The Everyday Bean

If you are wondering what the starving time or hungry gap is, it’s the period of time between when fresh foods have been eaten and gardens and crops have begun to grow. Where I live, it’s the period between February and June. Sometimes it’s shorter. Sometimes it’s longer.

It doesn’t mean that there isn’t food. It means that there isn’t fresh food such as potatoes, carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, etc. Historically, this was a time when people would subsist on beans and cornbread and oatmeal three meals a day. A lot of people would get sick and some would even die from malnutrition.

As we’ve been doing this experiment, I’ve come to realize just how dependent we are on the store. Here are some of the questions I’ve begun to ask myself:

1 What is I can’t get to the store? What if there is no store? What if the store doesn’t have anything due to shipping and supply chain failures?

2. What happens when our food storage runs out?

3. What if I have a bad crop for one particular vegetable or fruit? Do I know how to substitute something that will give me the same nutrition?

4. Do I know how to keep produce and food safe from rodents, etc that would ruin my food storage?

5. How much do I need to plant for a survival garden once the food is gone? How do I keep my seeds/seedlings separate?

6. How can I keep our food stored so that it loses as little nutrition as possible?

7. What if I have to feed others in addition to my family? Am I prepared to do that?

8. Do I have the skills and recipes to use the food I grow in my survival garden?

9. Do I know how to keep our food rotated so that spoilage is minimized?

10. Do I know how to grow a balanced diet if I don’t have access to wheat or corn? How would we get the vitamins and minerals we need to survive?

11. Do I know others in the community with whom I can barter for things I cannot grow?

Those are just a few of the questions of which I have thought. I’m sure more will come to me. I plan to find the answers to these questions in the coming weeks and months. I will share what I find.

If you have ideas or answers, please feel free to share them with us here.