@sagescrub and the @homesteaderscoop are asking What are you doing to claim food sovereignty for yourself and your community, and why?. There have been lots of great entries for this challenge already and I know I can't compare to them, but it's as good an excuse as any to assess what we've done so far.
We live in the suburbs of Adelaide, in the driest state in the driest country. I'm going to be honest with you, if we had a crash, such as some are predicting, which ended up with a loss of town water, we would struggle to keep anything but the most drought resistant plants alive. So one of our biggest goals has been trying to expand our water collection capacity.
Currently we have a dedicated water tank for our own drinking water and even in our driest summers this has always managed to last until the next rain. So that's one box ticked. Aloe Vera is a great medicinal plant with a range of uses and will survive everything our weather can throw at it, so that's a good medicinal fallback. I have some other local natives, which I'm not the most fond of food wise, but having them as a backup makes sense. If you're hungry enough you won't be too worried about flavour.
Something I have been trying to learn more about is recognising edible natives and weeds. My biggest teacher in this regard has been Malcolm @ligayagardener. When I’m unsure on something, I run it by him. Having some knowledge of the medicinal and edible uses of the plants around you gives scope for foraging if you're uprooted or crops fail.
At the moment we have mains water and access to chicken feed. We are able to supply ourselves with eggs, most of our fruit and vegetables when in season and some meat. All our herbs come from the garden and excess is shared with neighbours. It's not much, but it is a way of reaching out to the community and making those connections. For such an introvert, I was actually quite surprised to realise that I now know more of the people on our street than some of our chattier neighbours.
Community is essential when things get hard so cultivating that is important for me. Most of my neighbours aren't particularly interested in growing their own food, but the fact that we are doing it has started a seed of thought within some of them. One couple have bought some planters, but have yet to get around to filing them with soil. Another would like to grow more, but is in a rental and doesn't want to put that effort in for somewhere that won't be hers. Unfortunately, our two immediate neighbours are ripping most of the plant life out of their gardens and only growing low maintenance things.
Food preservation is something I've not gone into as much as I'd like. It's mostly theory for me, but I have done a bit of canning and simple drying of herbs. I should really try my hand at some fermenting.
Seed collection is something I've been trying to do more of in recent years. It's been interesting, because I'm finding that some seeds don't always develop for me. I'm also not the best at starting things from seed. It's led me to sticking with plants which I can get to seed and come back easily from seed. I guess this would have been the way plants were selectively bred for tolerance to different climates.
Laying this out in writing I realise we have some big gaps if we wanted to become self sufficient in our food production. There is no way we could manage it in our situation without community. So maybe part of my preparation for a situation where food supply fails is educating myself in order to help educate my community.
Those tough plants my neighbour has planted everywhere in his garden look rather like yuccas to me and I recently discovered that they can be eaten with the right preparation. So maybe that's a starting point. Identifying them properly and learning how they are best eaten!
