Southern Agrarianism and the culture of the Old South

Tag: resilient communities

Tomato With Your Oil Change?

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I’ve been taking my vehicles to Classic Lube in DeLand since the early 1990’s. When you find a place you like, you stick with it. Last week, after finishing our oil change, the guys asked if we would like to see their garden. Of course, we said, “Yes”.

They took us back behind the building to an area where a utility pipe comes up and where there used to be some of the usual landscape plants that most businesses have. There, instead of the usual sterile and unproductive living decorations, we saw a garden planted with tomatoes, radishes, onions, basil, lettuce, cilantro, and probably others that I can’t recall at the moment. The dirt that was originally there was replaced with some good top soil. They tend the garden during the normal down time that any business has during the day – and they have fresh vegetables for their lunch

Wouldn’t it be great if other businesses followed the lead of Classic Lube and helped make their communities just a bit more resilient and self-contained?

In addition to the photos, we left with a fresh radish.

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Resilient Communities

The concept of Resilient Communities is one that resonates well with Southern Agrarianism. It is a new term for an old idea – the self-contained village. Some of the large Southern plantations came close to being a resilient community, but not quite. While at first glance, “resilient community” may sound like a fancy phrase for “hippie commune”, it definitely is not the same. Not even close. Take a look at this video about a resilient community in New Zealand to get a better idea of what a resilient community is.

For more information, see the Resilient Communities blog.