Welcome to your food independence!
America is going through one of the strangest times in recent history. Words and phrases that were never part of our lives are suddenly part of our everyday conversation.
One of those phrases is “Food Chain Insecurity”.
Americans as a whole have become very concerned about the stability of our commercial food production and distribution system. Maybe this concern will fade away and maybe it won’t but, what we do know is that over the past decades we have grown so completely dependent on grocery stores to provide for our every desire, that we have become disconnected as to what could happen if that resource ever failed.
Any American who lived through World War ll could tell you all about ‘Food Insecurity’. For these citizens, it was a way of life, and it was necessary for them to gain the skills to create their own independent food chain to keep their families surviving. A cog in that system was called The Victory Garden.
There has been a resurgence of interest in creating these gardens, due in large part to the lack of food on the shelves in our grocery stores in recent months.
The purpose of this blog series is to teach you not only how to physically build a Victory Garden for your family, but to understand its purpose in the bigger picture. The Victory Gardens history were not just grown to feed you for a Summer, but to feed you for a lifetime. A successful garden takes planning and skills that go beyond putting a few seeds in the ground, but the staff here at Willow Ridge Garden Center is here to guide you every step of the way.
Through these entries, we want to provide a basic understanding of the tools, skills, and techniques involved in creating and maintaining the garden itself, as well as how to preserve your harvest, and plan for the coming seasons.
If you have never gardened with vegetables before, yes, there will be a learning curve. Not everything you plant will always be a triumph but, you always learn more from your mistakes than from your successes.
The most important piece of knowledge we can impart is, never be afraid to try! Ask questions, look at victory garden pamphlets, read books, watch victory garden tutorials, or, if you are lucky enough to have a family member or friend who has a garden themselves…listen and learn from them! We have and can create many victory garden plans. Our elders are a wealth of knowledge that they would gladly share if they were only asked.
So, come along with us as we journey into the new world of sustainability and food security!