Apocalypse Farm

There are a lot of reasons to be food prepared.

During the Great Depression, my grandparents fed their children from the garden and the fields. In eastern Oklahoma, the dust wasn’t as devastating. Sometimes kids there couldn’t afford shoes, but they had beans and onions, tomatoes and okra, homegrown potatoes and venison. They didn’t go hungry.

My daughter’s coworker told her that his Mormon family’s store of food was a lifesaver when he lost his corporate job. He’s working now, but he refuses to be caught unprepared.

We are losing habitat on which bees and butterflies feed and reproduce. We are using up the soil as if we could move to another planet when this one is used up. The oceans are rising and the jet stream is on a drunken spree. All the old gardening rules are flying out the hole in the side of the plane.

If you’ve read the list of ingredients of prepared foods available at your local grocery or tasted the difference between farm eggs and store eggs, you don’t need any other reasons to grow your own or seek out local food.

Apocalypse? I used to think that it would never happen. These days, I’m not too sure.

My daughter has a freezer full of meat and vegetables. I have a pantry full of canned goods, most of it grown within a hundred miles of my farm. I have fryers in the freezer and layers in my backyard. We both live in the country where electrical power can sometimes go out.

You’re better off, she said, with your canned stuff.

You’re okay, I said. You have a generator and a pressure canner. If you knew the power was going to be off for a while, you’d keep the freezers running and start canning everything you could.

With my shelves full of colorfully-filled jars, what do I have to fear?

An earthquake shook me awake a few Saturdays ago. The shaking knocked things off shelves and moved the bed I was on away from the wall. This went on for more than a minute. The first thing I checked, after I was sure my husband and animals were okay, was the pantry. Whew! Dodged that one.

This wasn’t my first earthquake; my farm is in the middle of frack central, two or three miles from the iconic bridge along the Cimarron River you see in all the old oilfield photos from the early 1900s. But it was the strongest one I’d ever felt. It appears that hydraulic fracturing waste has opened a new fault not far from here.

Prepare for the big one, some geologists are saying.

At least I’m not on the Cascadia fault, but it’s probably a good idea to be prepared for anything. I hope you’ll follow along with me on my journey to preparedness.

In Reading Lab we read every day. Books and stories have plenty of things to teach that don’t involve words or vocabulary. There is art and music, history and science, and even a bit of social skills. Take Matt de la Pena’s charming Last Stop on Market Street, a picture book I read to a group of first graders.

After church, CJ and his grandmother catch the city bus. He complains about the rain, and Grandma points out the tree taking a drink from a straw. The illustrations give us a hint of roots.

“Why should we love the rain?” I asked the students.

The first graders aren’t quite sure. One of them thought of flowers. Another said we need water to take a shower.

“What about the food we eat?” I prodded.

Silence.

“Where does food come from?”

A shrug, then, “Wal-Mart?”

“How did the food get to Wal-Mart?”

Another shrug. “Trucks?”

I waited. More silence. Finally, I said, “Plants feed us and they feed our meat. Every bit of food we eat grows.”

“Even cupcakes?” asked the Wal-Mart girl.

Yes, even cupcakes. I tried to explain sugar cane and wheat and fat. I didn’t sully the story with salt. She wasn’t buying it anyway.

It took us all period to read that one important book. The next day I read E-I-E-I-O: How Old MacDonald Got His Farm. Then we planted seeds.

Burpee and Wal-Mart provided the seeds—tomatoes, squash, basil, marigolds, and zinnias. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

Most of the students chose to plant flower seeds.

I wonder what they’d think of fried squash blossoms or salads with nasturtium blossoms?