Many of you out there in the community have already started prepping, but I encourage everyone to learn just a little bit more! Luckily, Barry Knights, a resident of Kinderhook for all his life, is a wealth of valuable information and can answer many of your survival questions. I sat down with Barry to learn a little bit about him and what advice he could give us to become more self sufficient.
How did you get involved with being self-sufficient?
My grandfather was one of the last real outdoorsmen around here. He started teaching me when I was very, very young and was the person that had the most influence on me. He gave me a lesson about every month on something outdoors-oriented. And believe me, you had to have that lesson mastered before he would move on to the next lesson. When he retired from being the head superintendent at Ichabod Crane, he decided to live in a tent for 22 years!
My great great grandfather lived over outside of Earlton in the Catskills and he was a hermit and he only came down once a year to get supplies!
I built a firepit in my back yard. I can start a fire with just flint and steel. I practice all my survival techniques all the time. So yes, I’ve been around survival lessons all my life. I’ve been foraging since about 6 years old.
What would you say to people who want to start foraging – mushrooms for example?
If you are really serious about foraging you should pick up the book National Audubon Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. Then you should meet with someone that has a lot of foraging experience. When you’re out foraging you’ll find a lot of good edibles, but you have to be extremely careful. There’s a lot of look-a-likes. For instance, the destroying angel, here in New York, is totally similar to the innocent white button mushrooms, but if you take one bite of it you’ll need a liver transplant. You also have to be careful with certain species of Lactarius as well. There’s also the giant puff ball. If you open those up and there’s no gills inside – you’re safe. Then you get other puff balls that do have gills inside and they are totally not safe.
But then there’s field mushrooms – which are also totally safe. You also have the issue in which some people can’t eat certain mushrooms that are considered safe – because their individual metabolisms can’t handle it. For instance I can eat morels, but I can’t eat white mushrooms – they make me sick.
Every mushroom has a season. The morel season, for instance, has just ended. Chicken of the woods, black trumpets, golden oysters, white oysters, chanterelles – these will all be coming up soon. There will be at least one, or several mushrooms, that can be foraged right up until November. Towards winter you can find turkey tail and chaga – both of these are medicinals.
What else can you find out there to eat in the forest other than mushrooms?
There’s a lot of edible plants out there. Lillypods are fantastic. The day lilies come up and you can see them on the side of the road. Don’t confuse them with the tiger lilies. The day lilies have these pods, like a bean. They’re like an asparagus.
There’s also ostrich fern fiddleheads. I probably got about 4 or 5 pounds of them this year. You blanch them, you vacuum-seal them and then throw them in the freezer.
Why do you think it’s so important to know a little bit about foraging, and self-reliance?
It’s very important! I mean, what are you going to do if all of a sudden the economy crashes and you don’t know how to hunt, fish, forage? When you’re out of power you’re going to have to know some basic survival skills.
I’ve seen the food supply chains change. I know everybody is concerned about being healthy, but I’m not sure they know what they’re eating. I went to the store the other day and I’m finding meat now that has absolutely no fat in it whatsoever. And I find that very odd. You know when you fry up a piece of sausage, and before you had to worry about it spitting out grease? That doesn’t happen anymore. I’ve noticed that lately everything in general is not tasting the same as it used to. I’m not sure what that means.
I hunt, I fish, I have a lot of venison in the freezer, I am worried that what may be coming is going to be a very bad situation, where people aren’t going to be able to survive. Everybody is used to instant gratification. You can order now online, over the phone, you don’t have to cook. I watch these people that basically eat out every night. What are they going to do in a crisis?
Have you seen people have a sudden interest in self sufficiency since the “Covid” situation?
Definitely. My neighbors left the city to move up here, and for the first times in their lives, they started this gorgeous garden! They took the time with it and now they love gardening. Covid brought people back down to homesteading.
What is the maximum amount of people you can have in your groups?
Well, the last group I had there were about 13 – and that was tough. It’s hard to do any type of one-on-one situation because you’re getting hit with all these questions – from 4 or 5 people at a time. And you’re trying to cover all the material in the meantime.
I did a group about 6 years ago down at the Greenport Conservatory, and there were about 30 people. I had 4 other people helping me, so we broke up into smaller groups. It was very difficult because I had to keep telling them I deal with edibles, but I do not identify every single mushroom that you stumble upon. If it’s not an edible, I don’t really care to try and identify it. So we had this couple that would point to everything and expect me to know every single plant. So finally I had to say “if you find a mushroom, bring it back, and at the end we will try and identify it to see if it falls into the edible category”. It’s just tougher with larger groups.
What other self-sufficiency skills do you teach?
I teach things like how to make a bow drill, how to make a fire using flint and steel, water purification, how to make a debris hut. Basic wilderness survival skills. This is controversial – but in a survival situation you may need to make a snare. With the debris hut – it is needed if you don’t have a tent and you need some sort of shelter. If you make these the right way it will keep the rain off of you.
I just did a talk about a month ago with a group of about 13 women. We went over all the gear you’ll need. I happen to carry a Haversack. In that sack you should have your fire-starting material, mushroom bags, a decent knife. You have to learn your gear. You can’t just learn all this quickly – it takes time. People need to start with the basics and practice their skills.
I don’t like the way the economy is going. It’s making me very nervous. I worry about the people that aren’t really good at prepping, and have absolutely no survival skills.
By Heather Wentworth
To reach Barry Knights to learn survival skills contact him via Facebook on his page: