time day month year

[Mortblanc]

Time does and will make a big difference in a nonindustrial setting, although it is time of a different nature.

Planting and harvest times are easy to confuse and most modern religions evolved around establishing those points in the annual cycle through observations of the stars/heavenly bodies.

Planting time in my area is 6 weeks after the spring equinox. (in ancient times March was the first month of the year) That is usually the second full moon. It might not mean much to a city dweller but it does to a farmer. If you wait for other things to bloom out your crop will be late, and you will be hungry.

One will also find that keeping up with the lunar cycles is important to predicting both human and animal behavior. Just ask any hunter, farmer, soldier or fertile woman.

I must admit that as a retired person time has become a different device for me. "What day is this?" is an often asked question while talking to myself.

Post SHTF we might find ourselves more concerned with the wind up clock than we expect. Ringing the church bell at noon by the sundial was a regular job for the parish vicar back in the day. Everyone listened and set their mantle clock to that bell. That mantle clock was the most complicated piece of technology that most people owned until the mid-20th Century.

Ringing the ships bell to call a new watch was important to the people on watch, even in mid ocean, when one would think time would not matter. People have schedules to keep even in the most unlikely scenarios.

If I am in a hostile environment and I must meet with someone I do not want to get there early, or late. "Meet me tomorrow afternoon if you can dodge the mob" is not acceptable. I am not going to pop my little pointed head out from cover until the exact precise moment. That is why soldiers are issued watches!

Every prepper should have a wind up clock and a wind up watch. They are one of the least expensive items on the prepper equipment list. Around here they can be purchased for about $10, so you can keep one for everyone in the family. One nice thing about them is that they can be placed in a drawer and ignored for years, then pulled out of the package, wound up and used.

And yes, I do often wonder about the "prepper" that obsesses over EMP and still wears a battery powered watch.

I carry a nice wind up pocket watch that was the first Christmas present given to me by my late wife. "Back in the day" those expensive timepieces were passed down from one generation to the next.