The Hunger Gap

While ordering some seeds this winter I came across the term “hunger gap”. It was used in the description of a storage root crop variety (I can’t remember which vegetable!). I was struck by the term, and honestly think its remarkable I’ve only heard about it now in

my late twenties. It refers to this period of time in mid-winter until early spring when no fresh produce is available, when winter stores are decreasing without any new food coming in. It's such a visceral term, one that makes me imagine being one of the original inhabitants of our late 1800’s home, huddling around the fire with a large family, mentally taking an inventory of the amount of different roots and grains down in the cellar as the bitter February winds howl outside, with spring nowhere in sight.

Back to the present day, in early March when I’m writing this, our winter stores are doing pretty well, even despite some mediocre harvests from some crops because of last summer’s severe drought. Plenty of potatoes left, lots of tomato sauce, pickles of various kinds, jams, garlic (which is just starting to green up inside and thinking about sprouting), plus all our frozen meat, fruit, and vegetables. Anyone else really grateful for freezers and refrigeration technology? Mind you, we are by no means eating only what we grow, though our storage crops and preserves feature in every meal throughout the winter. One of the long-term goals that we are working towards more and more each season is growing more diversity of crops that can be put away, whether as storage veggies or preserving fruits, making pickles, freezing, dehydrating, etc. That attitude of putting away the harvest during times of abundance is core to a simple and nature-connected life I think, and maybe something our culture could do with more of as a whole. 

It can be hard and exhausting to make the time for preserving while also attempting to have a balanced life, as we learned this summer caring for our infant son while also meeting all of life's demands and still trying to preserve our harvests in earnest. While it is tiring it also doesn't feel like ‘work’ per se, more like being connected to our food and future well being. Rewarding, fulfilling, tiring, engaging. Sounds like a good recipe to me. It all feels so worth it, opening that jar of tomato sauce that you were sweating over while canning in the August heat as the snow flies outside and the temperatures are 20 below. 

I think theres a great power in connection to the land that can be tapped into by putting up so much of the harvest for later consumption. Realizing that by eating that jar of tomatoes when the very garden that grew them is covered in snow, I’m literally eating the land, air and water that became such a wonderful fruit is a bit mind blowing to me. I am literally made up of the matter that is in the soil that we tend to. Of course, I’ve got the privilege of not living a subsistence lifestyle out of pure necessity and being able to have thoughts like that. On the other hand, our gardens do substantially reduce our food costs throughout the year which really increases our resilience as a modest income household. In all honesty we are actually incredibly reliant on our gardens to feed us throughout the year, which is something that I am ok with, and actually feel quite proud of. Rereading that sentence about “privilege of not living a subsistence lifestyle out of necessity” exposes a bit of a cultural bias I have internalized- that some how subsistence living excludes or limits the ability to have philosophical or spiritual musings and deep insights or explorations into the nature of reality. My experience and stories from other folks I’ve met living simple lives, as well as books I’ve read, tells me its tends towards the opposite. What better way to live alongside the realities of life and death, to contemplate them, than through acknowledging the realities of the hunger-gap in this landscape we call home. 

Our friends’ dog caught and killed a wild turkey the other week, the last week of February. Naturally, they took it home and processed it to eat. One of them shared that as soon as they de-feather the bird she was shocked by how skinny it was, but it quickly made sense. It’s been a brutally cold winter here, and surely all the easy to forage food is gone by now. My friend said it made sense her dog caught the bird, as it was probably starved and weak. 

Another thought along that line: years ago I took part in a wilderness skills program. During one of the weekends our group got together in late January. We were wandering through forest in Muskoka, looking at tracks and the winter landscape, when one of the facilitators shared an anecdote about early February onward being the “Time of Starvation”. I wish I could remember where she got the term from, but I can’t. A bit more brutal than hunger-gap, yet the title sure rings true for this time of year. Maybe it seems a bit dramatic, but in a world where one couldn’t just go to the local Superstore or Food Basics I’m sure evocative names like that would remind us to get our stores stashed away during the “Times of Abundance” in the summer. The reality of the time of starvation is lived by the creatures we share the land with, from that turkey mentioned above to the field mouse who's acorn stores went moldy and is scrambling around looking for seed heads still poking above the snow to eat. 

Given the fragility of our globalized food system and supply chains as was clearly seen during the COVID pandemic and recent tariffs thrown around by the Trump regime, I think we would do well to engage with the opportunities and abundance around us in our gardens, wild plants that grow around us, and our local food systems, storing abundance for future use while enjoying the seasonal plenty. I also want to emphasize a dual call to action on this as a way to create resilience in our homes and communities while also just being a joyful and connected way of living with the seasons that is valuable in itself. By growing food to put away for the winter, I’m following thousands of years of tradition practiced by countless different people who lived on this land before me, settler and indigenous, by doing a practical, wise, and kind of just common sense thing: saving abundance for times of scarcity. By buying as much of what we don’t grow or raise ourselves from local ecologically minded farmers, we get nourishing foods to get us through the winter while also supporting the livelihood of awesome folks. I think it’s easy to take a sort of “self-sufficient” attitude with this whole topic, but I think a more healthy and based in reality approach is to foster a “community-reliant” way of seeing. And of course, there are somethings we buy in the winter that don’t come from Ontario, which is also ok. There has been inter- and intra-continental trade for millennia, and I think the challenge of our day and age is to figure out how to engage in that ethically and with respect for lands that we may never step foot on and people we may never get the pleasure of meeting. 

To circle back to our own gardens, the awareness of winter storage is a huge part of how we plan our crops for the year, as well as what fruit and nut trees we plant. While preservation through food processing is well and good, there also is a huge satisfaction in being able to put away whole foods only to pull them out months later with them still looking great and tasting nourishing. 

One last idea while pondering the hunger-gap. It has power as a concept to challenge the consumer narrative that has been sold to us that abundance looks like having whatever we want, whenever we want it, regardless of the ecological and human costs (which we more often than not don’t see). There is a seasonal shift unique to all regions on this beautiful Earth, and ours happens to be one that has a long dormant season. Living in a time with of so much comfort, it is easy to lose sight of the unique gifts that offers us. Like actually relying on the people around us, the soil that feeds us, and the humble abundance that is always here, if we only know how to see it.