10 Important Traditional Skills
The year I graduated from college I realized I had very few real life skills and a whole lot of time on my hands. This feeling of lacking real skills that were helpful to my everyday life sent me on what is now a 20+ year adventure in skill building.
This where the Nettlesome Life starts taking shape. The moment you start skill building you start taking back your autonomy, agency and freedom. I’ve surrounded myself with a lot of like minded people who are constantly learning how to do new things. Surrounding yourself with others who want to learn new skills or old skills is also a great idea, because you honestly can’t learn all the things you need to, there just isn’t time in the day. However, you can trade some of your learned skills for someone elses and both of you can benefit.
There are many books out there about traditional skills and survival skills. Those are certainly great and if you get the call to do a deep dive into skills you need in off grid or backcountry living you should absolutely pick up those books and add them to your library (check out my list at the end of this post). My list of skills is something I’ve thought about for a while now and it’s mainly for people like I used to be, just starting out. It’s a baby steps list for people who live in the city, maybe in house or apartment or even a dorm room. This a list of important life skills for modern living.
10 Important Traditional Skills
Making a fire. Learn to make a fire without some kind of accelerant. Majority of people can throw kerosine on wood and light something on fire for a little bit or burn their eyebrows off. But I’m talking about the most basic way of making fire in case you are ever lost somewhere, or broken down where there is no cell service. Humans would not be what we are today if we had not learned to harness the ability to make a fire. We need it for heat, light, cooking, protection.
Learn to make a fire for warmth, then learn to let the fire burn down for cooking coals.
Cook from scratch. This is a skill I started learning at 17. I knew I was going to go out into the world and probably not have enough money to eat out. So I learned to cook some very basic things from scratch. That snowballed into making EVERYTHING from scratch. Feeding yourself with real food probably should be number one on this list. It’s the one thing you can get into right now. Find an old copy of The Joy of Cooking and go for it!
Food preservation. Did you know that we live in a world where the food supply is on a three day demand basis. In the gorcery store, what you see on the shelves is what you get. There is no backroom. In the event of a supply chain issue the shelves go bare very quickly. You can avoid the panic by preserving your food. The easiest way to start is by freezing or drying. Freezing does take up a lot of space and requires a power source. Drying is great as it can be done without a power source and the food never has a risk of going bad if properly stored. Canning is next and takes way more time, skill and materials. Though I highly recommend you add canning in after you get drying and freezing down.
Basic mending and sewing skills. The amount of clothing and fabric items that are thrown out every year is astounding. Like mountains and mountains of clothing. Learning to do basic mending and sewing is an awesome skill for both men and women. Lose a button or two? Just learn how to sew on buttons. Have a hem that’s freying? Learn to turn it and sew a new one. You don’t have to become a tailor or one of the crafty ladies on the internet, you just need enough to keep your items in good repair and maybe help out someone else willing to pay for your skills.
Foraging wild edibles. This one reminds me the most of the depression era advice. I wrote a whole post about this years ago. You can check it out HERE. If you really find yourself in hard times because of money, supply chains breaking down or you took a hike and got lost, knowing the wild edibles in your area is going to be a life saver. Also there is something exhilerating about the treasure hunt of looking for something you can take home and eat.
Basic herbal remedies. I would call this kitchen remedies. Learn about things like garlic, onions, thyme, rosemary, calendula, aloe that can help during a common cold, or with first aid. Check out this post I wrote about easy kitchen herbs : Ten Herbs to Know Right Now.
Basic first aid. This may seem obvious to an parent of young children, however this a skill most people don’t know about and should absolutely learn. Taking care of cuts, punctures, abrasions, bruises and burns is super important. With in limits it’s absolutely something you can do yourself. And if it’s something that’s even more than you have the skills for, say a broken bone or a something entered the body, or third degree burn, you can do basic first aid on the area to limit infection and give you time to get to a medical facility.
Way finding/ reading the weather. Finding your way around without GPS or google maps is something people have done for all of human existence. This is absolutely a skill that everyone should know whether you live in the middle of Manhattan or out in the bush. Learn the cardinal directions, landmarks that will guide you in the direction of home. Learn to read the clouds and tell time by the sun. Then you won’t be caught unaware when a storm starts to roll in or the sun starts to go down.
Knife/ tool sharpening. They say a dull knife is the most dangerous kind. Pretty much everyone uses a knife of some kind everyday. If you learn any of the skills I mentioned above you’ll mostly certainly be using a knife at some point. Keeping your tools sharp and ready to use will make your life a whole lot easier.
Recycle, Repair, Reuse. I wanted to write an entire blog post about our landfill culture and I just might one day. This is a skill that is super important and takes time to learn. To even be able to recycle, repair or reuse you first have to change your mind set to one that thinks about the items you are going to acquire and whether or not that can be repaired by you, used in an alternative way or used again and again. I’m still working on it as it gets harder and harder to purchase items that are capable of being repaired. Try to find an electric kettle that you can take a part and repair without breaking plastic parts.
You might be wondering why I didn’t put gardening or growing food on this list. Growing food is an absolutely critical skill in my mind. However, it’s not something that everyone can do on a level that will actually feed you and your family. It also can be incredibly frustrating when things really go wrong and it takes so many years to perfect. If I were to make a second list called “Advanced Level Skills” I would put that there along with machine repair, animal husbandry, textile making, shelter building, water storage and purifying the list goes on and on!
Before I end this, here are some books I highly recommend. Be warned they will send your down the rabbit hole of skill building.
Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emory
When Technology Fails by Mathew Stein
Wildwood Wisdom by Ellsworth Jager
The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs by Tristan Gooley
The Herbal Medica by Sam Coffman (read my review HERE)
The Forager’s Harvest by Samuel Thayer
**What skills do you want to learn? Leave me a comment below!
