I’m not exactly sure when it started, but I’ve felt an urgency to grow food for a while now, maybe 2014, 2015? I grew up with my parents always having a huge garden, we canned all we needed and shared the abundance with friends and family. So I’m used to growing and preserving food. But there began to be a thought in my head that lots of people, even in the rural, small town, farming area that I live in, do not grow much if any of their own food any more.
I believe there are lots of people like me, that have the feeling of urgency to either grow their own food or help others learn how to grow their own food. I believe there is a movement of people that are wanting to get back to the basics of being able to not rely as much on our supply chain for everything we need. The more sustainable we are, the better off we are.
I want to start of by saying that I believe in God, Jesus and The Holy Spirit. I believe that Jesus Christ is my Savior. I believe that everything happens for a reason, there are no coincidences and that means if you are reading this, it’s not by accident. I also want to say that it does not matter to me where you stand on the things I just said. You do not have to think the same as me, you do not need to believe the same things as I do. No matter what your beliefs are, you are welcome here. I am not here to push my beliefs on anyone, but I may refer to God or Jesus from time to time because of what I believe to be True.
In 2015 I organized my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture – It’s like a subscription service for locally grown fruit, vegetables, eggs, meat, milk or whatever a specific farmer produces.) program. I had about 10 subscribers. Not a lot of people, but enough for my first attempt at a CSA. I would call it a success, but it was very stressful and was a lot of work. The idea crept into my head that if I grow food for other people, they still won’t know how to grow their own food. You know, “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.”
Anyway, back to the “urgency to grow food”.
Urgency can be a scary word, meaning act now or something bad will happen, but it doesn’t have to be scary. It could just mean that it’s time to act. I don’t ever want this page to be a place a fear, I want it to be a place of truth, understanding, encouragement, education, acceptance, community, belonging, etc.
The urgency I feel to grow food, has become an urgency to teach others how to grow food. Regardless of your political or religious/spiritual beliefs, I think that most of us can agree, something crazy is going on in the world right now. There have been lots of people talking about food shortages for the last 2 years. We’ve seen some shortages, but most of them have not been sustained to this point. (Unless you’re trying to buy a new car and there aren’t enough microchips.) There seem to be more and more warnings of food and product shortages coming, even the White House warned of shortages due to supply chain disruptions that will occur.
I feel that the shortages will be real and maybe prolonged especially depending on where you live. I think it makes sense for larger cities be feel the pressure first and then it will trickle out in to the rural areas. Again, I am in NO WAY trying to promote fear, but if we don’t talk about this and no one is prepared, then what?
I’m not talking about everyone all of the sudden growing and producing all of the food they need to survive. I’m talking about being aware of the reality we seem to be headed towards and taking steps and making plans to be able to handle the situation. ANY food you can produce on your own and makes you a little less reliant on the grocery store is a step in the right direction.
So far, it has been enough for a small percent of the population to grow big gardens or market farms and sell their produce at farmers markets or directly to people through farm stands or CSA type programs. My thought is that it seems like the question isn’t IF we will see food shortages, but WHEN will the food shortage happen. If that is the case, our current farmers and gardeners will not be able to supply all the people suddenly flocking to the farmers markets and farms.
So. Ok. I hope there is still someone reading this. I know this is rambly, I just hope it’s making sense to someone.
It does not matter where you live or how much space you have, everyone can grow something. Put a pot with a tomato on your back porch or your balcony. Grow a pot of lettuce on your windowsill. What’s important is that you have the right amount of sun and the container is big enough for whatever you are growing, and the temperature is within the range that your plant(s) require. There is research you need to do before just going out and buying a plant or a packet of seeds.
Right now we are in early spring, it is too early in my area to plant most veggie outside, it still gets too cold at night for them to survive. Now is the perfect time to figure out what you want to do and come up with a plan.
What do you want to grow?
Where will you grow it?
What do you need to do to prepare?
Where will you get your seeds or plants?
When is it right to put your plants outside in your area?
What can you grow that you will actually eat?
How much should you grow?
These are all things you need to ask yourself before jumping in. Not that you can’t just jump in, but it does make it easier if you know the answers to at least some of these questions.
If it’s your first time growing something, it won’t go perfectly. If it’s your 100th time growing something, it won’t go perfect. Gardening is an ongoing experiment. The more you do it, the better you get. You start to be able to see things that need changed and you can be proactive and even predict potential problems based on your experience with weather, insects or other indicators.
I would like to help you learn how to grow your own food. I am planning on hosting some classes on beginning gardening. I don’t know exactly what it looks like yet, I know I want to do some in person classes and possibly some online classes. I know how the in person classes work, not sure about the online yet.
I hope this made sense, I have a lot of thoughts going on in my mind and it’s not always easy to organize them and get them out. I will be sharing more about all of this, at least it’s a start. Thank you all for reading this and I hope to see you, talk to you, help you soon!