The EssentiaList

D. Bates Garden in August

by Catherine Haug, April 2, 2011

(photo by Don Bates)

One of the topics which brought our ESP community together back in 2009, was the rising cost of fuel and anticipated food shortages on grocers shelves. While those stimuli relaxed for awhile, they are still present, and some predict they could get out of hand this summer.

We continue to focus on food and food availability; last month our gathering topic was Garden Season Extenders by Don Bates, and this month will be Gardening Tips by Julian Cunningham.

Check out this inspiring March 30, 2011 article from Counter Currents blog: Garden As If Your Life Depended On It, Because It Will, by Ellen LaConte.

The author is from S. Carolina, but what she writes about is also applicable here. Regarding why it’s important to start gardening now, she talks about effects of:

She concludes with the following profound statement:

“Gardening Like Everybody’s Business

Under the influence and auspices of the prevailing economy, most Americans have forgotten how to provide for themselves. We’ve become accustomed to earning money with which we buy provisions. That process is about to have the legs kicked out from under it. Instead of earning money (or its funny-money kin like credit cards) to buy the things we need, we’ll need to start providing more of those things for ourselves and each other locally and (bio)regionally. Gardening 0 and small0-scale farming – while they will need to be undertaken in a businesslike fashion will be less about doing business than about everyone’s having something to eat and more people being busy providing it. And while not everyone will be able to garden or farm, we are all able to get up close and personal with those who do.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 2nd, 2011 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Agriculture, Community, Food-Nutrition-Health, Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.