I’m a student of history. My degree was in Classics (Latin, Greek, ancient history) and my graduate work was in Classical Archaeology. I am also in the middle of studying the history of Christianity. If there’s anything that history teaches us it’s that life can change in an instant. That’s true for nations and the global community as it is for individuals.
Complex chains of events create unexpected—and sometimes completely foreseeable—consequences the have a staggering impact on people’s lives. A volcanic eruption brings down one civilization and opens the door to the rise of another. Discontent in one nation brings war to all the states around it. Irresponsible and greedy speculation on Wall Street results in crashes that bring depressions and recessions and wipe out the retirement plans of rank-and-file workers.
Now, COVID-19, or novel coronavirus, is making headlines. More than 130,000 have been infected and almost 5,000 have died as I write this, with the death toll increasing daily. Italy has shut down and placed its overwhelmed medical system on war footing, meaning that the sickest people might not get treatment in order to save the lives of those with a better chance of surviving. The virus is spreading in the US, but the numbers are unavailable because of lack of testing. People are canceling trips, which is having a economic impact on airlines, travel agents, and pet-sitters. The potential for a global recession or depression is real.
Plagues have always changed history. We are fortunate to live in times that give us access to modern medical care, but those resources can be overwhelmed, perhaps to a degree that we who haven’t lived through a major pandemic or world war can imagine. Italy ran out of medical supplies. Who could imagine that even a month ago? With a potential for 1 million fatalities in the US if aggressive steps aren’t taken quickly, it’s important for people to begin planning for long-term stability.
I’m not sowing panic here. I’m taking what the CDC says and responding to it as a private citizen, as someone who has felt called for many years now to do all I can to live a more independent life. There are so many interwoven components to meeting one’s own needs, and there are a lot of skills to learn along the way. But the reward is empowerment—the irreplaceable certainty that you can make your life and the lives of those around you safer and more secure during troubled times.
Ready.gov and the Centers for Disease Control have a wealth of preparedness information for emergencies in general (and news about COVID-19 specifically) that most of us seem to ignore. The best time to familiarize yourself with that information is months ago. The next best time is now.
But the point of this column is to focus on one area that can make an enormous difference in your life—and that’s growing your own food.
My great-grandparents and grandparents were all farmers. They grew what they ate and ate what they grew. My grandparents lived in Springfield, IL, and grew most of their own fruit vegetables. My mother’s parents fed a family of eight out of their back yard from a garden plot, fruit trees, grapevines, and rabbits. They fished, too, and ate the catch. They preserved their food, too. My mother’s mother had a goal of putting up 160 quarts of green beans every summer to get them through the winter.
This work of growing and preserving, combined with frugality beyond the experience of most of us, meant that they always had food, even when my mother had to wear converted flour sacks as skirts when she went to school. In economic upturn or downturn, they still had food on the table. This meant that any available cash could be spent on staples they couldn’t grow—such as flour, milk, etc.— as well as healthcare, shoes, and home repairs.
Let’s dive in.
Growing your own food isn’t rocket science, but it is science. It’s not difficult, but it’s also not something you can do successfully without some learning and deliberate effort. I say this because I’ve met people who place their security in packets of seeds and the belief that, if the time comes, they’ll be able to figure it out. I know others who save seeds from produce bought from the store, believing again that when the time comes, this will reap a sustaining harvest.
Chances are, both of these approaches will fail. Seeds don’t last forever. While I’ve had seeds last years, there’s always a decline in the number that sprout. When every bite counts, that’s not okay. Seeds from apples and squash purchased from the store, even organic seeds, might not come from varieties of plants that will go on to produce viable fruit. I’ve done that experiment, growing squash all summer that failed to produce anything.
It’s important to note that one need not have a big yard like my grandparents did to grow bountiful crops. Grow bags and large pots enable almost anyone to create patio gardens that can offer a surprising harvest. There are also community gardens. There may be other programs, too. Our county offers a veggie garden in a box every summer—seedlings and instructions to help the novice grower get started.
For the past four or so years, we’ve been shifting toward growing our own in our Colorado Zone 5 garden to the greatest extent possible. Maybe it’s in my DNA, but it’s also a call I’ve felt for a very long time. Growing food—gardening—is as close to human roots and the human soul as any activity.
First, we planted perennials—raspberries, blackberries, apple trees, pear trees, cherry trees, peach and plum trees. We have 15 fruit trees now, mostly semi-dwarf varieties, strategically spaced in our ordinary urban back yard. These need time to grow before they produce much, so the time to plant them was three years ago. The next best time is now.
Then we began experimenting with grow bags — felt bags and plastic bags that we fill with compost and raised bed mix. We’ve grown potatoes, tomatoes, and green beans in these bags and had enough for canning. This, of course, meant I needed to learn how to can. In the course of a few summers, I’ve gone from someone who was afraid of canning to a person with cans of fresh organic peaches, green beans, and my own raspberry jam on shelves in my pantry. I’ve also learned to bake my own bread without a machine.
Have I mentioned I don’t have an abundance of free time? I don’t. I also don’t have a lot of expendable cash on hand. What I do have is determination. I’ve been known to make small-batch jams at 1 in the morning.
After that, we began building raised beds to accommodate my physical limitations. In those beds, we’ve grown peas, radishes, peppers, more beans, broccoli, beets, lettuces, spinach, arugula, garlic and a host of other produce. We started with one bed and will have 100 feet of elevated growing space by this summer. We’ve done this organically.
Yes, we have had failures, and you will, too. Gardening is always an experiment with the experiments growing more successful as one matures in one’s skill.
Here’s the thing: You need to start now. While you can throw something together in July, you might get some results depending on what you plant. But chances are you’ll be disappointed. If you want to start building security for your family now, spring is the time to begin.
Growing your own food brings with it so many benefits. You know exactly what’s on the food and don’t have to worry about supermarket recalls. The produce is fresher, tastes better, and is often higher in nutrients because it gets to your plate sooner. Gardening relieves stress and brings families and even communities together. It also gives you some security because you know that you’ve got something to put on the table.
Growing your own food doesn’t have to be expensive with countless trips to the garden store. It can be done economically as you gradually build on your newly acquired skills and expand your operation. And it can be a lot of fun for the whole family. I’ll talk about getting started in my next column.
For now, here’s your homework: Find your hardiness zone. Do you live in Zone 4 or Zone 3a? Do you live in a part of Texas where growing is impossible in summer due to heat? To get started, go to https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/InteractiveMap.aspx.
We’ll meet here again in a few days.
Stay safe, and wash your hands!
