Is it possible to do Little House on the Prairie?

[ThighsRelief]

Or more Swiss Family Robinson.

I'm not going to /able to I was just thinking of an imaginary UK where every single person immediately winds the clock back by x years.

I suppose everyone would subsistence farm, Native fruits and vegetables would be grown and stored or preserved through the winter. You could have a cow and chickens, fish and hunt game.

You could swap marrows for eggs, and wash in the stream and brush your teeth with twigs.

And have a root cellar.

Sounds lovely until you injure yourself and need modern medical care.

Cobwebs are very useful.

I'd brush my teeth with salt or bicarbonate of soda - but where would I get this? I'd shit in the woods quite happily.

Perhaps we could all donate vegetables to the Dr to keep them alive.

Ariadne it would solve the aging population problem plus long term caring. I don't want that, but it would.

I'm going to need salt, bicarb and vinegar.

Depends on how high you would like the mortality rate to go. Wholly subsistent societies don't generally produce enough to subside a fully equipped hospital or the required drugs to do surgery. Would vaccines still be available (and who would manufacture them?). You could easily return to the days of 1 in 4 kids dying from childhood disease and women risking their life when giving birth.

I can see the odd family or community living off grid, but not society as a whole.

I think it’s a awesome idea I would go full Amish

I think you'd struggle tbh. I love the ideal, the reality not so much.

I wish my dds would exclaim in delight over one simple Little House type Christmas present such as hand knitted mittens, OR a book, OR a new tin mug so they didn’t have to share.
And love my cooking.
And be obedient!
But I’ll keep the mod cons, thanks

Papergirl ah, come on, I'll lend you my grinding stone. We can pummel clothes on the river. We'd all stink.

Oh yes, they got a tin mug each one year! Did they get a comb one year? Fancy. I'd comb my hair with my fingers. I might need a sheep and I was spin it's wool then knit it into clothes.

I think they did get a comb, yes.
Think I’d probably have killed Pa if I’d been Ma and he kept uprooting to head further west every couple of years!

Have you actually read the Little House on the Prairie books?

They nearly starve to death at least twice (due to locusts and blizzards), they all get malaria, her sister is blinded by scarlet fever, her husband is crippled by diphtheria, they're in crushing debt, her baby dies, her house burns down and everyone is wildly racist.

It sounds shit

The farming methods in little house were an ecological disaster which stripped the topsoil of many states and created the dust bowl.
They only had access to land because the forcibly made the local population homeless.
It is the last system that could be considered sustainable or beneficial.

What about people who live in flats and don't have anywhere to grow their own veg or keep a cow?

*dreichuplands" what did they do that caused these problems?

Ploughing the land for agricultural destroyed the dense, deep roots of the indigenous prairie grasses which held the top soil in place and trapped moisture. In periods of drought this led to the wind erosion of soil that created the dust bowl effect.

It is also worth noting that there was a lot of game when the expansion into the prairies started but less and less as farming became established.
I've just finished reading and excellent biography which talks about all this.
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Thorndike Press Large Print Biographies and Memoirs)

Oh I see, interesting, thanks.

But don't you remember how kindly Pa was when he made the built up shoe for Half Pint's crippled friend? And how they'd roll down that hill? Quite fancied both Pa and Willie Olsen.

I remember they were allowed to paddle in the creek, but never to go above their ankles. That fascinated me.

It wasn't even possible for THEM to do Little House on the Prairie without a lot of help and a fair amount of near-death.

Why did they have their lunch in a metal bucket, how I wanted one. And they slept on a mezzanine level while I just had a stupid bedroom.