Rising fuel costs for the tractor following coastal damage, worldwide environmental affects from Chinese development, financial investments and the economy, even the stress of watching it all from our living rooms -what happens “out there” affects us “out here.”

We share the world’s problems, but we don’t have to wait for the world’s solutions. Food prices rise? We garden and can. In the movie “The Core,” the characters, at one point, discuss the overwhelming task it is to save the world. But one man notes that he came on the dangerous mission to save his wife and two daughters. He wasn’t there to save the world, just three of them.

If you go back through local genealogies, you will at some point find someone in the family that “made do without.” In fact, throughout West Virginia, the knowledge of how to “take care of you and yours” in hard times was passed from generation to generation.

Even during the economic booms of the region, our parents, our grandparents, still made do with what they had simply out of habit. I once found an entire box of underwear elastic in the
attic of my great aunt’s farm house. For a lifetime past The Great Depression, she still kept precious scraps just in case such hard times ever returned. How many of you went to the cellar house this year to pull out dusty canning jars that have been there - recirculated from generations past? Try to find a cache of jars this year, and you will also find that jars are in demand again.

In a world that seems to push, push, push technological advances, excessiveness and instant gratification, we have almost lost the connection with those who remember how to make things by hand or from scratch, to live on only what you truly need, to collect elastic in a box until you have enough to
combine with other material scraps to complete a dress or blouse for school.

This fall, I stood in my kitchen with sterilized jars and bushels of produce for a second attempt to preserve food for the winter. The first year, I did easy stuff, successfully, mostly “bathing” in scorching water. Some folks call it a “hot bath.” Others call it a “cold bath.” I’m not sure if there’s a difference between the two.

But this year, I inherited my grandmother’s pressure canner, which, brings to mind warnings from childhood that it was very
dangerous, and unless the jiggler on top was jiggling just right, it could explode and blow a hole right through the ceiling. For that reason (and I think because grandma’s kitchen was so small), I was most often on the porch stringing beans during the canning process.

Grandma’s canner came with a tomato strainer, a wood mallet
for the strainer, and jar funnel, which isn’t quite a funnel, but
works the same way. It did not, however, come with instructions. Even so, I brought it out and filled it with boiling water.

During the process, I thought several times about pressure canning something, looking at the huge pot on the fire, but would inevitably imagine a hole in the kitchen ceiling above the stove. Eventually I did use the canner -- to hot bath. I never did put the lid or jiggler on top. Even though this generation (my generation and those after me) has little base knowledge about surviving an economic down time, in Central and rural West Virginia, we have the advantage of having the tools and people with the knowledge right around us.

Land, seed, wildlife, old canning jars, pressure cookers - we have what we need around us to survive, if we know how to use them wisely. Fortunately, we also have access to the people who can teach us. Parents, grandparents, elderly neighbors, those who remember and survived days where your water, heat, food, clothes, comfort - all came from the hard work of your own hands and the bounty of the land. In those days, they respected the land even more than they respected hard work.

The world was even bigger then, accessible by ship or horse not by virtual messages or jet planes. When times were tough,
folks took care of the land and took care of themselves. With all that hard work, who had time to worry about saving the world?

With limited communication and travel, those who waited for outside help and solutions could literally, die waiting. Two-Lane Livin’ magazine won’t teach you to use a pressure canner (maybe in the future, when I learn myself), nor will it teach anyone how to save the world. But I do hope we can help our readers realize that no matter what happens across the country or around the earth Central West Virginians can learn to use what we’ve got to save our own little part of the world.

Family and friends, mountains and fields, woodlots and gardens and livestock. These are the true riches in this ever changing world. If we learn how to appreciate and wisely manage the things we have, we may never feel as though we’re doing without.

~ Lisa