Lost Skills

Chemistry for Fun & Profit: Cracked Heel Balm

2024/04/05 Danielle 0

Alright, mostly for fun, not so much for profit. Unless you count a good foot ointment as profit (which I sort of do)… I suffer from dry skin and cracked heels on my feet. Used to be, I could just use whatever body lotion I was using on the rest of my skin (I also get really dry skin on my knees and elbows, so body lotion is a thing I have opinions about). I have tried using just a straight skin-friendly oil, which works pretty well (I believe that coconut oil is popular in the African American community, so […]

Lost Skills: Butchering

2022/12/19 Danielle 0

This is going to be a controversial post for some people, so please consider yourselves warned: I will be talking about killing animals, including the mention of blood and guts and slaughter. There are no images. It is my strongly held opinion that there is nothing wrong, per se, with humans eating meat – provided it is done ethically. Which is to say, the animals involved live good lives, and were killed in as stress-free and painless a manner as is possible. What this means, practically speaking, is that you need to either raise and kill, and butcher your own […]

Lost Skills: Soapmaking

2022/10/26 Danielle 0

Soapmaking, as a hobby, tends to get either the enthusiastic interest of people who are into homesteading and do-it-yourself make-your-own hobbies, or half-amused references to the 1994 Fight Club scenes about stealing medical waste from liposuction operations and turning the fat into soap to then sell back to the wealthy customers of those same cosmetic surgery clinics. That is possible, by the way. The making of soap from human (or, more usually) other animal fat. Lard (beef fat) and tallow (sheep or lamb fat) are traditional ingredients for soapmaking, and make a nice, hard soap with a good lather. One […]

Lost Skills: Cooking

2022/08/24 Danielle 0

I know. It’s a weird thing to list as a “lost” skill, right? But hear me out. A lot of people don’t really cook anymore. They never learned, or they don’t have time, or they think it’s hard (it’s really not). The rise of convenience foods and cheap (relatively) fast food have combined with the increased and increasing need for families ot have two – or possibly more – full time income-earners to make ends meet. It’s not a good thing. It probably showcases a lot of what is wrong with our capitalist society and economy, and we don’t even […]

2022/06/12 Danielle 0

A lot of the things I post here are about farming, more or less. Horticulture, agriculture, permaculture.. growing food (and fibre, and animal fodder). Which reflects the fact that the production of our base necessities is really important. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs places basic physiological needs at the bottom for a reason, after all – they underpin everything else. But growing ingredients isn’t the only part of that picture which is important. Over the last year or two, I’ve been looking at various sort of ‘old fashioned’ skills, mostly just because I’m interested and I’m that sort of nerd. I […]