Turning Gourds Into Storage | Live Free or Die: How to Homestead

In this life, I need containers of all kinds. One of the biggest, most frustrating things for me is mice getting in my stuff. It drives me crazy! I really need a container that I can put the cattail fluff in that I use for my Tinder bundles.

A friend of mine was trading a bunch of gourds that she had grown, and, uh, I was able to get a few from her. Gourds are basically like primitive Tupperware. The gourd has this outer skin, and then it also has a shell. The shell is pretty hard, so when I scrape this skin off, I'm actually making it so the shell will last a lot longer.

Now I'm cutting the top off the gourd so I can open it up and scrape out the seeds from the inside. I'll be saving all the seeds and then plant them in my garden, so there might be gourds next year.

Now I'm taking my pump drill and I'm creating a series of holes all the way around the rim of the gourd. What I'm going to do now is lace a rectangle of buckskin, um, and then put a drawstring up here. Then I'll pull that drawstring tight, and this will stay big.

I want to yank too hard on it 'cause it'll break. The gourd will actually crack if I'm too rough on it. Look at that! There we go. I need to buy something I can make for myself. Okay, it's going to work great!