Reflections on food security

What does food security mean to an everyday householder? A good question isn't it? The term itself is so officiated. It feels like you need homeland security to define what it actually entails. I didn't adore the term at all, but I started educating my young, my children with a generic idea of 'food security,' as the climate crises became symptomatic with daily news of wildfires, tornados, and floods. Sometimes, it even feels like you would see Food Security Special Ops at your front door, and perhaps say, "no, thank you..."

Where do you start? As a single mom with teens more interested in video games and tv series, I had to start with myself. Pulling weeds is the first step of a long process! And then like learning a new language... a whole new vista seems to open before you, and if you persist in your faith in making your own 'family-style food security' ( ..a more homely phrase :) ). Finding time for it and making goals, practicing dedication to turning your flat lawn into a veggie patch, styled with pollinator flowers, and composting department. Well, it will come to fruition.

This whole new vista for me has been experimental and a quest of exploration - you should try it. I begin to discover so many pioneers: beautiful people (I like to call these good folks, young and old 'pioneers' because for me it was like reopening a door to a forgotten realm!) After years of hours spent in technology and computers in an urban environment since the 1980s, where the countryside was never near me, yet secretly I harped for my link back to nature and all her abundances. I begin to discover so many freely available resources: seed libraries (a great many varieties!...) I know some of you who have managed to somehow balance computers/my-garden lifestyle is laughing, but three years ago, my idea of WTH is a 'seed library' was to Google it and stare attentively at this image on my screen: and finally sighing a soft 'wow...' '...are we doomed or something?

Next, since we aren't doomed yet (..love the Norway seed vault btw..) is to revisit the Canada Farmers Almanac. Back in the east, amongst the Asians, there use to be an old, old farmers almanac with all kinds of dates for planting and harvesting, astrology, and ancient puzzles. Many households back there faithfully bought it every year and hung it in the kitchen to ward off bad luck, collecting dust. Nobody uses the almanac nor planted anything. And my young mind consulted it as to when does the stars tell me I can get out of the country.

Yet it's instinctual - people are attracted to old knowledge that has withstood the test of time. You are not sure what, but you feel you want to read and learn the contents because you know it has wisdom. Wisdom, not necessarily just technological knowledge, is what will ultimately save species on this earth. The old, old western almanac started appearing in our market chain stores magazine racks - did you notice it was not always there? I saw mine at my local Wholefoods Market. The Almanac calendars come from two very different cultures but you will find similar principles of adherence to the natural cycles of our ecosystem - you see these rows of dates for planting, harvesting, and daily activities. Some passages feel like your dusty attic - in need of renewal. And why do you think we print the farmers' almanac as 'originals'? Because there aren't many new updates?

Well, for centuries now we have been losing our links to the knowledge of mother nature in terms of a human-environment harmonious relationship - we cannot see the signs from nature anymore, nor to gain insights into the wisdom. Funds are there only for scientific research. Almanacs are teeter-tottering on a| division between science and folk tales. The Original Almanacs spells to the reader some kind of age-old tested wisdom of livelihood. We do not have anything new to add, because we did not cultivate almanac wisdom.

Family style food security investigation brought me to the FarmFolks CityFolks so while working-class hours leave the masses with time only for chain store packaged food, no land to call your own, a few pennies to your savings - this whole new vista is now a budding socio-ecosystem in the making in North America where it really is about communities coming together in an effort to overcome 'working-class-packaged-food' life with seed preservation, sharing, growing and eating what we grow. Even if you have to grow on the roof in an urbanized environment. But we cannot grow it alone - in fact, many of us may not even have green fingers or a plot of land - but our internal 'farmer's almanac' instinctively will tell us that by acknowledging the land cultivators: our own local family-based farmers, working with them, the academic researchers and including the urban dwellers will in time give us the wisdom to create a modern original almanac of the Millennia.