This reminds me of a conversation I had with my ex-MIL about Bachelor’s Buttons. She insisted they were perennial’s, because they grew back in the pot she had them planted in. I tried to explain that they reseeded, but gave up fairly quickly. It was not worth it.
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I have that type of conversation a lot lol
It goes something like this.
…Yes I have x plant. Yes I will sell you x plant. However x plant will not live if you install it there and we have no warranties. If you would rather me suggest a plant that will thrive in that area I can do so…
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t
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I’ve had that conversation about tomatoes of all things. No, what you had were what I always called “volunteers”. Seeds that fell from the tomatoes you didn’t collect and then they came up the next year.
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DreamHorse is full of ads from people who adopted a mustang and taught it to wear a halter but that’s it while allowing it to run roughshod over them in their attempt to “bond.” They lack the skill to teach it anything more, so in their intention to “rescue” the horse they have probably done it a disservice as it will now take someone fully versed in dealing with a feral, now spoiled, horse.
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I know. It’s such a frustrating experience.
Most of the barn cats I have known over the years get fed - by humans - as well as the horses!
Tying this back to food – it makes me crazy when people want to eat foods that are out of season, and then they complain that they aren’t good.
“These tomatoes are terrible, they hardly have any flavor!” (In March)
“I don’t understand why we can’t find good raspberries to go on that Valentine’s Day cake.”
Or, my nightmare – asparagus as a side dish at Thanksgiving!
Call me crazy but hothouse tomatoes shipped across the country in February aren’t even worth buying. I’ll wait.
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I don’t know. During the arctic blast some opportunistic sparrows took refuge in my chicken coops, flying out and scaring the bejebbers out of me in the morning.
Actual conversation “Honey! There were birds in the chicken coop! Not chickens, regular birds.”
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So as far as general knowledge.
On this board we are going to trend towards knowing more than the average person about horses, and by extension farming: cows, pigs, chickens, vegetables, crops. Also by extension dogs, cats, housepets. We also have some computer literacy. As primarily older women we also tend to know a bit about cooking, especially basics and from scratch. We also follow politics and current events. And from horses, we tend to have exposure to the outdoors and know about plants, birds, weather, wild animals, etc. Also pest control.
Some of us (not me) know a lot about house maintenance, farm maintenance, gardening, truck repair, hunting, fishing, and how to make hay.
Some of us have professional knowledge like law or accounting that we share but don’t expect everyone else to.
By and large, I don’t see much interest in fashion trends, current popular music, and trending internet memes, because we are not all 17. We probably have other gaps that I’m not even aware of. I know I have little tolerance for learning new computer applications, and I can not name all the parts of a car engine.
The things we know, we tend to take for granted as a common basis of shared knowledge. It can seem inconceivable that someone doesn’t know how to halter a horse or roast a chicken but it happens.
My mother was unfamiliar with running water or electricity until she “moved to town” as a young adult in the 1940s.
One of the things about food is that there are legitimate “food deserts” in big American cities. You can’t easily get to a supermarket. In Baltimore I lived across the street from a Safeway but East and West there was nothing but liquor stores behind bullet proof glass. One day I found the discount supermarket and it was full of house brand canned goods, including things like canned sweet potatoes which are about the easiest things to cook from scrstch. Once I was in Safeway buying a super cheap little frying chicken for $2 (how is that possible?) which roasted nicely for one person. Another woman looked at them and announced she had no idea how you’d cut that up for frying. I said it was easy but then realized you’d also need a good knife, a chopping board, and some knowledge of anatomy. On the other hand I have no idea how to deep fry at home 
and don’t care to learn.
Anyhow my point is that if you have multi generational poverty, especially urban poverty, you end up eating at the low end of industrialized or processed foods. In order to cook, you need some exposure to cooking as a child, some literacy to search out recipes, and access to a functional kitchen with some basics of knives and pots and pans. You also need access to groceries and the time and mental space to cook.
Skills can get lost in a generation. This was actually a thing in Victorian England where people moved into cities from farms, worked in factories, lived in very cramped conditions, and lost cooking skills. Even the farm girls going into servants jobs wouldn’t know how to cook middle class meals for their employees, and had to learn.
Anyhow we can all have gaps in our knowledge. As a kid, I saw peas, carrots, sunflowers, radishes, growing at relatives’ houses in a different climate area (we ate a lot of frozen veg at home). But I was well over 40 before I saw brussel sprouts on the plant at a community garden here. I didn’t see zucchini, eggplant, or kiwi fruit in stores until I was in college. I didn’t know a hyena wasn’t a canine until a few years ago :). So I think we can all have wierd gaps. I wouldn’t discount or say it’s impossible to have any wierd gap or moment of blankness or disconnect. If you grew up urban it would be perfectly possible to not see a rabbit or a hen live and to have a brain fart, as they say, when you do see them. Children especially can concoct funny ideas and if they aren’t corrected by experience the ideas can linger until they are.
I’m sure most of us could have some OMG moment where we realized we had got something totally wrong as a child that we only saw as an adult. Many adults are very shaky on geography if they don’t travel there.
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I think we’re also going to have a bit of knowledge that comes from education and a certain social strata that enables us to be able to keep horses. Even on a budget, a horse is a luxury that many cannot afford.
Though I’ve been somewhat snarky on the board, I worry about people not being connected to food for a few reasons…the first is survival. I cannot tell you how useful it has been at points in my life to be able to cut up a chicken or cook from scratch. To know that I have the knowledge of gardening, though I’m no master gardener, reduces my stress levels incredibly because I know that no matter the fragility of society, I will always be able to feed myself and my family. Will it ever come to that? No, I’m no prepper, but food insecurity is one of the basics (food, water, shelter) that if I know I always have, I can go about my day without stress. I’d like for others to have that comfort too.
The second is voting. People who don’t understand agriculture vote, and they vote in large numbers because they tend to live in cities. There are more people in cities than live in rural areas (I know, this seems stupid to point out, but I should). While I agree with the city folks on many issues, I also understand rural concerns and as we move more and more to the cities it will become a bigger and bigger issue. Experts estimate that more than 2/3 of the global population will live in cities by 2050.
This is a collision that concerns me.
The third is the damage that people who are well meaning but clueless can do. They open fences and let cattle loose onto highways (almost hit one of those). They buy rescue horses and don’t know how to deal with them. They accuse farmers of being heartless and damage their equipment. It’s no wonder we’re losing farms left and right.
It all starts with a lack of positive connection to food production. This is a systemic issue and it is getting worse.
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Oh, I grew up around people who knew where food came from, and had horses or other animals because those were cheap at the time, and did a lot of stupid things because they didn’t think they needed to learn anythung. COTH trends older and better educated than other horse boards.
Where I live vegetable growing is hit or miss even for the local farmers so no one much is getting food security from their back yards.
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@Alterration I actually think about stuff like this while my mind is wandering cleaning stalls and whatnot.
If the apocalypse comes, in whatever form it might be, the first thing I’m doing is heading down the road to the hobby farm with the large herd of goats and free range chickens and I’ll be buying or bartering for a few of each. Might have to find some guinea pigs too 
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The problem here is that all the gun nuts will be killing people with food/animals in order to get the supplies for themselves. Since they aren’t thinking long-term, they won’t realize that killing breeding stock and people who know how to raise food is a stupid move.
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Didn’t see that one, but they could have roared in that one, too. 
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Great source of protein, Guinea pigs or so I’ve heard. Now those I might have trouble slaughtering. They are so cute!
I remember listening to a conversation (years ago) by a couple of “survivalists” where one bragged that he had food enough for “150 years”. I was tempted to ask him if he realized that he would be unable to take advantage of that time frame, but I held my tongue.
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I tried roses several times before I realized just how far reaching and how many black walnut roots were in the one “suitable” area of my gardens. The list of casualties (not just roses) is extensive.
Me after years of mistakes and finding out some of the available advice is no good, “FINE! More Hostas and ivy and Forsythia is then!”
The problem with survivalists is that they think the way to save themselves is with aggression and hoarding, when the truth is, the way to say OURselves is with community and sharing. Plus you get to keep your soul.
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Yeah, and re-reading what I wrote I wasn’t very clear.
I’m not so worried about the Mad Max type of apocalypse as I am always afraid of losing income. Having weathered some extremely difficult times in my life, knowing I can survive on a bucket of rice, beans, and what I grow is comforting (and yes, I know it’s many buckets of rice and beans…but you get the gist).
During the Great Depression, those with those skills fared much better than those who didn’t have them. And I’ve no doubt that something like the Great Depression could happen again the way we are abstracting money (NFTs are wild to me mentally). My great-grandmother and great-uncle talked a lot about the Great Depression when I was a kid and it left a mark on me.
Even during a recession, being able to cook and garden means surviving on what most would call luxury foods as opposed to just eating ramen (though ramen are wonderful and I won’t ever knock them).
I sailed through the COVID restrictions because I could grow everything (including mushrooms!) and had food storage. I don’t panic buy before storms because I have pretty much everything I need for quite awhile.
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I took a class in spinning last year. I joked that it was because I had to develop a skill that would make me useful after the apocalypse so the preppers would feed me.
But I was only half joking. 
Edited to clarify that it was the spinning wheel kind of spinning, not the bicycle kind of spinning.
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