Great conference, giant blizzard, closing thoughts
Well, the blizzard may not be so great for all the folks who had plans to travel home today, but the PASA conference was interesting, educational, fun and at times touching. In addition to tons of hard core ag topics there were a lot of topics for the do it your-selfers. This is just a brief mind dump, I have lots of fun stuff to write about in the coming week or two. But for now, the thing that struck me most was how much learning happened for folks from non-farming families on really practical food production and preservation. And the sense of self reliance and community that comes out of it.
There are a lot of folks who work with farmers, our food system, policy, cooking, nutrition; food really touches to many disciplines to list here. A lot of people have in interest in what they eat and where it comes from but are not from farming families. An interesting feature of the schedule this year was that there were a lot of skill-based sessions geared towards folks with interests in urban farming, suburban lawn transformation, permaculture, food preservation, composting and nutrition.
The food preservation topic was a great example of the cross pollination between disciplines and generations. There was a time where canning how-to was handed down informally every season during the harvest. This transfer from grandma to mom to granddaughter installed confidence in food security and the final product. Yum admits having canned and then not eating it for fear of having done it wrong and dying of botulism! So lame.
But to see a roomful of folks of all ages re-learning and sharing this old knowledge (which included the latest USDA tested recipes!) was remarkable. Seeing focused attention from so many people relearning how to use the sun to dry food for later use felt really, really right.
Here are some other things that were especially inspiring:
- Learning about a farmer coop in North Dakota who grow and distribute an open-pollinated wheat variety bred specifically for that climate. The seed is distributed on the honor system to fellow farmers, with no contracts to revive traditional crop production.
- Seeing how people have changed their suburban yards into beautiful producers of habitat and edible calories, and being inspired to keep removing the sod.
- All of the young families striving to learn and be part of making a better world for the young kids they were jugging.
- Lisa Hamilton’s photos and stories of farmers, farm protests and landscapes.
Enough for now, more later. Everyone have a safe trip home!!
