lystn

Although it's never enjoyable to go through hard times or times of crisis, they hold many lessons for us to learn. The trick is to find something useful about the tough times and not waste the potential lessons. Today we're talking about 10 lessons that I think people can learn in times of crisis.   *Hear this blog post as a podcast episode by pressing the triangle play button near the top of this post!*   I want to believe our current society can have just as much oomph as generations who came before us and dealt with whatever the crisis was of their time. Sure, some folks will need a kick in the pants to get there—but as my great uncle who lived through the Great Depression often told me when he was still alive, there were those people who needed a kick in the pants back in the 30s and 40s, too. A crisis has a way of shaping the people of its day, and I think our current health and economic situation has the potential to do the same. And if this ends up being one of those things that "makes it into the history books", the other thing that will make it into the history book will be how we, as a people, responded to it. Currently, I see a lot of bickering about what the American government is or isn’t doing, or how they're handling things, if they are or aren’t shutting things down, or what the status of Covid testing is. I offer this: how about we let our government officials do whatever they are or aren't doing and we, as a people, apart from our government, start getting to work to help each other. It sounds like a great idea. And it also sounds like something that's happened before. I think the reason we refer to the Greatest Generation as such is because they pushed up their sleeves, got to work with what needed to be done, and made it through. And in the midst of that, there were so many lessons that were learned in their day to day life while going through the hard times they lived through. So what lessons can you learn in the middle of hard times and crisis? 1. What You Know What skills can you share? I spent this past weekend teaching a lot of people how to make bread, answering questions when their first attempt didn’t turn out, and tweaking recipes for people who didn’t have certain ingredients. Bread baking is a skill I have and information I can share with those who need it. But let's look past skills that are often classified as homesteading skills. This isn't just about how to start seeds or how to bake bread. The skill you can share with people may be how to stay calm. It may be how to comfort others. It may be how to entertain kids when you’re about to pull your hair out. It may be medical skills. It may be budgeting skills. It may be "I play guitar really well and so I can hop on a live stream and make people smile". 2. What You Don't Know Ever heard the saying you don’t know what you don’t know? In times of crisis, there will be things that happen that you have to respond with um, I’m gonna have to look that up online or I’m gonna have to phone a friend on this one. I’ve been on video chat a few times with my friend Tom over at Small Scale Gardening asking him about my seed starting set up to make sure I’m doing it right. I’ve been talking to my friend Nicole from Living Free in Tennessee about some financial strategies. Hard times are the time to take note of what you don't know, admit that you don't know it, and then find someone to teach you those things. 3. Where the holes in your preps are You can prep all you want but you really don’t know how well you’ve prepped until it’s tested. In this current situation, I’ve heard lots of homesteaders say we were fine for ourselves but realized we hadn’t prepped for our animals long term. Another Minnesota homesteader explained it like this: prepping to be snowed in for a week and having enough feed for that, is totally different than prepping for a shortage of feed. This feels like preparing for a snowstorm and then coming...