What you wrote reminds me of my upbringing but with some differences.
I go 'back home' now, and the little 40 acre plots with a house, barn, garden spot, a few trees and an outhouse, have all been swallowed up, and are now just parts of the thousands of acres of fenceless/borderless, continuous rows of cotton, wheat, rice or soybeans.
My Mom, my brother and I still own one of those 40 acre farms ... but hasn't had anything growing on it for years except timber. We don't have to be there for that. We do have a trailer that we rent out on the place.
Where we used to be able to go out and shoot two or three rabbits or squirrels for dinner ... there are none, because all the 'treerows' and 'fencerows' where the rabbits and squirrels lived are gone. The creeks where we caught fish, have been dredged out, all the trees removed, and now dry up completely most of the year.
In our case, the rabbits are mostly gone, squirrels - there are more than ever. But the deer and their ticks are over-running the land ... when I was a kid, they were rare and I grew up only hunting small game.
I go 'back home' now, and the little 40 acre plots with a house, barn, garden spot, a few trees and an outhouse, have all been swallowed up, and are now just parts of the thousands of acres of fenceless/borderless, continuous rows of cotton, wheat, rice or soybeans.
It's a little different where I come from. I spent a good bit of my childhood on a hill called Springville Hill, where part of my family had lived since they bought land grant land from the railroad generations ago. I know a hundred years ago, every 40 acres in the country had a farm with a family living on it. The country was filled with people and they made their living off the land. Sure not much of a living, but they survived and had more kids than they knew what to do with. 50 years ago, there were only 5 families on the hill, all but one elderly couples. Now there are a dozen new houses (& one trailer) with people living there. Most of them don't farm (much, except for one family that owns most of the farm acreage), they just live in the country.
I think back to the fact that a hundred years ago, there were so many people making a poor living off those little farms ... so I know it can be done. As for the knowledge of how to do it, I have it cause I did it all as a kid. But how long will I be around? People would need a new education in practical living skills, like how to use an ax and a hoe, how to can food, and a bunch of other stuff.
As for hunting and fishing for survival, nah, that's not how you make it in the country unless you're in the wilderness ... you keep livestock. Chickens, hogs, cattle, especially the first two as the don't take a lot of land. And you build yourself a smoke house for when you slaughter a hog. You dig a little celler and learn how to can your own vegetables and dry fruits, you put your potatoes and the stuff you canned down there where its really dark and they keep. You give up the idea of selling timber, as you'll be using the wood your place grows for fire wood. Keep part of your place in woods for firewood and turn your hogs into it, they browse and you only need to supplement them a little corn every day. Plant a small orchard and let your chickens forage there and supplement them some corn every day, throw them your table scraps, peelings, chickens will eat anything (I won't go further into that). Make a coop for them and a corncrib. You'll need to clip the chickens wings so they can't fly, castrate most of your boar pigs when they're small and put a nose ring (can be a bent nail) in their nose and use pliers to make it tight so they won't root under fences. You get the idea. |
