In his post last week, Ed mentioned how leather reminds him of his grandfather. I have a similar relationship with leather, but mine comes from time spent in my dad’s shoe shop when I was a little girl.

Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on the counter in the shoe shop. I was probably three or four years old. Dad would let me play with leather scraps. I remember turning the hand crank of the leather cutter and watching the split pieces of leather come out the other side. I remember shelves that held customers shoes.  People came in all day long, dropping off or picking up shoes for my dad to fix.

The equipment from Dad’s shop came from his father-in-law, my grandpa. When he was a young man, Grandpa had worked in his father’s shop just a few blocks from where Dad’s shop was located. The first time he saw my grandma, Grandpa was working in that shop, but that is a story for another time.

Today, as far as I can tell, shoe repair has nearly disappeared.  That got me thinking about other lost, or endangered, skills and crafts. I even asked my friends on my personal Facebook page what they considered a lost art. Several of them said things, like “listening”,“using proper grammar”, and “common courtesy” which are definitely endangered, but not really within the scope of this blog.

Here are eight that we came up with.

1. Shoe Repair
2. Black Smithing
3. Small Appliance Repair
4. Reading the Weather
5. Orienteering (Ed suggested this one).
6. Foraging
7. Making and playing home made instruments. This one made me think about home made toys too.
8. Making do with what you have.

Over the next few weeks, We’re going to look into each of these endangered skills, and what caused them to no longer be necessary. Then we will look at what each entailed, and what, if anything, is being done to revive, or at least preserve them. We may even try some of them ourselves. Ok, probably not black smithing, but I do have an old blender I might try to fix.

I left off things like sewing and canning, because I know many people who do those things, including people who do not consider themselves the “homesteading” type. I will say however, that those skills need to be taught to every generation.

What do you consider a lost, or endangered skill? Leave me a note in the comments below, or on our Facebook page.

While I’m working on this, Ed is preparing for the new bee arrival. That will probably be the theme of his next post.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Connie