The World Wide Web, My Surrogate Grandparent

    Count off time. Let's see a raise of hands from my fellow aspiring homesteaders: How many of you have learned a major life skill from YouTube? WikiHow? My online search history reads like a homestead improvement library shelf, if such a heavenly place exists:
    "How to... make apple cider vinegar,
                    ... whitewash a chicken coop,
                    ... tat,
                    ... sprout fodder,
                    ... make herbal salves,
                    ... replace a sill plate,
                    ... cut hay with a scythe,
                    ... decoct essential oils"

    When my husband asks what I'm watching, I tell him my "farm porn."

Yep, found the recipe online. Works wonders on humans and creatures alike.

    It might not be romantic, but I think the internet age is saving small scale agriculture. Many of us growing slow food are learning skills our grandparents would have considered common sense. OK, I don't know if every grandparent knew how to decoct essential oils but I bet they knew how to boil an egg (Yes, I did look it up once. Bring the eggs, a pinch of baking soda, and room temperature water to a rolling boil. Remove from heat and let sit 11 minutes. Transfer to ice water. You're welcome). Whether the culprit was megafarm mechanization or refrigerated transportation or genetic engineering or a globalized economy or the culture of upward mobility -- whatever is to blame, the accidental consequence was an entire generation of farmers skipped. Young folks fled the farms or just couldn't make a go of it. Opportunities beckoned from the cities. Comfortable suburban living was just a bulldozed farm away.

Found photograph

    The problem is, with that generation gap, we carved a gaping hole in our collective knowledge. Grandparents might have told stories from their farming past but rarely did those stories include detailed instructions for propagating grape scions or floating horse teeth. Parents were no longer teaching by example the proper way to prune a cherry tree versus an apple tree or rotate a crop with nitrogen fixers or cure nuts or dye wool. As my grandma once said, "Young people today would never survive another Great Depression. They only know how to push buttons."

Andy teaching Hazel his love for honeybees.

    I know. I know. I can hear some of you clamoring to prove me wrong, shaking your 5th generation farmer heads. I know I'm generalizing. Plenty of you learned to buck hay from your daddy or can peaches with Aunt Trudy. I can't tell you how many people stepped forward with their own fond memories of a childhood on the farm when I was trying to buy our farm. I heard all about their summer jobs picking beans and raspberries, of lambing season and butchering season. But, by and large, they were telling these stories on a lunch break from their city job or across their desks at banks, dentist offices, bus terminals, etc. The nostalgia in their stories revealed to me how far removed those experiences were from their lives today.

My grandma and grandpa circa 1929

My grandma's childhood home in Oklahoma as she remembered it.

Above: A painting by my grandma of one of the houses they built in California. Below: The house as it stands today.

    My mother's parents were farmers in Oklahoma. The Great Depression drove them to California a la The Grapes of Wrath. Grandpa became a union carpenter (by reading a how-to pamphlet, I might add) and Grandma kept house, sewing clothes for her three baby boomer daughters. They counted their pennies and their blessings and, honestly, their grudges too. They built several houses themselves and dabbled in every trade and hobby that "tickled" them, from painting and woodworking to cake decorating and hunting. They traveled the world in retirement and brought back souvenirs and stories of new friendships from China, Egypt, India, and beyond. Their grandsons were all taught to fish and I, the only (and favorite) granddaughter, was taught to sew and crochet because fish guts were icky, duh.

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    The proudest achievement of my grandmother and the quality most valued in her "offspring," as she called us all, was education. She was the first in her family to graduate high school and my mother was the first to graduate college. I was praised above all else for being smart. Farming and homemaking skills seemed somewhat irrelevant, even backward, in this modern world that changed so dramatically over their lifetime. I hope I don't sound blameful here. Our family was just balancing on the same tectonic shift that everyone else in the twentieth century was navigating. How do you raise your kids with the skills you think they'll need when the ground keeps changing under your feet? Also, my stellar education has done nothing but open doors for me. I can still conjugate in Latin and I can hold my own at a dinner party with scientific study-quoting, English literate, art historian egg heads. Try me. Now that I'm raising a daughter, I am acutely aware of how precious education is, what a privilege to be born at a time when girls have the right to choose the direction of our lives and are given the tools to do so.

We can do it! And redo it if we screw it up!

Nothing that a little paint can't fix...

    Had I shown an early interest in gardening or cooking, I'm sure my grandma would have gladly helped me learn. Had I pointed to a wood planer in my grandpa's wood shop, rather than the cool little wood spirals it left on the floor, I'm sure he would have showed me how to use it, rather than shooing me out with my handful of wooden macaroni (which made awesome mermaid hair, BTW).  But my interest came too late. How I wish my grandpa was still here to help me with our barn repairs. I hear him turning over in his grave every time I hammer a nail in crooked. My biggest regret is not asking them more questions. Now, as I try to wrap my head around how to mend a split corner post or raise a wall to repair a foundation, I am left feeling totally inept. The tasks that Grandpa tackled with a cheerful whistle are the most daunting to me now. I know I am willing and capable of learning (I am "smart," right?) but I'm also smart enough to know when I'm in over my head.

    So now, when it's shearing time or I want to make my own beeswax candles, I crawl onto Granny Google's soft lap and type in my query:
    "How to... halter train,
                    ... stretch a field fence,
                    ... fell a tree."

    One more thing. I've made a couple of short DIY YouTube videos myself. My camerawork involves balancing my camera phone against a flower pot while I demonstrate my vast knowledge so prepare yourself for some accidental boob shots. 
    Happy Learnin'!