>not necessarily "a trade"
>our kids need to learn
>FOOD SAFETY
>ANIMAL CARE
>BASIC CAR MAINTENANCE
>BASIC HOUSEHOLD MAINTENANCE
>HEALTH MAINTENANCE
>BUDGETING MONEY
>and a load of other practical skills
>and none of it needs to be a career
>just practical working knowledge
>so they aren't totally fuking themselves up
absolutely. I'm canning five gallons of tomatoes today- most of it should be going into salsa.
Sure, I could have bought the salsa at the grocery store. One pint jar goes for about $3. I will get 20 jars out of this today. Spent about thirty minutes yesterday harvesting tomatoes, and roughly three hours today working on canning, plus $3 each for the two packets of Ms. Wages.
If I go work at a handyman job, I can make $25 an hour. But I don't want to do that every day. And it's Sunday, so I wouldn't be working today anyway. If I bought all these jars they'd cost me $60.00. 3.5 hours at $25 an hour- this is the stupid math that people usually figure this as- would be $87.50 plus the $6 for the Ms Wages salsa mix.
Technically, this salsa costs me closer to $4.50 per jar. And I don't know for sure what's in the Ms Wages, but I do trust her a bit more than I trust random jars of salsa from the grocery store- my tomatoes are organic- so I've got pretty close to organic salsa for $4.50 a jar.
It's a pain in the ass, but what happens when grocery store salsa goes up to $5 a jar? or $10 a jar? Who's to say it can't happen? One bad crop and that's where we're at.
Are you going to count on jars and lids being available when the shit hits the fan? I reuse my jars AND lids constantly until they are no good. No good means the seal is showing the white underneath and/or the lid is too rusty to trust it for another few years.
All I have to pay for is the heat source, salsa mix, and my time.
It sucks because my wife is busy at work and refuses to mess with any of this on her day off so I hate that part…..so doing it all by myself….. but I made myself do it today because I had 5 gallons of tomatoes in the garden rotting away.