LEARNING NEW SKILLS AND IMMEDIATELY PASSING THEM ON

For some homesteaders, raising animals for the purpose of meat is part of life.

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As always, anyone is free to choose whatever diet they want, but some people do eat meat. That meat comes from animals. However, unlike those who just go with the status quo, meat eating flow devouring McBurgers full of kangaroo meat or carbon-monoxide contaminated "red meat" at the grocery store or super market, some prefer animal husbandry and enjoy raising their own animals for the purpose of eventually eating them. If this topic offends you, you are not obligated to continue.

THE PREVIOUS GENERATION

I have often said that a whole wealth of information is passing away with the previous generation. A lot of this information is not completely lost forever since we can find some things in books or on the internet, but there is a difference when you can "go to the source." A video can be helpful. So can reading a book. Still, to have someone experienced in whatever you are trying to learn right there to walk you through the process is a whole different scenario.

One of my neighbors is an "old man" who was originally raised on a homestead up in Alaska. He's picked up a lot of life skills over the years, and knows and understands a lot. Right now, he's just down the street, full of information. A while back, I offered to help give him a hand whenever he needed one. I figured that this would bless him with some manpower and bless me with an education.

He's got a really good setup for a lot of things at his homestead, and he is willing to share his knowledge. We really enjoy him and his wife, and they enjoy us too. One of the things that they do is raise and process their own goats as a food source. This is a skill that I wanted to learn anyway, and @bluerthangreen has some goats that he wanted to harvest, so the timing was right.

I'd only learned how to deer hunt last year, and learned how to field dress and quarter them from one person. Deer and goats are pretty similar in a lot of ways when it comes to processing them, but I still wanted to see exactly how someone else did a similar task. You never know what you are going to learn if you give yourself the chance.

A few days back I went over to help the man with three goats that he wanted to take care of. It took us about an hour each, and he took the time to teach me each step of the way. I learned a lot of things that I would have never figured out on my own, and by the last one, he let me pretty much run with it.

Almost immediately I made a big rookie mistake, but it was just cutting through part of the leg that I shouldn't have. It wasn't a "big deal," but still, I should have known better. I had just forgot what I was doing and did something on the back leg that I should have done on the front leg. I told the man right away, he took it well, and we moved past it. As he pointed out, if it only takes you one mistake to always remember the correct way after that, it's a pretty good investment in learning the right way.

THE NEXT GENERATION

Yesterday I was able to put this new knowledge to use, and the education process continued. Now, the student had become the teacher, and I was able to my newly acquired skill and pass it on to @bluerthangreen.

Sometimes, living a more self-sufficient life can be a more lonely life too, so to be able to work together with friends or neighbors can be a huge blessing, just based on the interaction. Additionally, the extra help almost always speeds up the process and makes the job take less time. There is certainly a benefit to that as well.

I think that providing and raising your own meat certainly develops in you a deeper appreciation for that food. When we harvest an animal, we try to use as much of it as we can. Besides the meat, the bones can be used to make soup or broth, and then given to dogs as chew toys. Also, the hides can be tanned, or so I hear. I'm in the process of learning that skill more fully right now.

As with a lot of things in life, some skills may even be good to learn even if you don't plan on using them. At least you'll have an idea abut how to do if you ever need to. I think that life is a learning process and there are always new things to be learned. I'm glad to be able to apply an entire life's worth of expertise to something that I just learned. I could have never offered to help this man, and struggled through figuring it out on my own from a book or video instead.

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-new-skill

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Until next time…

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GIF provided by @orelmely

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