Every so often I feel the need to write a bit about preparing for hard times.
I feel especially burdened to help my own local community be safer and have a healthier culture that will keep us alive for generations especially in light of the recent war.
There are so many things to be upset or worried about but this is something that you can absolutely make a tangible difference with and that nearly everyone can agree is important.
Why Support Local?
Whether it’s supply chain issues, war, massive economic inflation, or natural disasters, community is one of the most powerful assets you can have.
I’ve written before about why the idea of “self sufficiency” is kind of a dangerous idea and why community is important, but I’ll reiterate here:
Trying to go the lone wolf route and escape to be in the middle of nowhere is short-sighted and very risky. There is only so much one (or even two) people are capable of and having loved ones or neighbors that are willing to take care of you and help in hard times is an amazing advantage.
It’s my aim to revitalize this kind of community oriented culture in my county and I think you should do it too!
It’s so easy to panic and have a doomer mindset, but take a deep breath and think for a minute. There are real tangible ways to make a massive difference and to prepare your community for the worst! There is hope!
There are several ways to support your local community (even if it’s just in your neighborhood!) The first is keeping money circulating close to home. Buy your daily needs as close to home as possible and avoid massive corporations that will inevitably send your money to other states or even overseas. That way your money is actively supporting the people around you.
The second is forming trust networks. Actually show good faith towards your neighbors! You don’t have to love everything about them to do them little favors here and there and to share food or gifts with them! People will always be thankful for that and good will is always worth the return on investment! Seriously, if anything ever happens to put you in a hard situation, the best resource you can have are people around you who care enough to help you get through it.
An important note: I strongly recommend looking past a person’s politics and beliefs. The fastest way to get people to tribalize and to be hostile toward you is making it clear that you trust them less because of their worldviews. I don’t care if your neighbors are the most insufferable republicans or the most annoying leftists, show them good will regardless! The willingness to say “I’m going to look past that because I care more about the betterment of my community” not only shows incredible maturity, but it is the attitude that will heal our society. Seriously, these are things that are frankly more important than our individual politics.
Read my article on community models HERE.
Practical Actions To Take
This is my favorite part: there are actual things you can do to take agency and help your community! We aren’t left hopeless to suffer at the whims of big tech and the government!
Firstly, do you have a knack for gardening? Teach people how to grow food. Do you know how to mend or sew? How about woodworking or basic handyman knowledge? Teach people those skills!
I write about the importance of perennial food systems all the time and if enough people in a community understand this, you’ll eventually have a resilient local food system that won’t be affected by outside forces as much!
Grocery stores operate on a minimum inventory. If deliveries stopped one day for whatever reason, it would only take roughly 2-3 days of regular shopping for the stores to run completely out of food. That’s not accounting for panic-buying.
However, if people generally all have food pantries at home with at least enough food for say a month or two at a time, or empty lots are converted into food forests that have regular supplies of fruits and nuts and perennial greens and medicines, and neighbors all care about each other’s well-being, you can see how easily these issues would be solved! We call that “food sovereignty”.
Additionally, even if you aren’t a gardener or forager, I can almost guarantee you have a valuable skill or can easily learn one!
A few years ago I wrote out a list of the most important skills for resilience. Go look through it and pick some! Not only is it valuable to know these skills, but it’s incredibly valuable to teach these skills to your neighbors!
Perennial fruit trees are amazing because they can produce food for literally generations of people. Skill are also perennial; you can teach them and they’ll live on for generations sometimes thousands of years! What could be a bigger impact than that?
Cooking outdoors with people is a great way to form community
Ways to Start
There are a few major things you can do right now to make a massive impact and here is the order I’d recommend:
Meet your neighbors. Somehow we’ve lost the habit of getting to know your neighbors and bringing them food or doing small things to help them. I know you might be an introvert and it’s hard to talk to people, so start with just doing something. Mow their lawn, shovel their driveway, leave food on their porch with a note! It has to start somewhere.
Involve community leaders. Approach a local church, the county commission, a school board, or a business owner and pitch them on these ideas and why they’re important. See if you can get important people to be thinking about these solutions (heck, show them this article!)
Start Teaching and Sharing. Start a local event or attend local meetings to share some of these ideas! Maybe the solution involves asking if there is any land available to start a community food forest on, maybe it involves getting a church to regularly host a skills class. Check with local homeschool groups and local Facebook community groups. The important part is just starting!
You may find that a few people already so related things in your community. This is a huge opportunity for collaboration! Ask if you can host or add anything to their existing projects. Maybe you can increase awareness for the project and get the word out, maybe you can recruit volunteers, maybe you can teach on additional days to maximize the impact. The possibilities are endless here.
Planting edible fungi is an underrated service!
I want to end this with a quick example: The John Hershey Homestead.
John was a homesteader who grew mostly perennial fruits and nuts in his hometown of Downingtown Pennsylvania in the 1920s. He believed in agroforestry and perennial food systems way before it was cool.
Today, his trees have been discovered all over the entire town to the point where if the town wanted to harvest the crops, they could harvest an insane amount of free food from the few hundred remaining trees almost a century later!
Just think about the lasting effect that has on a community. Imagine if 5-10 people did the same thing in their county. Imagine if even just a few neighbors agreed to ensure that the crops are maintained for better yields. Imagine citizens a century in the future eating for free because of actions you took in 2026!
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