On building community resiliance

The power was out at my house last week,  I arose the next morning to spent candles and dried food jars scattered around the kitchen (hub) table. My family knew not to open the refrigerator door during a power outage, so they ate dried apples, nuts and seeds. While putting the jars of food away, I was reminded of young friends who spent this summer and fall canning and drying food grown on their farm. At the time, they had jokingly suggested they may have gone a bit over-board; evidently there are shelves upon shelves of food in jars. I empathized, I am sometimes given a second look when I state 60 jars of canned tomatoes might not ‘be enough’. Enough for what? Enough for the times the power gets scarce.

These young farmers are not exhibiting weird behavior, they are practicing for the future. A future that will most certainly include more expensive fossil fuel, and possibly food shortages caused by disrupted supply chains, increased production costs, soil degradation.  The future of these young farmers and many of us acquiring food preservation skills includes self-reliance, skill sharing, and a variety of real vitamins and minerals captured in real food not seen in the grocery stores.

And the jars in the basement, not hoarding. Colorful examples to people who are fearful of home food production, who wonder if they too can (re)learn self-sufficiency around food.  They can. Food preservation is but one or two generations away;  the weirdness is that so few Americans set food aside. So few know to do it, know how to do it.

When food is scarce is not the right time to get prepared. And quality food is scarce. Our area farmers feed…1%, 2% of us? We hunt and gather from farmer’s markets in the late summer, grocery stores the rest of the year. We grow a handful of tomatoes in our yard and then spend most of the year lamenting the poor excuse of tomatoes available in the stores. To get busy about learning to live with less fossil fuel, to get busy about increased personal responsibility for the food on your table; both will require some form of food preservation.

Next Friday our town will have the opportunity hear Richard Heinberg, a Californian who will talk not about food preservation per se, but about the general reasons that and other conservation concerns should jump to the top of our priority lists. (Find a Minnesotan to address area food issues.) I hope you can join us on Friday, Nov. 12 at 6:30 pm at the Northfield Ballroom. Heinberg speaks nationally on the current conditions emerging around resource depletion and a contracting economy, on ways to begin building community resilience. We hope to see you there.

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