The Myth of Year-Round Abundance
The grocery store has trained people to believe that abundance is permanent. Strawberries in January. Tomatoes in February. Fresh berries, asparagus, and sweet corn every single week of the year. You walk in, and the shelves are full. It feels like it will always be that way.
On the farm, we know better. We live with the seasons, and the seasons do not care about marketing schedules or supply chain promises. Hens lay fewer eggs when the days shorten. Tomato plants die back when the frost comes. Peas, cucumbers, and sweet corn are gone within weeks of their peak. Apples are at their best for a short stretch in the fall. Potatoes store well, but only if you know how to cure them. Milk production in dairy animals shifts with breeding and weather. Nothing is constant, and nothing is guaranteed.
That does not mean we go without. It means we prepare. Every day we set aside food we grow for ourselves. We freeze eggs in the months when we have more than we can eat so we have them when the hens slow down. We can and freeze vegetables. We keep meat in the freezer and dry herbs from the garden. We store onions, squash, and potatoes where they will last through the winter. Our pantry is full because it is built a little at a time, in the months when the work pays off the most. We still go to the store for staples like flour and sugar, but our plan is to eventually grow and mill our own grains for our household and to replace sugar by adding bees to the farm.
What is everyone else doing? Most are going to the store. They are buying food that has been shipped from thousands of miles away and counting on the shelves being stocked when they need it. They are trusting that the supply chain will work perfectly forever. But what if it doesn’t? What if a storm grounds planes, freezes a trucking route, or wipes out a regional crop? What if fuel prices double overnight?
If the store shelves were empty tomorrow, how long could you feed yourself with what you have in your home right now? Could you make it through the next season? Could you make it through the next week?
Eating seasonally used to be normal. People planned meals around what was ready in the garden or what could be stored for winter. They knew when the hens stopped laying and when the root cellar would run low. Now we treat food as something that appears on demand, disconnected from the work and the timing that make it possible. That illusion of year-round abundance has made people forget that food is grown, not stocked.
We live in a time when the question is not whether the system will strain, but when. Preparing is not panic. It is responsibility. It is making sure that when the season changes or the trucks stop running, you still eat. That is what we do here every day, not because we expect disaster, but because history has already shown that nothing stays certain forever.