Cool stuff our Great grandmas would know about.

[madmomma]

Just opened my yoghurt maker for the first time and was struck by the thought that before yoghurt makers, bread makers etc etc people would've had so many skills that we now don't have and feel we have to buy gadgets to do it for us. Like, I'm sure if I asked my Pakistani mother in law, she'd be able to tell me how to make yoghurt involving zero gadgets and very little time. So what other stuff along those lines is worth re-learning? Off the top of my head I can think of sprouting beans and seeds for bean sprouts, making bread without gadgets, repurposing old garments... Just wondering if anyone else had any ideas.

I make bread, yogurt, jam, marmalade, pickles & chutney.

I can kill & joint a chicken ( but haven't for some years).

Can turn a sheet 'sides to middle', take up hems, darn a sock (haven't for years).

Catch, gut & fillet a fish, change the oil in a car & put up shelves.

And change a plug (but haven't had to do that for a long time).

Am mid 60's .

Thinking about this:

I can: cook, drive a motor car, earn money, sew, make curtains, do basic diy, bake bread, make preserves, launder, iron, pluck, shoot, ride a horse, and get my hands v dirty such as handling manure, raw meat, etc.

My GGM and GM weren't precious either

I make yoghurt by sitting a bowl of milk, with a spoon of live yoghurt stirred in, in a sink full of hot water in my utility. Replace water as required.

Bread from bread maker, soda bread and flatbreads by hand, my jam making and picking basic skills come courtesy of St Delia. And I can cook pretty much anything from scratch, all self taught.

My mum taught me to knit and sew, not done much since the kids were small though.

And I used to have a proper veg patch, only grow perennial stuff now though.

I think it's hard to do stuff really really well, but not that hard to make a decent bash at most things; there is so much information available nowadays. People are time poor though, that's the main problem.

Pickling not picking.

easy milkshake - use the milk bottle, tip out half a pint of milk & add the milkshake powder to the remaining milk, shake shake shake! & there you have it, the easiest, cleanest, frothyess mix without a blender! tip remaining milk back in when empty & repeat!

I make bread quite often, it’s really easy once you know what you’re doing.
My grandmother was a teenager in the 20s, she taught my mum how to dance the Charleston.

My gm used to save milk bottle tops and scraps of foil to clean silver. You put them in a jug with a glug of vinegar and a teaspoon of bicarbonate and put your silver in. Comes out shiney.

Fermenting milk - kefir.

Making yogurt without a yogurt maker, not sure if my grandma would have made yogurt but it can be done with a hot water bottle and towel.

I also make soda bread by hand. And pastry. Cakes in a bowl, not a mixer or processor, the traditional way with a wooden spoon and table spoon. It is how I was taught.

I sew by hand, repairs and alterations, mainly because it is easier that getting a sewing machine out and set up but also because I prefer it.

Clean glass and mirrors with vinegar and newspaper.

My father would repair our shoes, and make small items of furniture, skills he learned as a boy/teen which he never used once he started work as he had to work where he could. Grew all our veg.

All the excess fruit was bottled or used in pickles, apples stored in newspaper, as were potatoes.

I turn shirt collars. I can also darn socks. We had sheets that were side to middled but I don't do that.

My parents put Epsom salts in the bath water.

Whites were put in a huge pan on the stove and boiled, little blue bags used to whiten, and run through the mangle in the back yard before we got a washing machine. Washing by hand must be one of the worst jobs, sore, red rough hands.

I have made pillowcases out of old sheets.

this thread makes me feel ancient

Me too. I can, and have, done most of the stuff on this thread. That these skills are being lost is scary. When global warming kicks in, with its impact on the global economy, we are going to have to relearn these old skills very quickly. (Not me, I'll be long gone...)

My GGM was a slightly famous sufragette (not in the UK). I am really proud of her. My other GGM was heavily involved in the rise of a political party that made a complete mess of my country.
They both knew how to lay fires, ride, hunt and spoke a dialect of a language which is dying out.

Both men and women are losing traditional basic skills, very sad and yes rather worrying. They just don't count for anything anymore in a normal household. I think the two wars taught self reliance and making the most of things and now we are a rushing, throw away society where such skills are unappreciated.

waving
we used to do that with kids in class to show them how milk was made. You need veyr high cream and not homogenised if using actual milk though (so no supermarket milk would work) We used cream.
It is surprisingly effective.

I don't think most of these are gone.

They are just considered to be 'crafts' or 'hobbies' now.

Things like The Sewing Bee and Bake Off show that there are loads of people out there who still sew from scratch and bake a loaf just becasue they like to.

I can light a fire with one match.
Learnt it is as a guide. Still do it in our woodburner

My GGM started work in a Black Country nail-making factory aged 14 - so metalworking skills.
Family story that her first day 'initiation' was to be carried around the factory on a bench - fell off and broke her nose.

Butter and yogurt-making would traditionally have been done with raw non-pasteurised milk and cream. It sours much more pleasantly than the pasteurized shop bought milk.

I can bake bread, cakes, biscuits without a recipe, skin a rabbit, pluck a pheasant or chicken, make yogurt, cheese (hard and soft).
I knit, sew, crochet; I used to make all my DC's and my clothes. I make jam, marmalade, preserves, pickles, chutney, sloe gin etc.
I think I could be pretty self-sufficient if I had to be. Everything was learned from my mum who self-taught herself or learned from her MiL.
My paternal grandmother made the best scones ever!

Villain. We use shop bought milk but occasionally if we are near a farm we buy raw milk and yes it is 100% better

I can bake cake, bread, biscuits etc, make all forms of pastry. Catch, clean and cook fish. Skin and clean game birds. Skin, clean and portion rabbit. Butcher a half pig or lamb (beef is beyond me) Make butter, yoghurt and clotted cream. Pickles, preserves, chutneys etc.

Can sew and darn and do invisible repairs. Crochet and knitting but not great at it.

Can grow veg of all sorts. Can cook on a coal/wood fired Rayburn (never had an Aga) Harvest honey. Milk a cow or goat and also calve a cow and lamb a ewe.

When I can't sleep I imagine that I am one of a handful of survivors of the apocalypse and the people I would want with me to ensure we had all the skills to survive. Usually sends me to sleep!

My granny milked her cows, made butter and cheese to sell at market and raised chickens, turkeys and pigs.
Secretly she did a nice line in moonshine!
She raised 14 children and was known as the local healing woman, she kept spiders in a barn and used their silk to seal wounds. She knew many herbal remedies.
Bit of a hero really

My aunt can go from lambing, all the way through to a finished pair of socks! She still spins her own wool and knits it into things in front of the TV, seemingly without even having to think about it. She is also a fantastic cook, makes practically all of her food from scratch, does patchwork, needlework, etc.

DM used to salt runner beans from the garden rather than freeze them, the tasted lovely. DM and DGM were taught to iron at school and could make even the cheapest of dresses look amazing with a high standard ironing and a little starch. DGM made elderflower champagne, lovely.
On the other side of the family DGM had been trained at what is now Reading University to make cheeses, though sadly she had given that up by the time I would have found it interesting.