Home and land security
Even as lots of my fellow Americans, Mainers, and islanders felt an uptick in hopeful optimism back in early November, our wobbly economy reminded us that our stool might have only two legs and most people know that the world still contains hostile and dangerous people, including possibly some of our neighbors, if it is true that lots of folks are stocking up on automatic weapons and ammunition in large quantities. If you don’t mind, I’d rather take a different tack in maintaining home and land security by relying on our garden, land, and community. Here’s how.
Nearly everything is in from my garden: late season vegetables like Brussels’ sprouts sweetened by the kiss of frost, chard, kale, leeks and cabbages are put away. Some spinach and mesclun remain behind that we will bury in mulch the first time we suspect a hard freeze is on its way. Until then, it gives us salad. Inside, there two bushels of onions (grown to give us about one onion a day), strung and hung in the cellar way, plus a half bushel of beets, a half bushel of carrots, and rutabagas plus close to 100 pounds of potatoes. A mix of thirty-something winter-keeping squashes and pumpkins sit in a cool dry room, the delicatas promising one dinner each while the others are probably good for two or company. There are apples in spackle-buckets giving off the most wonderful aroma.
The freezer contains corn, green beans, summer squash, asparagus, various homemade soups bases, pork from one of three pigs raised in the backyard, fish, rhubarb, cranberries, chickens whole and divided, some venison, and a few supper starters, like tomato sauce, or packages of broth or stock, some leftover refried beans.
Three kinds of pickles-dill, tarragon flavored sweet and sour, and bread and butters-one jar each for each month between now and the next time I make pickles plus canned tomato sauce, peaches, applesauce, and currants in vodka awaiting a transformation to cassis fill the cellar-way shelves. Then there are chutneys, relishes, jellies and jams, maple syrup, maple sugar. Garlic, coriander, dill, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme dried and put away to make things taste good.
Even though there really is no such thing as real security, if one means immunity from disaster, still this plenty is part of my version of home and land security. I’ll bet I am not alone. A tour of other households would show where vegetable gardens flourish and people know how to provide for themselves without constant recourse to the grocery store.
We could, if needed, keep ourselves and a few others sheltered, fed wholesomely, even clothed, and tucked into bed warmly at night, because we are, after all, while not flooded with cash, quite rich. I can’t wear all my blue jeans at once, or all six turtlenecks, anymore than I can sit down alone to a dinner of one hundred pounds of boiled, baked, and fried potatoes.
There is another part of the home and land security though. It is the pantry of information, ideas, and community life. A day spent at the Sustainable Islands Conference on November 8 sponsored by the Island Institute demonstrated a wealth of information and ideas that we can get from our island and mainland neighbors and from around the globe about food production, staying sheltered and warm, and figuring out alternative energy resources.
Because I’ve put in time as a food historian, I have a pretty good idea about how we provided for ourselves in the past. Like how to store food before there were freezers. If we lost power for a few months and gas for the generators ran out I would have to summon all my capacity for salting, drying, pickling and canning to deal with all the stuff in the freezer. Fortunately among my acquaintances is an old-timer who, with his wife, once canned a moose, so there is a little how-to advice at hand.
Fortunately, my freezer does not have a surfeit of frozen burritos and hot pocket things which can only be eaten-those who do will have to have a feast with their neighbors and eat them all up before they spoil, and hope someone will feed them later with unprocessed stuff. I have a pretty good idea of how people in the past substituted and made-do. I even have recipes for all sorts of things made without seemingly necessary ingredients like eggs and shortening, and another set of older friends who recall rationing in World War II.
Hard-times bring out the best and worst in humans, so I suppose the remaining part of my home and land security is the civility of my neighbors. Small contained places, like islands or small towns, full of people who bump into each other all the time, who take care of each other via ambulance and firefighting companies, who look out for each others’ kids, who collaborate to raise funds for community goals, govern the town together, volunteer for all causes, might have a better chance of preserving real life-sustaining civility.
Maybe that way, the crackpot with the automatic weapon who thinks he is going to be king of the island when hard times come, will find himself tackled and locked up in the school cellar to be fed on increasingly stale, thawed-out frozen burritos, while the civil feast on roast venison and mashed potatoes with homemade chutney and neighborliness on the side.