Lummi Island Grows

On Lummi Island, as all around the country, many people are raising at least some of their food this year.  (For a few pictures of Randy & Linda’s recent harvesting, check out Randy’s blog, Rural Garden/Urban Garden.)

Seed ordering & swapping, pass-along-plants and more have been a highlight of the gardening year for me so far. (Bob & Marnie:  Thanks for the excellent bok choi & radishes this week. I’ll bring over some strawberries in return.)

This trend toward homegrown food isn’t very surprising, given all that we’re learning about about problems with ’standard’ food supplies:  high dependence on toxic pesticides and herbicides, increasing contamination of food supplies and lack of adequate food safety regulation, cost, quality, taste, petrochemical dependence, corporate patenting of food and other plants, GMO contamination of staple crops , lost genetic diversity, the increased probability of food scarcity etc.  (Excellent recent books on our industrial food system  include Pollan’s In Defense of Food and Roberts’  The End of Food, both available from the Island Library, as are many good books on growing and preserving healthy food.)

The good news is that Lummi Islanders have a tradition of food production, be it animal or vegetable (fishing is part of the tradition but now threatened by reduced fish populations).   Many islanders also  are avoiding needless pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, reducing use of external inputs’ (off-island amendments), raising heirloom varieties, saving seeds and sharing kn0wledge, space, labor and tools.

I think it would be great to have some kind of Lummi Island Grows network to facilitate community sharing of  ‘all things food’.  Some low-high tech combination probably would work best to connect people and swap information etc. — informal networking at the Saturday Market and with friends; organizations roups like the Grange, LICA or the  community garden; an online group for discussion and swaps;l plus blogs like Randy’s.

Such sharing used to be necessary in rural communities, often partly facilitated by organizations like the Grange.  The Lummi Island Grange doesn’t focus much on growing these days, but perhaps it will again, as  homegrown security feels increasingly important these days.

It will be interesting to see whether Lummi Islanders continue to rely on our informal networks of friends or develop some other structures, in the next few years.  The advantage of informal networks is that no one has to organize, coordinate or maintain anything, unlike  things like website, groups with monthly meetings, etc.