58 ~ Two years, many thanks

Photo by Greg McCune

Well, here we are – today marks the second anniversary of the last time I grocery shopped.  Since then I’ve occasionally stopped at grocery stores for the likes of cat kibble, coffee beans and paper towels. But other than two trips to augment provisions for the past two Thanksgiving dinners, I last grocery shopped to assemble a meal on December 23, 2019.

Some basics such as flour and sugar continue fall, manna-like, into my larder’s lap, through gifts or barter (so to be fair, someone is grocery shopping, even if it’s not me). I’ve also established wonderful pipelines to cream (and thence butter), strawberries, olive oil (produced by my nephew in Italy) and chocolate (no less than Swiss!). In these two years, I’ve had to slide my belt buckle only a hole or two tighter – and to a position of better health, not malnourishment. No Hunger Games here.

As this year draws to a close, the seasons for gardening, foraging, fishing and hunting lie mostly behind us. Here at the farmhouse a good harvest of winter squashes, potatoes, onions and garlic rest in their assigned cool places, the canning shelves are heavy, and my freezers are filled to their doors with vegetables, fruit, wild trout, venison, soups (leek & potato and venison & onion prominent among them), tomato sauce, pesto and ratatouille (while I make regular offerings at the altar of St. Felicity of Electricity, protector from power outages).  Still coming from the butcher, while I figure out where to put it(!), will be about 30 pounds of venison sausages and ground venison (fortunately, the fat doe I shot in November recently came back negative for CWD).

What began as a temporary, spontaneous experiment two years ago has gradually transformed to a routine, a way of life, and a profoundly satisfying one. The demands of time and energy to feed oneself can be intense (especially as I do much of it solo), but the spiritual benefits more than compensate, as well as the relationships that have deepened or developed along the way (just recently I traded maple syrup for honey with one friend, and squashes for more leeks and red cabbages with another). It feels good to move through the day with a markedly reduced ecological footprint, disengaged from the industrial food system. And this is something any of us can do more of in 2022, simply by seeking more opportunities to buy local and organic, or by putting a pot of herbs on the windowsill.

One thing I’ve struggled with is the language to describe what I’m doing.  I’m not, in fact, ‘feeding myself’ or ‘producing my own food’ or ‘living self-sufficiently’.  Quite the opposite – I am utterly dependent on the generosity of the Earth (and on my bartering homeys) for everything I have, everything in my canning jars and freezer. No one is self-sufficient, and I’ve simply become more aware of this the past two years.  

This understanding has in turn opened me to more gratitude and reverence for the world. It’s not generally automatic to feel gratitude for a can of peas or Hormel beef stew dropped into a shopping cart. But plant peas in early spring, nurture their tendrils through the spring cold, and later munch on the pods fresh off the vine – one of the first fresh vegetables of the year – and gratitude naturally follows.  Or carry the sadness of looking into the yet clear, brown eyes of a doe I’ve just killed, and grateful reverence is a healing antidote.

These are some of the things these past two years have given and taught me:

Reverence for the amber carrot that stretches into the earth like a secret, and bean stalks that reach toward the sun.

Reverence for each trout that died to feed me, offering it a prayer as its gills slow to stillness.

Reverence for the streams and the names of the streams that grew the trout that fed me and those I love: Tainter Creek, Big Spring Branch, Little Green River, Elver’s Creek, Sugar Creek. These are the names I know. The Ho-Chunk before me, and before them the earliest builders of the effigy mounds, called them something else.

Reverence for my red-combed hens, and their perfect feathers and perfect eggs.

Reverence for the sandstone outcrop on which I hunt in the dark of early morning, and the wild swans that mew on the west wind between the moon and me.

Reverence for the trio of ancient bur oaks that stand like guardians of the gardens.

Reverence for the bumblebees that steadfastly pollinate the squash blossoms in July, transforming orange flower to orange flesh that will feed friends around the Thanksgiving table.

Reverence for the maple trees, whose wounds are the gateway to their sweetness - as for so many of us.

Reverence for asparagus, that eternal optimist, which comes up every spring no matter how harsh the winter just ended.

Reverence (when I remember!) for the mosquito, Japanese beetle, burdock and poison ivy, each living its role. It’s not all about me and what I want.

Reverence for the corn, and corn’s deep story on this continent, and remembering the first two corn babies with cornsilk hair, the twins from which the Mayans believe all humans are descended.

Reverence for the rain, which soothes and nourishes all things.

Reverence for the dirt, which crumbles softly in my hands, and holds the deaths of a thousand lives, without which no new life can grow.

Finally, reverence for Grandfather Sun, who makes it all possible, by fighting each night through the dark side of the world, to rise again in the morning, a bit scratched and bloodied, but ready to nurture the world once again.

Dear readers, let’s keeping looking for points of reverence in 2022. Doing so will feed us, and the world.

I’ll leave us with a wee, appropriate Christmas gift  – my favorite poem about grocery stores, by the wonderful Jay Leeming (www.jayleeming.com):

Supermarket Historians

All historians should be supermarket cashiers.
Imagine what we’d learn;
“Your total comes to $10.66,
and that’s the year the Norman’s invaded Britain”
or, “that’ll be $18.61, the year
the Civil War began.”
 
Now all my receipts are beaches
where six-year-olds find bullets in the sand.
My tomatoes add up to Hiroshima,
and if I’d bought one more carton of milk
the cashier would be discussing the Battle of the Bulge
and not the Peloponnesian War.
                       
But I’m tired of buying soup cans
full of burning villages,
tired of hearing the shouts of Marines
storming beaches in the bread aisle.
I want to live in a house
carved into a seed
inside a watermelon,
to look up at the red sky
as shopping carts roll through the aisles
like distant thunder.