How do they do it?

I keep trying to wrap my mind about how they do it, and I think it must have come from the suffering that occurred during and after World War 2.  From the knitting to the freshly squeezed juice to the homemade marmalade to the fresh bread to the honey fresh from the bees etc... - it amazes me how knowledgeable "everyone" is about how to make stuff from scratch (scratch meaning from the land and not store bought). We had a barbecue this weekend and my friend brought me homemade pesto. I am still (5 days later) thinking about how absolutely delicious this pesto was. I could have eaten it for  breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The neat thing is that it was made from wild herbs in the forest. The main ingredient is a wild garlic called berlauch. It is kind of like a wild garlic, but the crazy thing is, it looks just like another plant that is poisonous (another funny side bit, is that the German word for poison is: "Gift" - don't ever ask for a "Gift" :-). People just seem to know how to make everything by hand - and they have the ambition to do so. I'm not quite sure if I feel inspired by the idea of it or exhausted by the idea of it - but either way, I appreciate it :-)