Building Resilience Through Relationships and Community

In a powerful conversation on the Less House, More Resilience podcast, host Laura explores the urgent necessity of self-sufficiency and community resilience with Egypt Krohn, farmer, homesteader, and food systems educator behind Dragonfly Downs Farm and her Substack publication.. Recorded against the backdrop of global conflict and supply chain uncertainties, this episode serves as a vital call to action, urging listeners to shift their focus inward—to their kitchens, their neighbors, and the land beneath their feet—to build true, lasting security.

Egypt's Links

www. dragonflydownsfarm.com

https://dragonflydownsfarm.substack.com/

https://www.instagram.com/dragonfly_downs_farm/

Book a Call with Laura

Go to thetinyhouseadviser.com

Transcript

Less House More Resilience ... (00:45)

Well, Egypt Krohn welcome to Less House, More Resilience podcast. It is so fun for me to have a conversation with you since we have connected through Substack, which I guess on Substack you can still send messages that people actually see. And there's so much great writing going on and yours is, great writing and so timely for what we're experiencing right now. For listeners, we're recording this on March 13th.

So we are 14 days into this ⁓ crazy and ⁓ illegal war that we're in. And so all of us right now as we're thinking about both the atrocities, but also how we might prepare ourselves for perhaps supply chain shocks or having less access to

easy things that we might normally pick up on a regular basis. It's good to start thinking about how we can be resilient in a smaller, like bring that radius in to a smaller, community and stop, maybe focusing so much on what's coming from a big barge overseas. So I really love that we're going to talk about this idea around resilience and self-sufficiency, but also how that's all tied into community. So.

Welcome Egypt.

Egypt Krohn (02:09)

Thank you. Thank you, Laura. I'm really excited to talk with you today.

Less House More Resilience ... (02:13)

So please, for listeners who haven't encountered your Substack page, introduce yourself and all the work that you're doing.

Egypt Krohn (02:24)

Sure, so I'm Egypt Crone. I'm the owner of Dragonfly Downs Farm, which is a very small family, permaculture, regenerative, integrated, all the things farm in mid-Michigan. And I do write on Substack under my own name and the publication label Regenerate. I also am a mother of four pretty young little kids. I...

I'm a homesteader and a food systems educator as well.

Less House More Resilience ... (02:56)

That is a lot for one person to keep going. Yeah, a lot of little jobs, all of which keeping your mental like very busy. Yes. So how did you come to this notion of self-sufficiency and homesteading for yourself and your family?

Egypt Krohn (02:58)

It's ⁓ a lot of little jobs.

You know it's funny, in a lot of ways it's been with me since I was a little kid. I grew up just devouring all of the survivalist youth fiction, you know, Jean Craighead George

 I just started reading her books with my son, ⁓ you know, My Side of the Mountain and Julia of the Wolves and so many other classics, Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson, all these things. Just kind of always dreaming of like, what if...

you know, I'd disappeared into the mountains and survived on my own and but never taking that seriously. And it wasn't until I was an older teenager that I found the publication Mother Earth News and realized that like, ⁓ you can actually do a lot of these things just in kind of an otherwise normal life. And then also, you know, around the same time and as I was in college, kind of becoming aware of

what now often gets referred to as the polycrisis. You know, didn't have that language for it then, but understanding the depth of the environmental catastrophe that we're in, understanding the natural resource and just general life degradation that we're seeing, how much we're losing, and also coupled with the precariousness of our energy infrastructure and ⁓

kind of this crazy, almost like a Ruth Goldberg machine, modern life that we've kind of created. It's like a massive stack of cards and just realizing that in a way, ⁓ I really lost.

faith in kind of modern civilization, Western society. And I was also really disturbed at that time in particular with just the level of violence and cruelty that's kind of hidden behind the scenes. ⁓ Just how extractive and destructive kind of everything that we do, you know.

I have a lot more nuance on this perspective now, but it's still fundamentally true, and that really disturbed me as a young person, and I really wanted to figure out how...

to live differently, like live in a way where I could look myself in the mirror and not feel like I was being cruel and violent and destructive to people and beings outside of my own immediate circle. And that all of those things together really pushed me towards both sustainable agriculture and kind of what we generally call today homesteading skills. And I was really lucky to be able to do

a

fair amount of traveling when I was in college, through university programs, and study abroad, always in kind of agricultural fields. So I had to learn all of these really tangible skills that felt really important to me at the time and still do.

from people around the world, which is something I'm always gonna be really grateful for. I got to learn how to make cheese at this beautiful dairy farm in the south of France. I to, I learned how to spin from abuelas in the Peruvian mountains and just all these little pieces, all these little threads that each one to me felt like a weight off my shoulders. Like, okay, I...

my children will have clothes no matter what happens. They will have food no matter what happens. All of these little pieces coming together felt like true security to me in a way that I couldn't find a motivation to find in our more traditional fiscal system at that time.

Less House More Resilience ... (07:30)

That's so beautiful because I think that when we get siloed in the system that we were born into, and we don't have those opportunities to be exposed to other ways of life, then it doesn't occur to us, right, to go seek out that information. You have to kind of just encounter it, you know, serendipitously and then

be able to say, ⁓ I could do that and I could apply that. And so it's such a amazing thing, the way that life will guide you around to have exposure to all these different concepts. And, and you can be so blind for so long, ⁓ if you don't get that exposure. so hopefully this conversation will spark some sort of curiosity in someone who hasn't thought about all the ways that they could actually take care of themselves.

through your experience and especially as we consider this moment of, the continuation of challenges of ways that we are normally used to doing all of these things. It's time for us to activate perhaps some hidden history in our memory or in our collective memory. So let's talk about

heritage skills a little bit, specifically around the food farm and kitchen. This is something that I see a lot of people just mentioning, like, I don't have the knowledge that my grandmother had, right? So talk about why that is so important for being adaptable right now.

Egypt Krohn (09:14)

Food is where it all starts, you know? And that's, there are so many different places to look in the midst of all the things that are wrong in the world and I keep coming back to food. ⁓ You know, there's, are other core needs that are just as important as food, but food is so personal and so foundational to our health.

and our culture and our sense of self and the way we interact with other humans and the way we interact and affect the more than human world. ⁓ I have trouble finding one topic that you could focus on that has a wider range of ripple effects than food. And you really can't.

your locus of control is very centered in yourself and perhaps your household and your family and you have so much power and autonomy to change your diet. And I know we can feel crippled by financial access and we can feel crippled by what skills we have, but it, you can,

you can change your diet and you can learn new skills. All of those things are available certainly to any able-bodied person. ⁓ There are ways, you know, if you are determined and you are ready to make changes, there are ways and there are paths forward. And there is so much, so much complexity and nuance to kind of

the current moment we're in, but one thing that is, I think, a positive is the availability of free information and the accessibility of free information. I am, ⁓

I am as critical of the dangers of social media and the effect it has had on our interpersonal relations as anyone. And the fact of the matter is, is there are thousands if not millions of people on social media in particular giving away free information. yeah, sure form information has its limits, but.

those little nuggets and starting points really can't teach you a lot and they can lead you down ⁓ the right trajectories to find the long form information that you need. And nothing replaces one-on-one learning and togetherness, but that doesn't have to be a skilled mentor and someone learning. That can be a couple people learning together ⁓ through these remote informational sources, you know? There's a lot of different ways to find real companionship and

to learn that don't involve ⁓ necessarily having an in-person teacher, even if that is the best way to learn. There are other ways to learn. ⁓ And that can be done without money. don't have to... Classes are great. And if that is how you learn, there are so many great courses out there, ⁓ but you can just try. I think something ⁓ that affects a lot of us is a...

oversized fear of making mistakes and failures. I think, I wonder sometimes if that comes back to the way we learn and the way we educate. You know, we're so worried about getting graded on our results, you know, even if it's only us doing that grading that sometimes we hesitate to do things without all the support that we need to do it right the first time or within the first couple times, but

It's okay, like, just start and know that you, honestly, you are gonna make mistakes and you're gonna mess things up, but that's okay, you know? Just being willing to start is, I think, just like the most important thing.

Less House More Resilience ... (13:32)

Yeah, it's, there's been a few starts going on in my world. ⁓ in terms of these heritage skills, I've started to be a little concerned that maybe I won't have access to all of my bookmarks of all of the, of all of the recipes or the concepts that I've collected from permaculture and cooking and things. And so I have started, you know, collecting a few books that are key and, ⁓

Egypt Krohn (13:52)

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Less House More Resilience ... (14:01)

you know, creating a little bit of a physical library in case something were to happen to, you know, grid or internet access. And also one of the things that I had intended to do was to start a bread ritual, which a lot of people did during the pandemic, right? Everybody took up sourdough. ⁓ and I didn't do it successfully during the pandemic. ⁓ in that my starter that I was trying to create didn't turn out so good.

Egypt Krohn (14:18)

Yeah.

Less House More Resilience ... (14:28)

But I got a starter recently from someone and I have, ⁓ you know, stockpiled some grains and buckets. And so I'm milling grains every week. And I, after a couple of weeks and, know, kind of really getting through the, the process of baking with sourdough, I now have like a weekly bread thing going on. And I've turned that into one of the two lows is going to go to my neighbor who's gonna

⁓ exchange with me for greens that she's growing because my greenhouse isn't quite ready yet. And so it's given me an opportunity to expand, just the resilience beyond my own family and start, you know, connecting with neighbors and looking for opportunities for exchange. So talk about collective resilience a little bit in terms of that and like that idea around the food and farm and kitchen skills and how that's important for our community and more than just ourselves.

Egypt Krohn (15:24)

Yeah, I mean, it goes back to the beginning of who we are as a species, right? I mean, our most distinctive self-identity as what makes us humans is that we are a collaborative ape. know, we're, our species special sauce is that we will collaborate in a really fundamental way.

And that is what has allowed us to be so resilient and so adaptable across time. And that is why we now live on essentially every continent and every, you know, climate and biome imaginal. Like there are humans who have found a way to make that work. And so much of that, it's adaptability and resilience, which I think ⁓ should give us a lot of hope in this moment.

Our world is changing and we can survive it. We have as a species survived climate changes before and we can survive this one. ⁓ That doesn't mean that we can be complacent and that doesn't mean that we don't need to take like urgent action to save the other species that are imperiled by our actions and by the changes that we're seeing. ⁓

But I have like ultimate faith that we, that we can find a way through this, but we, we can't do it unless we remember who we are and who we are is a collaborative community based group. You know, we, and, and that's like a really like big way to think about it. But in this, it has to happen on the small everyday scale. It has to start with

saying hi to your neighbor, offering something and you know coming up with these these sweet little barter exchanges, just offering gifts. Also being willing to ask for things, you know people like to feel needed and you need you know there's a line, don't be the person who always asks and never gives. That's really important but don't be afraid to ask, know offer freely but also

Don't be afraid to ask for things. And I think that is something that gets forgotten too. ⁓ all, you know, we just, one, there are too many skills and too many needs out there for any one person to learn them all. And we need partnerships and ⁓ collaborations and a huge diversity of people to be involved in acute.

in our communities with a huge diversity of skills in order to have true resilience. ⁓ You know, there are things that I'm just never going to be good at. You know, maybe I can do them, but there's someone else who can do them better and it should be okay to say, hey, I'm really good at this thing and you're really good at that thing. How about we, you know, partner out then. ⁓

just just being willing to make connections and I think that

food is also just the best place to start that, you know? I really think that one of the most powerful tools of the resilience, you know, if you want to call it that, or of building mutual aid networks and resilient communities is the potluck and the dinner party. Like, invite people over for dinner and if you can't put together a whole meal, make it a potluck and that is fine, you know? ⁓

But like we need to have parties and we need to have chill evening events ⁓ on a regular basis. And you know, it's got to start with you. You're the only person in your world who can make that first step, you know? And then the other piece of that is say yes and make it a priority when you do get invited to someone else's.

whatever is, you know, events or community building. ⁓ But we've gotten really good at making up reasons to not do these things. And we've made it really easy for ourselves to stay hold up in our own little nests and not reach out. ⁓ And that's, I think, the most important work of the moment is to kind of undo that isolation and build networks in the real world again. ⁓ And

you can build some really, really powerful, deep modes of resilience, but they need to start in those, it's got to start before the crisis, if you want to be strong in the crisis, you know? ⁓

Yeah, I just start reaching out to people, invite people over, feed people.

Less House More Resilience ... (20:29)

So I just want to reiterate that point that you made about asking. I think you hit the nail on the head in terms people do like to help. And I think we have forgotten that allowing someone to help is actually giving them a gift of doing something that makes them feel good. And we all have this

culture around being very individualistic and taking care of ourselves. Or maybe that's just our white culture. That's like that, right? Because certainly other communities seem to be more adept at this sharing and community building than, than we are. And you and I come from a, we have a particular point of privilege in that we get to flex our days around multiple

Egypt Krohn (20:54)

Okay.

Less House More Resilience ... (21:18)

projects that we want to work on. We're not out working, four jobs in order to, keep food on the table for our kids. So I think it's important, to point that out that there are people who don't have as much time freedom as we do. And this is where those community connections can really serve an even stronger point. And all of us have to in this moment, get out there and start, exposing ourselves to the communities that exist.

not only for our own, betterment and for our community building and resilience for the future, but also as I've been hearing on other podcasts, this is how we become like Minneapolis in terms of being on someone's call list so that we can actually give or help when help is needed. If you stay at home and you're stuck inside your house and nobody knows you except for maybe your work colleagues or

whoever you associate with on a regular basis. And you're not on somebody's text thread or you're not on somebody's email list, whether it's, the art club or the, or the, mommy and me group or whatever it is. Like if we're not in the community and on somebody's list, we won't know when there's a moment for us to show up and help. And so.

This is just another call on this podcast from what I've been hearing on a lot of other podcasts. And that is get involved now, get involved now. And if you're not already and make sure that you are connected with people who have your name and they know how to reach you so that when your community, ⁓ needs a little support, you're able to. To be there in that moment. So I wanted to talk about.

place-based connections too a little bit as, being rooted in a community for those of us who've moved around for our careers or, you know, traveled a lot or whatever ⁓ can seem a little, you know, hard to achieve. I have talked to people here in New Mexico about how I might become part, of this place, right? I moved away from my home.

Egypt Krohn (23:25)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Less House More Resilience ... (23:30)

where I grew up, at 20 years old and then moved around a lot. And it can make you feel a little bit, unanchored. And so as we want to become more rooted in a place and a community, how do you think about that in terms of its tie to the way that we have historically treated nature and our land?

and how becoming more rooted might change our perspective on that. Talk to me about place-based connections, because you have such a great connection with the land that you're on.

Egypt Krohn (24:04)

This is actually something I think about a lot. And I think it's really at the root of a lot of what has led us astray culturally. And there's a lot of different places to start in this conversation. I really fundamentally believe that the soil itself is just the foundation of all terrestrial life on this planet.

And I don't think we've done nearly anything approaching on a good enough job of giving the soil and the community that exists within the soil the credit that it's due. it's that, you know, each soil is so unique. Each mycobrium is in that soil is so unique, you know, that there are other cultures that have a word for this. You know, I had the privilege of studying this, concept of terroir, which is a French concept of

flavor and, food quality and uniqueness based on the specific regionality. And that is easiest to understand and often related to wine. so you think of like a traditional, champagne wine, for example, it's like a specific grape variety, but it's also a specific region. And it's those two things together that make that flavor. And you can't.

get that true flavor in any other combination and in any other place. And that comes down to the very unique makeup of that soil, right? And that reflects outward on so many other things than just a wine quality or a type of cheese.

everything that is true about a place and all of the life in that place. And each place is its own unique community. And you know, I really, really

respect and have been very heavily influenced by the work of Wendell Berry and one of his one of his quotes that has stuck with me the most is something to the effect of there are no

There are no unsacred places, there are only sacred places and desecrated places. And I fundamentally believe that like every place is sacred. And every place is just profound and unique and special in its own way. And I think that we used to know that without

knowing that even in that our lives were so intimately tied to place. So even in a culture that didn't necessarily talk about this explicitly, I think we did know the ins and out of the place that we were in. you know, I've thought I had the privilege of growing up in a place ⁓ where my family had been for

A decent number of generations ⁓ for a white family here on this continent, about as many generations as is possible. it's like this place that I grew up on, this place is in my bones, like very literally. The minerals of the soil are the minerals in my bones. My body is of this place. It is of this soil. And that's a really special level of connection. And I think it makes a lot of

What those of us who value ecological responsibility and resilience and protection, the kinds of actions that I want to see from that perspective, they become innate and natural when you are of a place and understand that place and value that place. And it becomes a lot harder to protect.

a place when we aren't connected to it, when we don't see it, when the actions that are harming it are coming from people outside of that place. And we are fundamentally an unrooted culture. And it started on this continent back at the beginning, right? I mean, we ⁓ came from another place and displaced the folks who were of this place. And, you know, at this point, even

Most of our indigenous folks are displaced forcefully and moved around. And there's so very few of us who have that very true, very deep time relationship to place that makes environmental responsibility just innate, you know, an innate part of life. And I think it's really critical that we focus on rebuilding that.

This is something that's really, really important to me and it's really important to the food systems work that I'm trying to do is recreating a true sense of place wherever you are. And that looks like a lot of different things. One thing that I try to write about and encourage is looking at indigenous flavors to your place. Indigenous foods so are

diet has become very globally homogenized and it's very Eurocentric. Obviously there's exceptions to that. It's not a straight rule, but overall that's very true. And it's beautiful and amazing that we can share flavors across the globe and that we can share cultural recipes and have cuisine from any far flung region of the world in almost any major city.

But at the same time, we've lost so much of that regional nuance of flavor and diet and culture. And I think rediscovering that is really important. So something that I've spent, that I've been trying to make time for is learning how to forage native plants to my area that have strong flavors that are usable as spices and learning how to incorporate them.

I work with juniper and prickly ash and spicebush berries and a lot of these different things. you know, something that's been fun for me is to make a forage pie spice blend with spicebush, which tastes a little bit like a native shrub. It makes these little red berries that have a big seed inside of them and you can dry them and

grind them up and they have this really strong pungent flavor that's a little bit like allspice, but it's different. you know, making desserts with that instead of the traditional like cinnamon clove, allspice blend that we're so used to. Just these little things, you know, that you can create these really special, really different foods that no one's ever had before because we forgot that we've forgotten so much. ⁓

So that's such a small thing and it's like, yeah, my spices are such a tiny percentage of my calories. But when you can rediscover these unique flavors that are, can only be created in your place, I think we, we do something really special with, with reclaiming culture and, reclaiming place and beginning to understand, you know, I think foraging is a really important part of this because it's how we learn about the plants that are.

that are in our area more deeply. So few of us know how to see plants as individuals that they are. You look outside and you see a of green. You don't know how to say, this is this being and this is that being. And I know who you are and I know who you are. And I don't know who you are, but I know that you're different from your neighbors and I want to learn. this is part of why ⁓ I have carved out the time for making foot...

for offering foraging classes on my farm because I want to help teach my neighbor's children how to see the plants that surround us and just see them as individuals and learn how to interact with them. And I think that's a really important piece to this puzzle.

Less House More Resilience ... (32:25)

Foraging and learning about the plants around me has been something that really struck me a few years ago. I wanted to know what every single one of those, those things growing up in the, in the grassy field were to understand, it's just fascinating. And we have so many great apps and things that can help us identify plants now and reading about how they may be medicinal or, know, which ones you definitely shouldn't eat.

Egypt Krohn (32:48)

Okay.

Less House More Resilience ... (32:51)

and all of these things is just fascinating hobby work. to your point, think knowing these plants, individuals that are around us actually gives us so much more, reverence and respect for the land that we're on and how we're treating. It's just like, just like with humans, right? Whenever we're othering or, you know, having not a good understanding of

Egypt Krohn (33:06)

Yeah.

Yes.

Less House More Resilience ... (33:20)

someone's culture or their beliefs or their values, we can so easily just assign a label and dismiss. It's part of our cognitive biases, the way that we shortcut everything. And so when we shortcut our plants as being, that's a weed, that's a weed, that's a weed, we don't understand deeply what the purpose of that plant is because if it's in our ecosystem, it is there doing some sort of role.

And so it's been such interesting, just a fascination for me to learn about the different plants. And especially in the West where I am, there's just a smaller variety of plants for sure. And so getting to know them and the ones up in the, up in the high meadows that maybe are edible and it's, it's fascinating work and just really connecting to place. I want to take you back to food systems a little bit. So we have a,

Egypt Krohn (33:51)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Less House More Resilience ... (34:15)

pretty robust, would say, ⁓ focus in our state about local food systems and connecting producers with people who are looking for local food, whether that's a food bank or an elementary school, or, an individual producer. And there's a lot of work that has to go into that because food prices that we complain about really are

undervaluing the work and they're very representative of the extraction that takes place in order to create cheap food. We pay very little for our food. And so when we go maybe to the farmer's market and we have to pay more, which small producers generally are never making a living off of the work that they are doing to produce this food. And yet we feel like the prices are so much higher because what we have experienced

Egypt Krohn (35:03)

Do not.

Less House More Resilience ... (35:11)

is prices that are subsidized, prices that are extractive from, cheaper labor, prices that are basically have destroyed all of the soil microbiome and prices that basically are based on the petroleum, the oil, the natural gas that's used to make the fertilizers. And so talk to us about food systems.

and community and why that's important and help us understand what you say when you're talking about working in your community on food system work.

Egypt Krohn (35:46)

Yeah, so I have a fair amount of experience working professionally on local food systems work, which is a funny sentence, right? Because that's what does that mean, you know? And it really means...

there's farms and there's eaters and there's all this infrastructure in between those two things and behind and ahead. know, there's behind any farm there's all these inputs and machinery and equipment and supplies and that's just as true for a small farm as it is for a large farm and they're just different what those things look like, what those inputs look like are different. So food systems are

all of the moving pieces that get food both produced and then to a plate and eaten. And we have this very sophisticated, very high tech national food system. And that is kind of where almost all of us get almost all of our food from is through this conventional food system and this very industrialized, very mechanized food system and

there has been a movement for quite a long time to try to create another food system that is localized or regionalized. And there's lots of debate and lots of different work where do we make a new side by side system that supports this effort to localize eating, or do we integrate the local food into the existing system? And really it's all of the things, right?

This work is really tricky because farmers make such small margins. mean, think about like a business that we think of having really tight margins like restaurants or food service and farm margins are usually even tighter. So we've created an economic system where the only way producers can make money is by having massive volume because the margins are just so slim.

So that's the only way that we've, the producers have been able to stay afloat. And, you know, there's some interesting complication because land is such a valuable economic asset. So land holder, so our farmers, especially those that have been around a while might be very wealthy in some ways as, as landholders, but then their businesses are very cashflow poor, very debt-ridden. And this is, I'm even talking about what we think of as the successful.

industrial kind of farmer. then, so when you try to farm in a different way, where you've got smaller volume, and you're, you've got different inputs, and, you know, maybe a more diversified system that we kind of think of when we think of when we think of local food systems, we also usually think of small farms without even stating that explicitly.

So these small farms, they're working with similar margins and not that volume. So it's very, very hard to make a living. And there's a lot of infrastructure that subsidizes industrial production and smaller and specialty crop. Specialty crop is the fancy word for basically anything that you actually eat.

So any vegetable or fruit in particular, flowers and some other ornamentals kind of fall into that bucket. But basically anything that you would actually buy at a farmer's market or fresh from a grocery store and then bring to your kitchen and cook, that's considered a specialty crop. So that's, you know, your veggie farmers and all that. Like there's just a lot less infrastructure for those folks as far as programs like crop insurance or

Any of these safety nets that we think of farmers may be having. A lot of our smaller growers who are trying to serve a local food system don't have those things and they don't have the ability to externalize production by destroying soil or destroying water systems or polluting the air. So it just gets very economically challenging very quickly. And I will be honest, as someone who is

been both a small farmer and working professionally in local food systems. I have watched so many beautiful, hardworking, just dedicated people working really hard to do kind of the right thing by their communities and their land. Throw themselves against this wall of just complete lack of economic viability and burn out really quickly.

because they are not making an income ⁓ except for a very few exceptions. So most, there's this deep irony really, and that we understandably and correctly get very worried about the affordability and accessibility of the food that these farmers are producing, but they themselves are also the populations that we're worrying about. People are generally,

very low or often very low income or working on an entirely other career alongside building these businesses. And it's just a very tenuous state to be in and it makes it really hard for our food systems to become what we want them to be when we can't pay the people who are doing that work a fair living. And it is really hard to make a fair living what we would consider a fair wage.

So I worked very specifically in urban agriculture. So I worked with a lot of small urban farms and the folks that out of all the years that we're in, all the farmers that we worked with, the folks that I would consider the most economically successful that were like, you guys are doing it. You're making sales. You're, you've got a, you know, kind of a real farm. Like you guys are really doing it. And they were actually able to track their expenses and labor and inputs in a way that most people weren't. And this,

Less House More Resilience ... (41:42)

you

Egypt Krohn (41:51)

very successful by most measures, vegetable farm, doing awesome work, growing beautiful food for people. Their best year, I think they made like $4 an hour. And that's like good, you know? Under the context of this movement, like that's not bad. And that should really tell us all something, right? And it is hard.

when you yourself are struggling to justify paying more for food. And I completely understand that. And I have to make those decisions too in my own household, know. But we have to understand that the people that you're buying that food from are not the ones hurting you and they are not exploiting you. And it's everyone who's working within that food system essentially is in fact being exploited to fund this.

cheap food system and anyone who tries to do something that's different has to go up against some really big cultural and economic barriers.

Less House More Resilience ... (42:57)

So given that our local food systems are...

don't work well within, don't work well within the capitalistic extractive system that we're in. Given that we as individuals have lost touch with many of the skills that maybe our grandparents or great grandparents had. Given that we're in this space where, you know, things are getting harder and challenges are increasing. Where does someone start if they want to sort of

switch their focus towards, you know, more resilience, more ⁓ harm reduction, and maybe enhance their own skills and enhance their own ⁓ self-sufficiency. Where does someone start?

Egypt Krohn (43:36)

Yeah.

I think the most fundamental place to start is in our kitchens. This is where it all has to begin. And that's, I really strongly believe that after so many years of working in food systems and that bigger picture of food systems, where those of us doing that work are trying to start at the farm and start at the market. And we actually need to go a step further and start in the kitchen. And for those of any listeners who are

really wanting to get started and not sure where to start, it is in your kitchen. that what that looks like depends on where you're at. ⁓ But it's probably just learning to cook. Just learn to cook a few simple, easy meals. ⁓

Starting off with recipes is fine, but like learn, learn to make at least three to five good nourishing, affordable meals that you can make without pulling the recipe out by the time you're done with this assignment and make them and try to find meals that can, possible, first just learn to cook. But if possible, try to find meals that can be made with ingredients that are easy to grow in your area. And if you don't know what's easy to grow in your area, then even

Even if you can't afford to be shopping, just go visit farmers markets and see what's around and talk to people. ⁓

seasonal, my seasonal, you know we're Michigan so everything's my seasonal produce guide. So look for things like that, you know your local ag university might have things like that, local non-profits might have have some guidelines like that, but really just starting by cooking and then whatever portion of your food budget that you can afford to set aside, set that aside to buy from a local grower.

We had this really powerful moment in the...

first year of the COVID pandemic where we did see supply chain disruption and we saw a lack of consistent availability of foods in our grocery stores and we turned to our local farmers in that moment. And our local farmers across the board stepped up the best they could. And I saw a lot of people ramping up production as quickly as they could. And a lot of people were really excited about what that meant for their businesses.

know, lot of people's best years that they've had in their lives as farmers. And we did the thing where most of that momentum didn't stay once the supply chains were smooth again. And we can't do that this time. ⁓ If we want our farmers to be there for us in a time of crisis, we need to be there for them in the everyday.

And that doesn't have to mean switching your entire, know, buying all of your food local all at once. That may not be feasible. If you can do that, do it. You know, the rewards are there. But if it's five or 10 or $50 a week that you can afford to divert to some sort of local food system, that's fine. I offer, you know, from my farm, something that I do.

is an egg subscription program and this is a very tiny program. ⁓ You know, but it just makes it easier for me as a grower to sell eggs. If you sign up for 10 weeks at a time, ⁓ it's five dollars a week and your eggs will just be there. You don't have to think about it. I offer a delivery to a few neighborhoods. I do this thing where I partner with some local businesses to take food scraps home for my animals. So I

will then deliver to the neighborhoods surrounding these businesses. And it's all this really great synergy and it's such a tiny thing. know, it's 15 dozen eggs a week. That is a drop in the bucket of what is consumed in my area. And a dozen eggs is not that many calories. You know, it's a drop in the bucket of what each of these families consume. But we're making these connections, you know, and it's been really powerful. We've had some really beautiful things come out of that. You know, some of...

my subscription members and go on to buy a pig for me you know we have this really sweet moment where I messed something up and you know I wanted to go fix it for them and then they were really grateful that I fixed it for them and they gave me this loaf of bread and it's just like these sweet little you know we start to make real connections one of my customers her little girls like great

like greet me at the door every time I go to deliver with her and they're like so sweet and so precocious and are always like showing me what they're working on and you know these all these little moments of humanist and connection that you just can't get that by just going to the grocery store and buying food, you know? So even just that five dollars a week like that makes a big difference to me and it makes I think it makes a difference to my customers and the fabric of our community like we're creating

connections and threads that makes the fabric of our community stronger. Way more than that five dollars a week means to either of us, you know? And finding little things like that, I think is really powerful and is a really good place to start.

Less House More Resilience ... (49:10)

These are all great starting points. Thanks for sharing them. If we're going to, transition these systems or, or our ways of thinking or our biases or prepare for being resilient, we have to, get comfortable.

with one little movement that makes us feel good and then that will bloom into the next movement. So thanks for making that accessible for folks. So Egypt, tell people where they can find and follow you.

Egypt Krohn (49:37)

Yes.

Sure, I'm, you can follow our farm on most major social media platforms, Dragonfly Downs Farm. So we're https://www.instagram.com/dragonfly_downs_farm/ and I don't really post on TikTok much, but we're there and YouTube. And then you can follow me, Egypt Krohn on Substack. And that's where I do most of my writing. Trying to find ways to provide some

electronic and distance learning resources. I really love teaching in person and teaching informally, but I do want to help more people learn. kind of, you know, folks follow me on Substack. Those opportunities might come in the future. Folks are also happy to reach out, especially in my area. I would love to hear from you so you can message me on any of those platforms. And our website is dragonflydownsfarm.com.

Less House More Resilience ... (50:38)

Wonderful. Thanks for sharing all of that. And thanks for being here today. It was great to have this conversation with you at this moment in time and encouraging all of us to think more locally, to look inside our kitchen, to take some micro steps towards our own resilience when it comes to food and realize how important food and the soil the food comes from are to our overall strength and resilience. Thanks for.

sharing all of that Egypt.

Egypt Krohn (51:09)

Thank you so much for having me and for having these conversations. I think they're really important.