My Grandma Clarice was born in 1899 In the Oklahoma Territory. She lived through two World Wars and the Great Depression, the Korean War, the beginning of the Cold War and the space race. She saw the advent of air travel, mass produced cars, the proliferation of radio and later television, the creation and use of nuclear weapons – all this before I was born. I am a charter member of Generation X, and am part of the bridge between the analog past and the digital present, and Grandma Clarice was my connection to a very different time and reality.

I had the singular blessing of spending more time with Grandma Clarice than any of the other eight grandchildren. After my Grandpa Oda Lee passed and she moved near us, I was with her every Saturday and often during the week, helping her with chores, mowing her lawn, tending her vegetable garden, and, most importantly, listening to her stories, and learning. She influenced the arc of my life more than any other single person, including my parents, because she planted the seed of Self-Reliance.

She knew how to do everything, it seemed; growing food, cooking and baking, canning and preserving, sewing (I have her still-working treadle Singer sewing machine – a favorite treasure). She got the most use out of everything she had, reusing and re-purposing everything she could.

She was creative, capable and resourceful because in her life she had to be, everyone did. For much of her life there were no supermarkets and very few of the conveniences that we take for granted. Having a garden wasn’t a hobby, it was survival.

Being Gen X, especially with this connection to the past, I have been really bothered by the loss knowledge and skills that were once so commonplace. Self-reliance was a necessity, but it was also a birthright! It’s true freedom, yet I’ve watched my peers and their children, and now grandchildren, be pushed into servitude and dependence in the name of “convenience.” How many born in the last 50 years know how to grow their own food, then harvest and preserve it, or sew their own clothing, or even sew on a button? How many know how to collect and purify water, build and repair things with their own hands, raise and butcher livestock?

We have become so far removed from real life, and real hardship, that when our fragile systems collapse, even temporarily, people panic because they don’t know what to do to survive. Western civilization has traded the freedom of self-reliance for the slave-system of dependency on convenience, and we don’t even know where our food comes from any more.

That’s why I homestead. That’s why I created community gardens, taught gardening, foraging and preparedness. That’s why I taught

my kids to garden, cook from scratch, and sew. That’s why it’s so important to me to preserve and share as many of those lost skills and wisdom as I possibly can. I understand how fragile our system is, I have a close connection with the way the world used to be, and at some point will be again. And I value freedom and self-reliance, which by necessity means rejecting much of the current dependency system.

And it’s my way of honoring the life and legacy of Grandma Clarice.