Lansdale Gets a Farmers' Market

So two years ago (wow, was it that long ago?), when I was writing for the alternative-reality game World Without Oil, I predicted that with a catastrophic oil spike and subsequent economic meltdown, Lansdale--the town I moved to and now live in--would start up a farmers' market. Though the town is situated amongst some of the best farmland in the Philadelphia exurbs, and is surrounded by local farms and dairies, it hadn't take advantage of this with a local farmers' market.

Well, two years, an oil crisis and Great Recession later, and Lansdale finally has it's own farmers' market. I've just come from there, actually, where I bought some black raspberry jam and some rather creative bread (long story). I was there last weekend as well, on the Fourth of July opening. Both weekends it's been very successful, which is encouraging, and it looks like the borough council will have it permanently approved, with a ribbon cutting on August 1st--which, in an odd bit of synchronicity, is the old Celtic harvest festival of Lughnassadh, also called Lammas in Scotland and England.

At any rate, it's an encouraging sign that communities are starting to think local, and doing something about it. The world is rapidly changing, and the old ways will not return. We still have our three-thousand mile Caesar salads (and I'm as guilty of anyone of enjoying that), but it's unsustainable in the long (and maybe even short) run, and better that we plan on this now than wait until we can do nothing about it.

The Line Between Fiction and Reality

A year ago, I took part in an ARG (alternative reality game) called World Without Oil. In it, I and nearly 2000 other people imagined what life would be like if oil suddenly shot up in price--a world where Peak Oil is manifest.

The funny thing? The game starts with oil at $4.12/gal. A year ago, this honestly seemed a little over-the-top; I was paying $2.58 at the Wawa on Dekalb Pike & Welsh Road (if you, reading this, know Montgomery County). But one year, and here we are, where the game began. Of course, they got one thing "wrong", for in the game diesel was $3-something a gallon, and today it's around $5.

I don't claim to know what's going on; but I turn on NPR, turn on CNN, and now they talk about the end of oil--or at the very least, cheap oil.

In the real world, I do live with my husband in Lansdale; I have a marginal garden I'm hoping produces at least one tomato (which would be better than last year). We don't work at home, we still drive the ten miles to Horsham--and for that relatively short distance I'm grateful. It costs four dollars a day to commute, which is still cheaper than the train (and there's no easy way to go those ten miles without a car).

At any rate, a year later and people seem to be waking up to the reality that oil isn't going to be cheap anymore. It's not like the 1990s, when I learned to drive, and I could buy a gallon of gas for 90¢ and spend Friday and Saturday night driving around with my friends and not even think about it.

The world is moving on; some days I wonder what relics we'll leave, what they'll think of us. And if we'll ever see a day when walking on the moon sounds more like a myth than a historical fact.

EDIT:*For some reason, links to my posts are missing from their archive.