can and have done that many of my city family and friends haven't done and do not have any desire to do.

I can bake and cook many of my own things here at home. We don't run to town for just anything like a loaf of bread.

I raise my own chickens, turkeys, and pork (buy the piglet in the spring, butcher in fall).

While I've yet to kill an animal to eat, I do all of the cleaning and plucking of chickens, turkeys, rabbits and ducks by myself. This doesn't totally gross me out but is rather interesting. I helped to butcher the pigs, and was fine with that.

I am learning to garden and grow some of our own veggies.

This fall I cut and packaged 2 pigs and a quarter of a moose all by myself.

I do my own canning. Fish, pickles, jams, salsa's, meats, apple sauces, berries, peaches, and homemade juice concentrate.

Stocking up on food for winter, so we have less to pack.

I have learned how to use some power tools so have built some chicken tractors and things myself. Also figured out how to do some basic changing of light fixtures, switches and plugins. Minor plumbing (fixing toilets and installing taps).

Tried my hand at making wooden spoons.

Peeling logs for fences (I absolutely love doing this!)

Also when we had wood heat, I would help with the fire wood.

I tried making goats cheese once, but that was a complete failure, so that is definitely not a skill I have... ha ha ha!

There is much more I would like to learn.

This is the perfect thread for a morning when I don't really want to do anything, except, well read, my head is hurting from genetic studying stuff, smiling that big smile, and I need to take a break.

This is a thread where we can toot our horn, yes, we can tell all what we can do, and I am amazed at all the things that my forum friends can do. So, now it's my turn, this may be lengthy (imagine that ), but got things to say .

Anyways, in the 59 years that I have been on this earth, think I have dabbled in many things, have absolutely never became really good at any of them, but have had my hands in those pies.

Guess I'll start out by telling of my later teenaged years, a young gal, probably in my 16-17th year. Our family had moved from the Burnaby, B.C. area to the Sunshine Coast, camped for a summer in a very beautiful spot called Roberts Creek. We spent that summer there in tents until we got a home, just before school began. My Father was a beachcomber. Yep....he had a boat and pulled logs off the beach basically, and retrieved logs from the water. That summer I spent many hours on his boat, sunbathing, smiling. Yep, teenage girls like to sunbath. I helped him out when he needed it, but mostly I was along for the sunshiney ride...I learned that summer to make things, like the way to tie the ropes to the dogs, splinting them onto the dogs (dogs are the metal things that are banged into logs to pull them off the beach, or to follow the boat in tow), I learned how to use a peavee pole, I learned how to respect the sun and how to jump off a moving boat to cool down. That was a few good things I learned, and still use those skills of splicing polypropolyene rope, so that rope can be attached to things with a loop, learned that polypropolyene rope is hot when you melt the fabric so that it doesn't fray.

As time went on, I learned how to garden, my Mamma was a beautiful gardener, with gardens I remember my Auntie in North Vancouver would rave about, these were flower gardens, she had many. I had learned how to identify plants, weeds and how to get weeds out in a most easy manner. I grew food gardens when I left home, raising my two girls. In those days, I learned how to built a barn, well kind of. My girlfriend and I built a pig shed. Thinking back, still wondered how it stood up but it did. I had some chickens and Muscovy ducks in those young woman years. I learned that racoons are powerful and can pull a big fat Muscovy drake over a poultry wire fence. I learned how to pick up a Muscovy drake that bit my leg and learned how to throw him so he was not hurt, but so that he would stay away from me. I was a menace to him.

I learned how to crochet, this came from my Grandmother, who made many, many pretty little doilies. I learned how to make clothing from crocheting, and making throws for my Daughters' beds, with crochet skills.

I learned how to darn. With a lightbulb inside. In those days, you fixed socks.

I learned how to do some very beautiful embroidery, I made some very pretty clothings for us gals from embroidery.

I learned how to knit and knit many a nice thing for my girls and me.

I am a very good cook. I am not a gourmet cook, but I can whomp up a meal that can feed from two to close to 40, with no problems at all. I have a huge family, siblings and their children, my cousins and their families. That is a skill how to coordinate so much cooking, but I can do that, easy peasy. That is a skill. My food tastes good, and it is very basic, but is raved about. Especially my potato salad, smiling, gone down in history with that one for surely.

I learned how to properly freeze foods, can foods, using pressure cookers or water bath methods. I preserve a whole lotta food this way, oh yes, learned how to dehydrate as well. I have a larder full of food, more than my Husband and I could ever eat in our lifetime, hence we share our preserved food with our family.

I learned how to nurture seeds of vegetables and flowers, cloning perennials, growing plants on, to sell to the public. This came from years of studying about greenhouse growing plants and a small nursery business that I owned and operated for about 15 years.

I learned that I really don't know an awful lot about anything, smiling, that is a skill, to accept that you are just on the edge of the iceberg.


I learned that I really don't know an awful lot about anything, smiling, that is a skill, to accept that you are just on the edge of the iceberg.

I learned how to keep the honeybees and attained a certificate, indicating that I was a beemaster. Not that I am, but I delved deeply into apiculture for a good many years and have a pretty good handle on it. I am looking forward to this spring to build up my, one-only-left bee colony, to create a few good, strong colonies again this year forthcoming.

I have learned many carpentry skills from my Husband, helping him to do the the building, tearing down, rebuilding, redesigning of chicken houses and things that go in chicken houses. Think I have a pretty nice set up, I could do it myself now if I had to. This comes from his knowledge, his patience with a gal that just needs to learn in different ways, hands on stuff. This to me is a great skill. I can use a power drill, skillsaw and a chainsaw, these are all skills.

I have learned how to use an incubator and how to look after chicks, once they are hatched, and can grow them up to adults. Is this a skill? I don’t know, but I think so.

I have an achievement in my life, wherein I can type as quickly as the human mouth can form words, smiling. Well, guess that is dependent upon how quickly one speaks, but the average person, I can probably type faster than they can speak. This comes from years as a research typist, word processing of course, in Vancouver, in my younger days. I never stopped typing since I left the working field, so have kept these skills honed. I think this is my greatest skill achievement. I know keyboard commands, which allow me to only use the mouse on certain occasions. I can dicta-type, which is when someone records their words and I transcribe from that recording, that is difficult, as you have to listen and you can't see the words formed, so it is massive translation stuff.

I have learned how to be a listener, people love to have someone to listen to them. And not being much of a talker, I am a wonderful listener.

I have a skill of being a pretty good speller, sometimes errors, but spelling goes with typing quickly, with almost next to zero errors with my typing. That to me is a skill too, error free typing. The comes with knowing the keyboard so well.

Now these words are not flowing quickly through my fingertips. I am thinking now of what other skills I think I might have, if I have to think about them, then they are not something that I deeply have achieved.

Oh, I know how to put make up on, is that a skill, smiling.

Yep, think I am getting to the end of my skills. Nice post, and we get to talk about ourselves, sometimes when I make a post, I feel it is all about me, just all about me, and my response in this thread certainly proved that true. Beautiful days to us all, CynthiaM.

Oh I forgot one. I can sew, I do not like it, but am very good at sewing, be it from scratch to make clothes or mending, my sewing machine has done me well over my lifetime.

Ah Cynthia, some of your posts make me smile, pulling things from my past, into the forefront of my memories. You speak of Roberts Creek, which wasn't far from Garden Bay, in Pender Harbour, where I spent so many of my summers with my grandfather, learning so many things. Both places not very far from Molly's Reach, home of the Beachcombers' episodes.
You speak of dogs, which yes, we used them too. I'm betting you also know how to use an adz. We used them a lot in that marina. dogs, adz, pike poles, and yes, the peavey too.
I don't even know many people that know what an adz is these days, but that is one tool I am very proficient with. Definitely old school, whereas most of my other mentions weren't necessarily old school skills in my mind.

I also left out gardening, which I'm thinking my green thumb came from my grandfather as well. In the depression, he lived in Ontario, and at 17, he supported his family of 5 brothers, and mother, by working on the farm. Underage of course by law, but he did what had to be done.
After that, he always had a huge garden that he grew vegetables larger than any other varieties. He knew about growing and could tell you the proper nutrients each vegetable needed off the top of his head for maximum yields. He bought a 3 acre lot, and just grew stuff on it for almost 20 years. He sold his produce in his grocery store, yes, in Garden Bay, on that beautiful Sunshine Coast.

I suppose my math skills could be considered old school. I don't use a calculator. I do the majority of math in my head, always faster than anyone can push buttons on a calculator. In reverse to Cynthia's typing skills. I get frustrated with tellers that need to stare at a screen blankly, as they push away at buttons, waiting for the answer to appear as to how much to give me back when my groceries are $19.86, and I hand them a $20. Let's not even get into multiplication and division...

Living alone until I was 36, and loving food, I also learned how to cook. Not just regular meals. I love extravagant stuff, and have no qualms about spending many hours preparing a delicious meal. That is no old school skill, as Cynthia mentions, just a good tooting of the horn I suppose, but now we all know a bit more about each other don't we?

Wow, cool thread.

some of my old school skills include:

gardening
woodcarving
elementary blacksmithing/knife making and brain tanning
milking a cow, of course
drawing and painting, although I haven't done these for ages
raising and butchering chickens
learning about poultry breeding

and probably a few others but these come to mind.

I envy all of you for your skills!

Hillbilly, I am glad that fond memories were pulled from the cobwebs of your mind. I am going a little off topic, but then as was mentioned by another, topics have a mind of their own, and little bits that we add to them, even if off-topic, and shed happiness to another -- or grief, if the off-topic stuff bothers, to those, I apologize and hope that it does not darken the day too much . Garden Bay. Such a beautiful place, as so many of the coves, harbours and bays of that Sunshine Coast. Beautiful. I had lived there for about 15 years, then carried on to different pages in my life. We lived about 2 km from Molly's reach. As a young woman, I was a bartender/cocktail waitress at the Cedars' Inn, centre of Gibsons for many years. Yes....another skill, forgot that one, so still on topic. I can bartend and I can also serve drinks and I can also take a table of many individuals and remember what each and every soul wished to have brought to them as a beverage. Not to say that I could remember so much detail now . We had a family reunion in Roberts Creek this late summer, and boy have things not really changed too much in 30+ years, so surprised, but they have some advancements, like a McDonalds, smiling.

Hillbilly, you speak of an adz. I honestly cannot pull that from the memory banks, perhaps I knew it by a different name....or spelled differently...or pronounced differently. But if it was part of boat and logs, you can be your bottom dollar I have used that piece. I think that an adz might be like a shim, well, not a shim, but like an axe that is called a mall, one that has a very thick end of the axehead, used for splitting things. Is that correct? Please tell me what an adz is....just can't remember... Forgot about pike poles. When we left Burnaby in 1969, my Father had stuck one of his pike poles into a log, way up a creek, which was close by the home we lived in. It was called Stoney Creek, and so rightfully called. My Brother and him went on a memory trip one day when they were back in the Burnaby area, just meandering around, looking at (this would have been about 15 years ago now) this, that and the other thing and they took a walk up the banks of ol' Stoney Creek. Lo and behold, nigh onto probably over two decades later (using this time frame very loosely), that pike pole was still stuck in the very same log, lodged on the side of a bank, where my Father in his younger years, had thrust it in. Amazing. Why didn't some kid that I sure played in Stoney Creek, not find it and remove it. Maybe kids didn't play on those creek shores anymore, who knows, but it was still there...

I have a skill to know what is good and what is bad. And....this is good, this is a good and great topic, smiling now that huge smile, again. Beautiful days, CynthiaM.

The adz, it has an axe-like head, but turn it 90 degrees, and put an upward curl on it. Basically, you stand on the end of a log, and swing it straight ahead of you, toward your feet. They're quite often used to make a flat spot on a log end, for stacking another log on top for instance.
It's a bit precarious, standing on the end of a log in the ocean, swinging an axe-like tool towards your toes, but this is how it is.
My grandparents owned Harbor Marina and Grocery up there in Garden Bay for decades. A couple buildings away from the old hospital that was later converted to a hotel.

Hillbilly, ah yes, I recall the adz, never used oned, but yes, I remember, it was almost like a notch in the end of the log, but not deep, as you said, a flat part for another log to sit on, for towing, or making booms. Think that is what my Dad did with them, booms, the storage corals for logs, and not sure if what I am speaking of is called a boom, that is going so far back in my memories. The logs were stored in corals, so to speak, huge, with several long logs in a row, attached and then the logs that went from side to side on the ends to make a place to store the gathered logs, from beach, ocean, whatever. Wow was it a sight to watch him hook up to the logs on the beach and with his incredible ol' boat, pull those logs off and tow them away. Man, those were the days, yes, memories, and yes, oh dear, strayed so off topic....sounds like your Grandparents had a most lovely place, have a wonderful night, with days to follow. CynthiaM.