Relocalization and Cottage Industry

kpeavey · Expert Joined: Oct 04, 2004 Posts: 1321

I started this all off by thinking about food preparation. I was packing corn in Mylar bags and got to thinking that none of my neighbors were doing this, and that few of them would know what to do with it, and that even fewer have the tools to do much with it. This is where it took me...

Having spent the last few decades living in cities, eating fast food, prepackaged TV dinners, and food so heavily processed they can't identify the ingredients, a great many people have lost the ability to prepare basic meals from fundamental ingredients. Corn, rice, wheat, oats, and beans are simple foods. They are available cheap, in high volume, and store for years when properly packaged. There are plenty of people who are not able to identify whole wheat. Hand someone a bag of whole dry corn, they have no idea what to do with it. Rice, on the other hand, has a chance.

I was looking online at some recipes for beans. One recipe said something like open the can, cut some hot dogs, mix the hot dogs and beans in a bowl, microwave for 2 minutes, serves 4. years ago I was training a kid to be a shrt order cook at a diner just outside albany NY. We had an order for 2 eggs over easy with some toast. I told him to put two eggs in a pan, buttering it first, then 2 slice of bread in the toaster. He buttered the pan, put in 2 eggs, then showed me to see if he had done it right. I said "Thats good with the butter, but you'll need to crack the eggs open. I though it best if I took care of the eggs, he moved on to the toaster. After a few seconds I hear the guy going "Ouch, Ouch!" It was a conveyor belt toaster, he did not understand that you simply set the bread on the belt. He was singing his hands holding the bread inside the toaster.

Simple skills have been lost. Much of the loss is a result in the simple nature of modern appliances. It used to be common for every home to have a woodstove or fireplace, a couple of cast iron skillets or pans, and every town had a grain mill. The loss of the electrical grid will remove the ability to cook a meal from a great many homes in the developed world. If you don't own a grain mill, how many of your friends have one. Where is the nearest one to which you can gain access. What can you make with dried whole corn and or beans? In the absence of electricity, how many people out there can heat a quart of water to 160 degrees? Its not that many. There are some people who have the ability, campers, camp stoves, bbq grills, some woodstoves out there as well. I can see these items being in high demand in a crisis situation.

Bread is a common staple. Local bakers are still around, although the big box stores with a bakery department are surely cutting into the market. I live in a town with 10,000 other people. I know of 1 small bakery downtown. Where is the bread made that the big box stores stock? I have no idea. How many people do you know who have made bread before? The ability to bake bread in a crisis situation would be a skill in such demand that I don't know what to predict. This of course assumes ground wheat, oil, sugar, salt and yeast is available, along with a working oven to bake it in. To maintain bread production a community would need everything already in place to last a considerable period or the ingredients and energy brought in regularly. Equipment which operated on locally available renewable energy would be required at the very least in the event the electricity goes down.

In a Post Peak Oil collapse, everyone returns to gardening to replace the lost goods from failed distribution systems. How many of these people will be able to raise enough tomatoes, as well as other ingredients, and produce tomato sauce. How many have a cooking device which will allow them to do so if they knew how?

Preparing for the Future is a tremendous project, requiring tools, expertise, systems, equipment and skills for even the most basic of self sufficient production. The ability to raise and grow food. Garden tools, arable land, water, energy to move the water, the know how to raise this food in a sustainable, duplicatable manner. Harvesting and processing the food, and storing it. Pressure canners, as well as jars and lids, dehydrators, sinks, stoves, pots and pans, mills, grinders, knives, and of course all the tools and supplies to clean up and maintain sanitation. Cooking equipment, be it stoves, ovens, open fires, smokers, BBQ pits, pots, pans, griddles, and a myriad of smallwares are essential to a diet based on local foods coming ripe at different times. How many people do you know who can make their own cheese, flour, butter, vinegar, or wine, have all the equipment in place and are able to grow all the ingredients in their backyard?

Don't get me wrong, there are people out there with some ability. Soap and candle making is a hobby craft, basket weaving, pottery, cooking, organic gardening as well. There are those who tinker around in the shop with metal sculpture or blacksmithing, woodworking set up with great skill and a keen eye for detail. Some people make quilts, dresses, even hats. Of all these people, what percentage would be able to continue their skills without electricity and a distribution system to bring them supplies and actuate equipment?

A crash that is slow enough to motivate people to get deeper into their crafts to such an extent that they are able to create their products from local materials is a best case scenario. Small economies and team work can help. One guy cuts down trees, makes lumber and firewood. Another builds fences and cabinets. Someone raises sheep for meat and wool, another takes fresh wool and turns it into yarn, then socks. Someone raises bees for honey and wax, others make candles and mead. The population needs time to relearn crafts which were performed locally a century ago, lost to the ravages of machines and industrial production. A town without a beekeeper has no honey and no candles. Maybe there is a beekeeper in a town close by. Sure their may be horses, but the closest farrier is 50 miles away. If the farrier needs charcoal, he's hoping there are plenty of trees around and someone who knows how to produce charcoal, with the equipment in place. There are seamstresses out there who can make a suit of clothes in her home, but she needs a source of thread, fabric, and parts for the sewing machine. Farmer John can raise the wheat, mill it, even bake the flour into bread. He still has to get it from the farm to the customer, and needs a system of money or barter in order for his activity to be worth his effort.

Relearning a single skill for a cottage industry is all well and good but for that industry to be viable, a support system needs to be in place. While barter can replace money as a means of trading goods and services, there needs to be something out there to trade for. Farmer John is not going to spend all his time baking bread in order to give it away. He'd do better spending some of his time canning tomato sauce or cutting firewood for the winter. An entire community needs to relearn a wide array of skills in order that ancillary products and services are available.

It takes time to learn a craft, and the right tools and equipment to do it. Whats more, the tools equipment and skills need to be useful in a pradigm of energy depletion. You can't run to Sears, buy a bunch of tools and start building cabinets unless you already have an understanding-even a basic one-of the steps involved. To keep going, your tools will need to work without elecctricity or fossil fuels. People can learn, they do it all the time, but the awareness of what they will need for the future is not in place on a scale that will be needed to continue any sort of localized barter based economy. The firewood guy will eventually have to give up his chainsaw for an axe, and give up his F250 for a team of horses to haul the logs out of the woods, otherwise there is no more firewood. Furthermore, someone needs to have axes and teams of horses in place ready to sell.

How then, do we move backwards? How does a society, with most of the people having no clue of future events, move from being dependent on a vast and intertwined network of goods and services produced by the indigenous people of whereever, to a local resource and renewable energy based society, and do so in the timeframe available (20-30 years using the most liberal extimates, 10-20 with resonable estimates, 5-10 with worst case scenarios), all the while prices on everything increasing, world politics getting more militaristic, governments continuously reducing civil liberties, shortages of goods on the market and weather patterns resembling bad Hollywood movies?

I think the world will simply explode under the pressure.
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eastbay

Great thread idea kpeavey.

Four years ago my wife and I knew almost nothing about veggie gardening. Now, due to peak oil, we're getting very, very good. In fact, we're quitting our local CSA after this year and doing it on our own next season. Six months of no vegetable purchases is the goal. We'll make it.

But we don't do animals. But I checked that box anyhow because it's closest to what we are good at. Food growing.

But we're in our 50's and can't learn it all. Few will.
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mercurygirl · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jan 29, 2006 Posts: 1289

Wow, great post. Hope it gets made a sticky.

I could check three on your list, so didn't vote. Like a lot of others here will say, having many skills is the way of the future, as is localization. That said, there have also always been specialists, and probably always will. The scary part is how many need to become farmers, or at least, gardeners.

Food Not Lawns!

IslandCrow

Maybe here is the place to explore this, or maybe in the economy thread. As I look to the future I want to encourage relocalisation and cottage industry - BUT: -

Because most of the cottage industry is small scale, to provide a living wages the costs have to be very high compared with mass production. Costs of hand-made products are almost in the class of luxury goods.

As energy costs will rise, and the value of the Yuan rises, then we can expect the cost of mass produced goods to rise and some of the gap between their costs and that of local production to narrow.

However, as people’s incomes are under pressure they will have to cut out spending on luxury goods, so there is a great danger that the remaining handicraft and cottage industries will be squeezed out of existence just before they are most needed.

With an increasing sense of frustration I ask “what can we do to save the handicraft and cottage industries during a time of economic depression so that they are there to help cope with the declining oil/energy supplies?” Or to put it another way “How much extra am I prepared to pay for local goods because I believe there will be a long term need for such service, while I have little hope that they might be able to survive the coming economic crash?”

Personally I buy my bread for a local (one man and his wife) bakery, get my wood supply from a local farmer, buy local potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers (there is a good green house supplier in the next community - and fresh tomatoes taste so much better than those transported a long way!). But I only have limited need for more dishes (from the potter who sells on the village green), and I have not bought anything from the seamstress (a mother with several small children).
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CarlinsDarlin · Moderator Joined: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 1422

Great post, kpeavey. It amazes me, sometimes, the incredible depth of knowledge and forethought of some posters. Well done. You have presented the problem beautifully.

IslandCrow also brings up good points. How much extra are we willing to pay for locally produced goods?

We shop locally as much as we are able. And yes, we do pay extra. It's important to me that local businesses and craftsmen remain in business because of all the reasons mentioned. I also know many of my neighbors who produce goods and we trade and barter among ourselves. But, as noted, many of these goods are produced with outside inputs dependent on the status quo.

I hope we have 10-20 years to re-establish these kinds of cottage industries. The more time we have, obviously, the more likely we will be successful on a community level. There are so many people, even here in our local, rural community, who cannot cook without directions on a box. It's sad. But there are others way ahead of the curve. I just hope we have enough time to pass on that knowledge, but no so much time that people get complacent and the holders of that knowledge pass on, themselves.

Seven of your poll options are represented in our local community, with some modifications. With enough time, we could be okay. Personally, in our household, we could manage four. Three being most likely. I'll have to try to narrow it down to one.
K

TheDude

I see there are two other entertainers. Cool

Only other thing I'd be good for is (maybe) digging a ditch. The skill I want to pursue though is cobbling/shoe repair. Start at the bottom, you know? Very Happy

Also figure it will be a profitable trade no matter what happens.

No option for police/militia/soldier? As glaring an omission as prostitute...wait, are they "entertainers"? Laughing

As it happens there's a farrier about an 1/8 of a mile from me. Dunno about their operations though. Milling is a big consideration, I think a town of any size in a rural area shouldn't do without a good hand mill at the very least.

A must-own: The Forgotten Arts and Crafts by John Seymour. Don't have a mill but at least I have a book showing how it was done.

South of Portland there's Bob's Red Mill, whose stone ground flour is in every store round these parts.
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IanC

I can provide medical care for acute injury and illness...dependant of course on the ready supply of drugs. A lot of the injury care is what we sometimes call "arts & crafts": suturing, draining lesions, removing foreign bodies, setting bones. I'll offer this up to my community along with sourdough bread baking, cob building, gardening, preserving, and...and...wait for it....

accordion music!!! Okay and fiddle and songs too. Gotta have the button accordion though. Such a ridiculous instrument, it will make my starving neighbors smile.

I agree, though that the pressure of having to make this transition will cause our society to explode. Just reading your post made me jittery about my lack of preparation. It also underscored how important it is for whole communities to prepare. NO one person can do everything.

-IanC

CarlinsDarlin · Moderator Joined: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 1422

Dude and Ian,
I also play an instrument (acoustic guitar) and sing, but I didn't choose that option because I figured food would be in higher demand Laughing

Kathy

Nicholai

I know nothing. I can cook you a meal if you give me the ingredients on a sheet of paper and the needed food from the nearest grocery store. I don't have a piece of land to grow food on nor a sustainable home to start all of this from. I'm trying though, slowly but surely.

If all goes well, I should get started on my Cob cottage within the next 8 months or so. I'm so effed.

Ludi

Love this thread! Smile

I have a lot of skills, but I don't know what I will do to support myself in the future. There may not be much demand for anything but food in the near future, as people will be able to live for a long time on their old stuff.

I'm currently an artist by profession, but I don't expect to be able to support myself through art in the future!
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Kingcoal

coyote

Arts for me. I've learned quite a bit about natural artists' pigments and materials, and it's my intention to become what a previous generation would call a "colorman." I'll provide myself and my community with pigments and paints for artists.

The trick now is to produce as many pigments locally as possible. So in my (extra) garden right now I am growing some traditional dye plants that can be made into paints. I'm growing indigo, weld, and madder, and plan to add some more possibilities next year. This is tough for me, since it turns out I have quite a red thumb. I kill plants by looking at them the wrong way! But I'm learning. I've also learned a lot about searching for, collecting and preparing earth pigments.

I'm practicing making watercolors/gouache from store-bought pigments for now - this fall I'll get a chance to try making some colors from my own plants. I've harvested gum from our peach tree to use for the binder, rather than the imported gum arabic. And later, if I can get any kind of property, walnut trees are a must, to make walnut ink, and possibly (if the food situation isn't too terrible) walnut oil to make oil paints with.

If this is to work at all, I'll eventually need to be in a community where I can form a partnership or collaboration with someone who produces paper and perhaps canvas locally, possibly from hemp. And, hopefully, some local honey as a humectant for the watercolors.

Colors grown from plants, in the long run, are the only pigments from truly renewable sources. And the bright colored earths, while not strictly renewable, are very abundant here in the Southwest, especially from Arizona. So if the trains keep running, I'll use those as well.

Anyway, this is the path I've chosen. I'm fairly excited about it, to tell the truth - I think I've found the right profession for myself. I couldn't give up artistry, and this is the best solution I could come up with to make my art relevant to a world of resource depletion. If the watercolors don't work out, the dye plants will be available for their traditional use in dying cloth. That's a backup.

I guess we'll find out pretty shortly whether these kinds of cottage industries will work out or not. Great thread, thanks!
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Ludi

Coyote, where are you located? I'm interested in buying pigments from you as soon as you have some for sale. I would like pigments for painting, but presently I'm more interested in those for dying wool. Will you also be supplying mordants, or will I need to find those elsewhere?

Thanks. Smile

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"...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow." - jboogy

mystiek

This site is really cool. I can provide medical care-to what degree depends on availability of medications-but I can patch folks up too. We are getting pretty good at the gardening and I love to cook. One of the things that would be neat is start connecting with PO folks within our regions that are interested in the above approach. Its a good way to share not only what resources we have individually, but other resources in an area. I live in an agricultural/rural community with some industry-alot of resources available here.
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mercurygirl · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jan 29, 2006 Posts: 1289

KP, it's an enormous problem as you're aware. Thanks for bringing it up.

I do think an important role I can play right now is in support of local efforts. I'll never be a farmer, or self-sufficient, but who is going to help the farmers come back? Supportive neighbors.

coyote, have you tried making egg tempera yet? What you're doing sounds like fun.