Yes, it’s all doom and gloom out there. Since we Americans live in an economy, not so much of a culture, it often feels like our entire way of life is crumbling as the stock market crashes and banks struggle.
People point out that I don’t need to worry because I have a garden and farm animals. It’s true that I recently started selling my eggs ($5/dozen) and sometimes sell a rabbit or two. That money goes toward buying things I can’t make, like parmasean cheese, beef, bananas, and french bread (thank you French guys at Oakland Farmer’s Market!) But of course, I’m not immune to the trials of the economy, as I watch friends lose their jobs and their homes, I realize how fragile our society is.
Last weekend I went to a Long Now event and saw doomsday-er Dmitri Orlov speak about what happened when the Soviet Union fell. The winners were the ones who could adjust and adapt quickly. Orlov lists the most important things for people to worry about during collapse: food, shelter, transportation, security. I was surprised that all of the descriptions of food post-collapse involved growing your own food, allowing animal husbandry in cities, even planting wheat on college campuses (after their endowments become worthless). If Orlov had spoken even two months earlier, I’m sure there would have been a lot of eye-rolling in the audience. People were on the edges of their seats. Including me, I found myself slapping my forehead about the wheat growing in Memorial Glade. Genius! Timing, for doomsday predictors, is everything.
Funny thing, though, here in the ghetto where everyone is poor, no one is grumbling about the economic crisis. It made me realize that for as long as this crisis goes on, we’re all going to be living in the ghetto. We’re going to have to forage, scrimp. Many of us may chose to do things that are considered illegal (selling drugs, selling rabbit meat). We’ll start sharing living space with our friends and families. We’ll spend more time chatting on the corners (no jobs to go to). And, I predict more and more people will arm themselves.
For awhile, I was sort of gleeful about the downturn, but lately I’ve recognized that it’s fun to choose to do all these self-sufficiency things, maybe it won’t be so if it’s forced on us.
P.S. Farm Tour Saturday, March 7. 10am
Food–it’s so boring. I mean, yes, it should be delicious, and lovingly prepared. And plucked fresh from the earth. But with the economic crisis exploding around us, all of a sudden our (my) food geek tendencies seem a little trivial. During the fat years, we all had more time and money to natter on and on about what we were eating, and making food consumption into a meta experience. I remember checking out a book called Food Is Culture at the library at UC Berkeley, and the librarian couldn’t help himself when he snarled, “No, food is just food!”
The Urban Orchardist 