A Call to Action

A Call to Action By Gabe Bridges
No time like the present to start working towards a more sustainable future. One of the biggest things we can do to start the process is create a more secure local food system. So many things we can do to create the security. Can we continue to rely on food sources that may travel thousands of miles before it gets to our plates? I think not. Unless we want to keep supporting oil spills, energy shortages and possibly food shortages we need to create and support local food production systems. When I work in my garden or consult with someone I’m guided by the permaculture ethics: 1) Caring for the Planet 2) Caring for people 3) Sharing the surplus. These ethics can help guide our choices in supporting a local food system.
One of the best ways to secure your food supply is to do it yourself. Home gardens can supply us with bounties of food with virtually no ecological footprint attached. It can create nourishing food to care for ourselves and loved ones, it can enhance local ecologies and create habitat for wildlife, and we can share the excess by bartering or just giving away the surplus. What sounds better to you, food delivered by semi-truck or food delivered from one hand to the other. We need not only grow and eat fresh foods but we need to be able to preserve our harvests so we can have them for extended periods of time. Food production doesn’t have to be something you do alone but can be more thoroughly enjoyed when done with friends and family. Do you have fruit trees that you can’t keep up on the harvest? Call up some friends and make some wine, jellies, jams, chutneys, or dry the fruit. Do you like pickles, salsa, barbecue sauce? Grow a plot with friends and have a canning party. Now you have gifts and tradable items, its great to share with people food that you have grown yourself.
What if you don’t have land to work with? Time to start looking into community garden plots. They have caught on all over the nation and are starting to pop up here in Calaveras County. This is a great way to share knowledge and get inspired. I once lived in Davis, California where I had several community garden plots. I was always inspired by the different ways that people grew food. The Armenian guy grew lots of herbs and when he got too old to work in the garden he planted more fruit trees for his friends and family. The Taiwanese lady would always grow amazing mustard greens, bitter cucumbers, daikon radish, and spicy peppers. The lady from the Congo loved to grow okra, amaranth greens, and walking onions. The Mexican guy had a bounty of nopales, hot peppers, oregano, tomatoes and sugar cane. A couple of guys from California had a beer garden, where they grew everything to make a batch of beer, including barley and hops. So much inspiration and always great pleasure to see these characters working in their garden plots.
People would be out in their plots at all times of year tending to their seasonal crops. Some plants actually thrive in cooler weather while others prefer mild or even hot climates. So don’t be fooled that we can only grow food in the summer. Season extenders such as row covers, cold frames and greenhouses can extend our harvest even further than we expected.
Don’t have time for any of this? Stop by your local farmers market and check out what they are harvesting. Get to know the farmers that grow locally and support them. When you support local farmers the food miles can be relatively low when compared to similar items at local grocers. I wouldn’t count your local grocer out though. Many of them do carry small amounts of local produce. You can ask them if they can source more and they may. Restaurants have a role to play in this too. Many local restaurants prefer to have fresh local produce in their menu items and specials. We as consumers have the ability to ask for more local produce from our grocers and restaurants and reward them with our money. This can have profound effects on the local economy and environment. When we support endeavors that support local food production we are investing in our community, making it stronger, more self-reliant and stable. Supporting a local food system can feed our community with more than just food. It can offer food security and we can build a vibrant community around food that includes learning, celebrating, and sharing.