Guys,

I'm writing a college paper about organic gardens.  I need a good story for the intro.  Do any of you know of an actual natural disaster that was less severe afterward due to gardens and/or individual food storage?  NOT looking for MRE's or freeze dried, but actual "my garden saved my family" type of stuff.  Even a personal disaster that was lessened by having your own garden would help.

Thanks!

Great depression
WW2 in the UK (major benefit from the garden, they were facing famine from blockade), although because they needed maximum yields, artificial fertilizers were used in increasing amounts (and they killed off all the farm animals, so had little manure to spread on the fields).
WW2 state side, to a lesser extent than the UK

That is what comes to my mind instantly.

To add to that in a new post...

Gardening almost can't save money vs grocery store prices of today, unless is organic vs organic, etc. I won't go into it unless you want, but just wanted to mention it.

Gardening puts food on the table in a meaningful way when food isn't available otherwise, or isn't available otherwise for a reasonable price (as in organic, and then maybe).

I probably spend 5x as much on the garden as I would from a store. Depending on what gets yealded and what I grown though. I'm also considering my time in that cost. However in any disaster my skills or food would be invaluable.

Also I do it because mmmmm it taste so much better. I mostly just grow tomato's now though.

My Mom was a pre-teen and teenager during the Great Depression. She spoke of her Uncle Joe's farm; she spent a significant part of her life there. She remembers her mother talking to someone, saying that her proudest achievement was keeping her family from being broken up. (Lots of families sent the children to different family members, just so they could be fed.) They were in Kansas or Missouri IIRC.
Joe left a verge of weeds around his crops for the bugs to eat; this saved a lot of his crops! (This always sounded a little strange to me but she swore by that story.) (HobbitWife says it works. She's looking over my shoulder, so she's right, too.)
He or his wife would feed vagrant people if they came by for a handout, but they'd make them work for it. And people who came by to eat NEVER, EVER complained about working for their meal!  That big ol' woodpile must have been moved from one end of the house to another ten times!
One time she remembered Auntie looking out at the hen house, suspecting it was being raided. She called out "If I thought someone was in my hen house, I'd shoot 'em!" Mom said "What are you gonna shoot 'em with, Auntie?" Her sister grabbed her and put a hand over her mouth.
Mom participated in all of the farm chores: collecting eggs, cleaning the hen house, milking the cow, mucking the barn, pretty much all the dirty stuff that Little House on the Prairie ignored. She didn't like killing chickens, so she'd go to the corner of the house, hold the chicken by its head around the corner so she didn't have to see it,  and spin it till the head came off. She had to chase a couple of headless chickens!


Pop a chicken's head off

When my wife (HobbitWife) lost her job, all she had was her garden, chickens and a goat. She cared for her son and her disabled husband. She slaughtered her goat for meat. She sent her son out to collect the harvest, as she'd recently had  a stroke. She grew carrots, lettuce, squash, green beans, radishes, spinach, and mulukhiyah. Her little "farm" provided for them for 9 months until she finally got onto SSDI. She did well until her subdivision restricted water, and forbade growing gardens. HobbitWife is still growing food where we live now!
ETA We are also keeping bees now. HobbitWife threw out some old green beans into her compost heap; the beans sprouted, the bees pollinated them and we had green beans in our garden! (Green beans won't grow in the absence of pollinators.)

Home gardening is VERY labor-intensive. Weeding, planting and just daily maintenance takes a lot of work and time. For that reason, buying at the store is usually more "economical." But if you want organic, pesticide-free food, you almost have to grow your own-- unless you are very well-to-do and can afford New Age Market prices.

Thanks guys.  My enthymeme for this essay is, "Government should incentivize organic gardening because it improves  self-reliance to help survive disasters."

The class requires an overall theme of "sustainability."  

My outline is like this:

I. Intro
  -a. Interesting story
  -b. Enthymeme
II. Case for gardens
  -a. Personal Food
     --i. Nutrition
     --ii. Storage
     --iii. Grocery Stores
  -b. Pollinators
     --i. Bees
        ---1. Benefits of bees
        ---2. Colony collapse
     --ii. Wasps and other pollinators
     --iii. Effects of farming
  -c. Chemical Use
     --i. Run-off
     --ii. Soil preservation
     --iii. Modern Markets
     --iv. Economic effects
III. Modern Use
  -a. Community Gardens
     --i. Victory Gardens
     --ii. Modern Disasters
  -b. Current Resources
     --i. Government resources
     --ii. Non-Government resources
IV. Conclusion

So you can see, I want to show the importance of personal gardens.  I am giving the example of victory gardens, making a case for community gardens, and pointing to the increase in both farmer's markets and organic foods in stores.  My hope was that I could come up with some real world examples where having a garden saved someone from starving, or having food stored from their garden saved them.  I was thinking of the scene from Gone with the Wind, where she runs out into the garden and eats a turnip, swearing to God that she will never go hungry again.  Hopefully this stance will satisfy the teacher's philosophy on sustainability.

Thanks for the story about the garden helping before benefits could kick in.  That is exactly the kind of "saved my family in hard times" example that I am looking for!

Just as a tidbit of info, a "self sustaining" garden requires heirloom seeds where you can save seeds for the next year. You can't do that with hybrid plants and expect anything close to repeatable results.

HobbitWife gets our heirloom seeds from Bountiful Gardens.

https://bountifulgardens.org/

or https://www.southernexposure.com/

or http://www.nativeseeds.org/

OP, you may find your answers in our own Home Garden sub.

Homestead, Farm and Garden

Dig for Victory

Victory Garden

Rationing in the UK

Food Rationing in Wartime America

You could look at current day Venezuela, where people are gardening to try to survive. In that case, they just have to hope the government doesn't swoop in and take their crops.

Look at Native Seed Search for these "heirloom" sees.

I've got a bad example.

My mother always had a garden. One year, she decided that one hill of zucchini wasn't enough, so she planted three. The damn things got to be about 15' in diameter and 6' tall. We were getting a dozen gourds a day in the 3#-4# range. Every day. For a month. I tried picking buds off the plants, but I couldn't stem the tide. We ate it with every meal, broiled, fried, baked, roasted, toasted, braised, boiled, nuked, raw, shredded, sliced and mashed. The neighbors were thankful for the first bag or two, but a gift of zucchini is a pale shadow to tomatoes or carrots or herbs. The neighbors stopped answering the door and even began actively evading my mother. When she was walking their way with a brown paper bag, they'd cross the street or hurry the other direction or draw the shades. She got to the point of driving by and stuffing them in mailboxes, sometimes of people we didn't know.

I have not eaten zucchini since, and it has been 30 years.

Almost comical. I have to ask: why not just pull some plants?

Because that would have been a waste of food.

Well, yeah, but .

Anyway, great story. Thanks for sharing 

Talk to anyone who lived through the great depression.  Both of my parents did and they basically ate what they grew or shot.  My dad told me of eating a bag of pinto beans every night for two months until other crops came in.

Cuba instituted urban gardens get by while they were under sanctions, maybe this will give you ideas good luck

Cuba’s Urban Farming Revolution

It can cost 5x as much it can also be a lot less. It all depends on how you garden I suppose. If you are buying plants instead of starting from seed it does get more expensive. I start all my own plants from seed. I've got a small backyard garden about 30ft x 40ft. So far I've had good luck and usually don't spend much more than 15 dollars on seed packs. I usually end up with more than enough plants and have extra plants to share and trade with my family for their gardens. I use my own compost from yard waste and rainwater water to keep costs down. I would guess I don't spend much more than thirty dollars for the year on my garden with buying fertilizer and fuel. I've never kept track of the exact figures but I'm sure I'm yielding way more than my out of pocket costs in just my tomatoes and watermelon alone with what they cost at the grocery store. I however don't figure in my time. My time isn't worth that much and after planting I don't spend much more than 15 minutes on my garden a week to water, fertilize, and weed.

I currently don't have any pictures. I normally have 8-10 tomato plants. I've had mixed results with various brands of tomatoes but have always had good luck with Burpee big boy tomato seeds and typically stick with those. I'm not as picky with everything else and just grab what deals I can find or what I get in trade. I plant around a dozen green pepper plants, 6-8 watermelon plants, about a half dozen cucumber plants, then a row each of onions, peas, green beans, radishes and a small strawberry patch.

The first few years I had a garden, I really neglected it and let the weeds got out of control and trying to reclaim my garden was a lot of work. After that I decided it was more work to not stay on top of my weeding. I found if you just a quick walk through with a hoe weeding about every 3 days it takes 5-10 minutes each time. I also mulch with grass clippings straight from the mower bag every few weeks to help with weed control and to retain moisture. I run a watering can when I need to put out a little miracle grow otherwise we get enough rain that I don't need to water much unless we are in a drought.

Been there, done that.

Would have been easier to just compost the excess.

Thanks for finding that story!  It's a great example and exactly the thing I need to support my theme!  Of course, I don't like the fact that communist government forced the practice, but I think I can use the model as a democratic government (or representative republic) providing a resource to free people.

You could look at Appalachian Homesteading and how miners families got by on small gardens and hunting when the company stores started pricing them into continual debt to the company.