Sustainable Communities
Here at the Harvest Network, we take a different approach to creating self-sustainable communities. True self-sustainability means not relying on outside sources for your success, In the context of food sustainability, the means land, seeds, equipment, manpower, skills, and leadership. It is the Harvest Networks desire to provide these resources short-term while developing these resources within the community long term. Notice what is missing from this list, money. It is our understanding of self-sustainability that it means to provide for one’s household and community material needs without the dependence on monetary resources. This does not mean we discourage the sale of goods to those outside the community, but what we do is encourage sharing of resources within the community to reduce the need for finances. We also realize that to be completely free of our monetary system is theoretically possible (just look at the local Amish communities), it is not practically possible (again even the Amish deal with money). But it is our goal to reduce the reliance on finances to meet our material needs.
While a geographical community is perhaps the most recognizable and easiest form of community to create food sustainability, it is by no means limited to it. This community can include a close knit group of friends and family, a church home group, or a group of coworkers. Throughout this discussion, I will refer to my own personal history growing up on a rural farm community in Indiana. I will also refer to the Ikon community, a house church community here in Clarksville where we are sharing resources and learning how to be sustainable not only as individuals, but as a community. I will now go through the list of resources and how they are provided by the Harvest Network and eventually by the community.
Land
Land is perhaps the most material but hardest to come by need for self-sustainability. While most single family households have enough land to have a small garden, it is not enough for high degrees of self-sustainability. But by expanding the scope of sustainability from the household to the community, it increases the probability that the sharing of land will allow for greater overall sustainability. In the Ikon community, one household had fairly good size strip of flat workable land in the back of the property. In recognition of this the family allow the rest of the community to work part of the land for what we will refer to as a communal garden. This is different from community gardens in that produce grown here is planted, harvested, and preserved on specific dates. As an example when the first sweet corn harvest is ready, the community will come together, pick, clean, cut, and freeze the corn. Because of this process, it is recognized that it is more efficient when a community does this together than as individuals. Also, because of the spiritual nature of the group, they will celebrate the event as a parallel to the Biblical Feast of the Ingathering, an event when the Israelites finished the harvest and celebrated as a form of thanksgiving to God and each other. The Ikon community will have these “Feasts” around other produce like potatoes, sweet potatoes, and winter squash.
The importance of land is also addressed in terms of the financially disadvantaged who can’t afford to live on a property. The Harvest Network is currently working with the First Church of the Nazarene in Clarksville to start what is called a Jubilee garden. Here, people who come to the food pantry in need of food assistance will be introduced to the garden where they can take whatever produce they need without being wasteful during food pantry hours. They will also be encouraged to work with church volunteers to help take care of the garden thereby creating a sense of ownership and self reliance. In the process, they will form relationships with not only the church volunteers but also those who need food from the garden thereby creating community. The reason for the name is based the Hebrew Year of Jubilee. In the Bible, the Year of Jubilee occurred every 50 years during which one of the requirements was that all land be given back to the original families, therefore creating economic equality. It is based on this philosophy, that the church is given back to the disadvantaged what is rightfully theirs by Hebrew laws.
Seeds (Initial produce)
The beauty of seeds is not in the cost, but the fact that seeds is the source of the information. Materially seeds require very little to process but are very necessary in sustainability. For example, sweet corn seeds are very materially efficient, $10 of seeds can produce the equivalent of $300 worth of ears of sweet corn. But if one does not have the seed to begin with there is no possibility of having sweet corn at all. While the Harvest Network can provide the initial seeds, we also encourage individuals and communities to learn how to preserve seeds from the produce thereby creating seeds sustainability. That is why the Harvest Network tries to get seeds from Seedsavers. Seedsavers is a non-profit heriloom seed company that provides seeds from original stock. By purchasing seeds from them, The Harvest Network can save communities money on seeds by buying in bulk and passing on the savings. But also Seedsavers also has instructions on how to keep seeds from the produce, thereby reducing the need to buy the seed from the seed company itself!
In Ikon community, one household has been more skilled and capable of starting seeds in doors. Because one cannot buy individual seeds or small starter plants in packs less than 6, the household started the tomato plants indoors and are sharing the plants with the entire community for the individual backyard gardens. By doing so, cost is saved on starter tomato plants and requires hardly any extra effort from the donating household.
But starter produce is not limited to just vegetables. Chickens are something that The Harvest Network encourages as another source of sustainability. This is because chickens provide manure and pest control for a garden while at the same time being fed with scraps from the garden. And with all of this, providing the family an ample supply of eggs and the occasional chicken dinner. But as with all living things, chickens are self replenishing. If a member of the community wants to have a small population of chickens, one only needs to ask a neighbor with a flock that has a rooster to let a chicken sit on the eggs and in the matter of a month or two you have enough chicks for another flock.
Manpower
“Many hands make for easy work” The old saying is one big reason why communities are more sustainable than individual households. During my time on the farm, when the sweet corn was ready, our family as well as a few others would come together and harvest the sweet corn. We would then split the produce appropriately among all that helped, thereby reducing the amount of manpower per amount of produce. It is this tradition and its values that compelled me to pass on the sustainability to the Ikon community and start the Harvest Network to pass it on to other communities.
In this same vein, there are time in the farming community where an unfortunate incident would befall on one of the farmers and he couldn’t harvest his fields. In that time, the other local farmers would come with their time and equipment to harvest his crops. Again this is where community comes together for the sake of one and helps him in his time of trouble. Or as said in one great movie, sometimes “the need of the one outweighs the needs of the many”.
Equipment
While there is some capitol cost in the purchase of equipment, much of the overall cost can be reduce by sharing equipment. Along the lines of the Ikon community where one member provided land and another shared seeds and starer plants, another bought a tiller and shared it with the rest of the community. By one person sharing his or her equipment, it saves other members the community from having to purchase one. After all how often does one need to till a garden, only a couple of times year. Yet they tillers are expensive to be used so little. So why not share? This will come in very handy if a member of the community has a tractor and implements or knows someone well enough that he can borrow it.
Skills
The art of sustainability is one that has just been lost over the past generation. I hear so many talk about how their grandparents would have a garden, get eggs, butcher chickens, can their vegetables, and even just cooking from scratch. I am one of the few fortunate ones who was lucky enough to have their parents who did this stuff. But if sustainability is to be accomplished, those skills need to be recaptured while that generation is still around. In face when addressing this issue to a community, their most valuable resource is this older generation. One can read as many books and watch as many episodes of “Good Eats” as one can, but none came compare to having a friend or relative right there with you.
When the Ikon Community started down the path of sustainability, it started small. It was just me and another household having a garden together. In the second year, the household had it’s own garden plus a community garden where the Ikon members got their hands dirty and experienced gardening for the first time. This year, 5 households will have their own individual gardens plus a communal garden as well as saving money on beef by purchasing a whole beef from a local farmer. Plus this year their will be food preservation via canning and freezing. Next year who knows, there was talk of chickens, growing our own grains or purchasing fruit and nut trees and maybe more. But this would have not been possible if someone hadn’t brought the skills in to begin with.
That which is permanently lost within the community can be made up with the help of the Harvest Network. But from their there still needs to be the skills passed on to the rest of the community. In order for the skills to continue to permeate community, there needs to be mentoring to the new generation. If it wasn’t for the fact that I experienced those skills and that lifestyle, I wouldn’t have been able to pass it on to others in the Ikon community.
Leadership
If there is one thing that is essential to self-sustainability that the Harvest Network can’t provide to the community is leadership. The Harvest Network can come and talk with the community, provide resources, training, works side by side with you, and all of the things necessary to make a garden work, but unless there are people in the community who can step up and say “I will do this”, the community can’t be sustainable and will fail when the presence of the Harvest Network is diminished. Now I am not talking about one person who is in charge and tells what people need to do. That would be “the leader”. In Ikon, many of the households provided leadership by merely stepping up. One household wasn’t asked to provide land, they merely offered to provide what was needed to make things happen. Another household wasn’t asked to start plants for everybody the other group, they just were willing to do it and provide for everybody else.
The leadership needed is simply those who are willing to share and ask for nothing in return. It isn’t about making sure that everybody does their “fair share”. Keeping account of what everybody does won’t create sustainability. Providing for you community will. Contributing and taking the first step in making sure things get done will.
To sum all of this up, the Harvest Network is about helping people take care of themselves. We take the approach that when you don’t need the Harvest Network to maintain you level of sustainability, we have done our job. But we are hoping that you will be wanting to be more sustainable and we can help you.
