(The music video is an important watch).
As we are all acutely aware, rising global temperatures come with more frequent and stronger storms—storms are the biggest cause of blackouts in the US. While storms do not immediately cause energy poverty, they exacerbate the issue, along with unjust energy transitions that allow wealthy people to access green energy while distorting the costs for people without such privileges.
Energy poverty describes anyone without secure access to electricity and fuel, and specifically includes people who have an income lower than average and are affected by fuel prices that are higher than average.
There’s more than enough evidence to link the very dynamics of colonialism to many issues of chronic inflammation, such as gut issues, as people are metaphorically forced to stomach something they cannot digest; A colonial system where the people who have made the decisions for us and our loved ones for generations live in a different country, speak a different language, and have repeatedly proven to bend the rules away from justice.
Under these conditions, making food that can exist outside of the fridge, outside of the geopolitics beyond our control, and outside of the affects of the inevitable next blackout, becomes a potent form of self-protection.
“Modern diets contain more processed foods and less fiber, both of which can alter the gut micro biota population and function, leading to changes in the immune system that can create inflammation,” explains Dr. Rupa Marya and Raj Patel in their recent book, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. It explains how poverty and poor gut health are connected in many communities, making it clear that blame really belongs to the systemic characteristics of life in poverty: including low access to fresh, tasty, and healthy foods, unstable access to enough clean water and electricity, limited or no support in caring for children and limited or no free time to cook between multiple jobs, and ultimately the relentless stress caused by all of the above.
We taught our neighbor, who struggles with debilitating gastrointestinal issues, everything in our workshop, sending her home with kraut, bread, and kombucha. The next week she stopped us on our way home to tell us that she’d had a zoom call with a nutritionist who spent the entire hour explaining the usefulness of those foods to her gut health. While we are glad our neighbor is getting this useful information from multiple avenues, what the nutritionist failed to explain was how to make any of these necessary medicines ourselves, ignoring the financial inaccessibility of the suggested treatment.
Workshop
Fortunately, the mainstream has begun to welcome the long held knowledge of the health benefits of freshly preserved and fermented foods, yet unfortunately the processes of being able to ferment and preserve at home still allude and even frighten many people. As a result people are paying an arm and a leg for probiotic and high fiber foods while the simple, cheap steps we’ve begun to practice keep our kale and herbs good for months and our tomatoes and bananas good for years while turning fresh food into potent medicines.
Alex wrote us a grant that allowed us to share this information as a workshop to the community; it is useful both to people who need refrigerator alternatives—be it energy poverty or natural disasters in the way—and people who need some gut health support. The gut biome, the living environment of millions of microorganisms in our gastrointestinal tracts from stomach to intestines, influences most of our health, affecting the strength of our immune system, determining how well our body takes in nutrients, and is a reflection of and in constant communication with our brain, sometimes named the second brain.
Basically, the healthier the forest in our gut, the healthier and happier we are.
None of this is original, it is merely calling back to the brilliance tried and tested before us. Fermentation, dehydration, preservation in oil and vinegar or salt and chili peppers. None of these methods require electricity, canning, smoking, or any difficult or expensive process. They are all simple, cheap, and can be done with a few simple tools. If there are any concerns about having the proper space to do these, rest assured that we are able to do it all from the loose idea of a “kitchen” we have under a tarp next to our tent.
Thanks to Southern SARE for their Sustainable Agriculture Leadership Program award we were able to hold this workshop for free and share with the community the same information we shared with our neighbor.
We held the first workshop this month and will be holding another August 12th to accommodate community members who wanted to attend the first but could not. More images and information coming in our August newsletter.
Detailed instructions for everything in the workshop available in our June newsletter!