Preparing for a Nourishing Tomorrow – Part I: An Introduction

photo credit: ukanda

This article is the first in a 3 part series graciously written by my husband, Mr. S. While this may not appear to be directly in the vein of the content here at Nourishing Days, I believe that it is the logical conclusion of all things sustainable, homesteading and finding our food’s roots.

You can expect parts 2 & 3 later on in the week. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

This series of articles may link to some different content from what you normally read on the site.  I won’t have any great food recipes but I will point out the recipe for disaster that the current society has been baking for some time.  Along with this examination will be some things you may never have considered.  Does it have to do with nourishing?  Absolutely.  In fact, it will be an attempt to inform you of how to be prepared to nourish the people you love and care about (and maybe even those you don’t) in the next few crises that are on the way.

Before we get started I think we should take just a minute to define what we mean by nourish.  I’m going to combine a couple definitions to give us something to work with.

Nourish: To supply the food, support, instruction, and encouragement necessary to maintain and grow.

So we are not just talking about nutrition when we are talking about nourishment, although that is certainly a component of it.  However, it is certainly one of the building blocks because if you do not have the nutrition you need you will not be able to support, inform, and encourage those around you to maintain and grow. While the various parts of this article will address all aspects of this definition, to get started we are going to focus on the supply of food.

Everyone (or at least every family) has to plan for how they are going to eat in any given week.  What I’m going to ask you to do is extend this “plan” into preparation for surviving over the longer term.  But before you will buy into this preparation I’m talking about you are probably going to need to see a reason to do it.  This isn’t going to be one of those, “Go buy all the dehydrated food you can now” routines.  This needs to be something more thorough and thoughtful because the simple matter is that if all you have is dehydrated food and it runs out then you haven’t really done a thorough job of preparing.  So our solution on this journey needs to be practical and sustainable.  It also needs to have short-term (“Surviving”) and longer-term (“Thriving”) points of action.

To get you in the proper mindset you should take the time to read Surviving Off-Off-Grid: Introduction

Stay tuned…it is going to get interesting.