Victory Gardens
Dec. 1st, 2021 02:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithHere's a look at the rise, fall, and return of Victory Gardens.
This is the kind of project that can be pursued in any community. Network people together, create yard and community gardens, and push for food empowerment. Consider yardsharing so people without yards and people without gardening skills can team up to grow things.
Stop and think about how little power people have left. You don't have a right to hunt, gather, or grow your own food. It's a paid privilege, and even that isn't available in all places. All the land and all the food belong to someone, and you have to pay to get any. If you can't pay, you don't eat and you don't get a place to exist. This is evil. It's also unsustainable in an economic sense.
The more densely productive the land, the better the town's cashflow. Consider how much money people spend on food and lawn maintenance. If they convert lawn to garden, then they save money on lawn maintenance. If they grow produce, then they save money on food. If they have chickens, then they not only get eggs and/or meat, they also save on fertilizer. All the money they're not spending on yard and food etc. is money they can spend to boost the economy, because their income goes farther so they can afford little luxuries.
Think about the barriers to surmount. It's not just about laws banning people from growing food and/or requiring them to spend lots of money making a yard look perfect (which is also bad for the environment). People have much less time than they used to. When Victory Gardens peaked, one job supported a family. Now it takes 2-5 jobs for most families. 8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will leaves plenty of time for gardening. Working 12-hour shifts just to eke out a bare living does not. Children's lives are much more regimented than before, and teens are forced into unpaid labor in "volunteer" or "sport" or other activities in hopes a college will deem them worthy of paying for higher education. But it's still worth checking, because they may have more time left than working adults. Stay-at-home parents are a good bet, as are retired people. Many really avid gardeners now are retired.
This is the kind of project that can be pursued in any community. Network people together, create yard and community gardens, and push for food empowerment. Consider yardsharing so people without yards and people without gardening skills can team up to grow things.
Stop and think about how little power people have left. You don't have a right to hunt, gather, or grow your own food. It's a paid privilege, and even that isn't available in all places. All the land and all the food belong to someone, and you have to pay to get any. If you can't pay, you don't eat and you don't get a place to exist. This is evil. It's also unsustainable in an economic sense.
The more densely productive the land, the better the town's cashflow. Consider how much money people spend on food and lawn maintenance. If they convert lawn to garden, then they save money on lawn maintenance. If they grow produce, then they save money on food. If they have chickens, then they not only get eggs and/or meat, they also save on fertilizer. All the money they're not spending on yard and food etc. is money they can spend to boost the economy, because their income goes farther so they can afford little luxuries.
Think about the barriers to surmount. It's not just about laws banning people from growing food and/or requiring them to spend lots of money making a yard look perfect (which is also bad for the environment). People have much less time than they used to. When Victory Gardens peaked, one job supported a family. Now it takes 2-5 jobs for most families. 8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will leaves plenty of time for gardening. Working 12-hour shifts just to eke out a bare living does not. Children's lives are much more regimented than before, and teens are forced into unpaid labor in "volunteer" or "sport" or other activities in hopes a college will deem them worthy of paying for higher education. But it's still worth checking, because they may have more time left than working adults. Stay-at-home parents are a good bet, as are retired people. Many really avid gardeners now are retired.
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Date: 2021-12-01 01:56 pm (UTC)