Food Sovereignty Pt. 2: Creating Community Around the Harvest
working in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley provide her with many opportunities to expand her
culinary horizons and continue to learn and grow through hunting, fishing, foraging, and farming.
- Colombian-Style Ajiaco (Chicken Soup with Galinsoga) - July 13, 2026
- Savory Hen of the Woods Mushroom Sliders - August 6, 2025
- Food Sovereignty Pt. 2: Creating Community Around the Harvest - July 16, 2025
In a time when food has never been more politicized, eaters from all walks of life are seeking ways to reconnect with the sources of their sustenance. Yet the best way to do so might just lie within our connections with each other as humans.
For some conscious consumers, lifting the veil of blissful ignorance is enough. The world of food production is fraught with facts many people don’t want to know, but should. For others, immersive participation is necessary, literally getting dirt (or blood) under one’s fingernails to truly understand what feeds us, and why it matters.
Opening the mind and broadening perspectives — to digest and accept often distressing behind-the-scenes details of how living things become food — can be a heavy undertaking. But it’s not a journey that needs to be taken alone.
Listen to our Podcast
Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, Amazon Music
Get a Copy of our New Book!
In Part I of this article, I explored the importance of perspective in understanding food sovereignty. Recognizing that we’re still part of nature within our greater food system is the first step, followed by finding ways to engage with our food sources wherever we live.
But when it comes to harvesting nature — eating wild food that exists and persists beyond the confines of industrialization and monetary exchange — the most important element is the human one.
The strongest and most reliable food systems are the “microsystems.” They’re small in scale, local or regional, often isolated in close-knit communities. But they’re extremely resilient even in times of strain, because they rely wholly on themselves and their own internal resources.
A food microsystem might consist of a neighborhood with a local farmer’s market or CSA. It could be homesteaders that exchange eggs and produce. It’s families who chip in to get a whole steer from the same farmer every year.
A microsystem could be a network of hunters that fills their freezers while reducing undesired human-wildlife encounters, and donates the meat to charitable organizations. It could be foragers learning about floral and fungal food and medicine, so that they may heal themselves and others.
When disaster hits and national or global supply chains are affected, these microsystems can and do still provide food. This is because the food is coming from within. It’s not produced in some distant land or abstract facility — it’s coming from our communities: friends, strangers, neighbors, relatives, and the natural spaces we share.
What do all food microsystems have in common? Groups of people, sharing and giving food to one another. Food comes from nature, but it’s with human intervention that wild things become food: game, crops, livestock. Meals and memories. Traditions. Cultures. Ways of life, passed down. It’s with each others’ guidance that we learn how to take nature’s offerings and make them valuable to us.
That’s because all food is a gift. It’s a gift from nature, and from person to person.
Founder of Harvesting Nature Justin Townsend, explains:
“[Sharing and gifting food] is a natural thing that we do as humans. Food has always been a center place of gathering, of conversation, of the social interactions we need as humans. Food has been the center, and it continues to be.”
It might appear to the outsider that a hunter, angler, or forager is blatantly taking, but all around the world there are shared sentiments and spiritual notions of gratitude and humbleness, of profound love for the living things we kill to eat.
Of course there are unscrupulous exceptions out there, but the vast majority of hunters I know deeply care about their quarry and are determined to honor their harvest — and share it. Every single season.
For me, deer season occurs within the busiest time of year at my job, immediately followed by the holidays. I hunt when I can, before or after work, and as anyone who hunts deer can tell you, working an entire shift then taking an animal from the hoof to the freezer is utterly exhausting. But feeding others with the food you so intimately and arduously acquired makes it all worth it.
This is a phenomenon I first experienced alongside all the other emotions that came with hunting my first deer in 2021. So much physical and mental effort went into blundering into the right place and the right time to shoot the deer, bring her home, and turn her into food.
Yet the most surprising thing is that I felt (and still do) an overwhelming urge to share the venison. Every year, I find time and energy to make my loved ones jerky. I ship insulated boxes of steaks and roasts. I cook with friends, for family that visits, and try my best to discover new and interesting ways to honor the gift of every deer and educate others to do the same.
We are not just taking, but receiving that which is naturally provided to us. The predator-prey relationship is simple and ancient, but we humans love to complicate things.
Justin also cited the importance of belongingness within the wild food community, which unfortunately can be impeded by a materialist society’s hold.
“Someone coming new to hunting or fishing is already going to feel like they’re outside, and they’re a little bit behind the curve. And I think that stigma of having to have the best equipment, or the specific name brands, or all these things – it’s unnecessary.”
What we truly need is each other. It’s from other people that we gain knowledge: about how to safely use weapons and avoid toxic lookalikes. How to navigate the outdoors and understand the behaviors of the wildlife that calls it home. Recipes, encouragement, warnings, comic relief, advice for success — an empathetic ear for when the hunt doesn’t go as planned — this all comes from our fellow humans.
When I look back on my wild food journey, far and away the most valuable and memorable aspects of the experience were the people that support(ed) me along the way.
My enthusiastic hunter education instructors and extremely patient mentor on my first ever hunt.
My neighbor who handed me a warm bowl of venison stew when I came home cold and spent with my first deer. My farmer friend, who showed up with his huge John Deere tractor to retrieve my first buck.
Dedicated authors and content creators who go out of their way to educate, empower, protect, and conserve with their intimate knowledge of animals, plants, and fungi. The countless people online that teach and inspire and just say “I’ve been there. I know how you feel.”
Self-introspection and personal spiritual growth are also central to wild food procurement, but it’s only with the presence of other people that our increasingly disconnected population will be able to truly reintegrate into the landscape that feeds us.
“There’s this inherent nature in humans to just share things that they really value, because it creates community,” Justin stated.
“When you share something like venison with someone, you’re now opening up the gate for them. Through venison diplomacy, you are bringing people into the fold whether they hunt or not. It’s just very human to share, and it seems very natural that deer meat is the thing that people share.”
And why not? To me, in my context, venison is the healthiest, most sustainable protein to be eating. It just makes sense here, where deer overpopulation contributes to property damage, disease spread, and vehicular collisions. My ancestors came from Europe, but there as well as on this continent, humans have been pursuing deer for millenia. I once attended a venison potluck held annually at a vegetable farm: even hungry hippies befriend hunters!
Lastly, Justin compared the joy of sharing wild meat to popping a bottle of expensive champagne.
“Does it taste better by yourself, or does it taste better when you’re sharing it with people?”
I will honestly say that the deer steaks I cook for other people taste much better than the ones I just keep “saving” for some “special occasion.” Any time you eat wild food is special, be it berries or backstrap. Celebrate it with others!
Wild food is my favorite food to eat. I love becoming acquainted with a new ingredient and learning new lessons. Wild food never ceases to amaze me, and seeing the revelatory look on people’s faces when they try it for the first time reminds me that
This is your call to go out to eat. Seek the unfamiliar and the uncomfortable. Find food so local it could come from beneath our very feet, or welcomed into our outstretched hands. And ask all your questions; we want to answer them. Creating community around the harvest is an amazing way to convene with nature, your community, and yourself. There are certainly easier ways to get something to eat, but there’s nothing deeper, more spiritual, and more human than to share it. It’s recognizing that we were, are, and always will be part of a system — and that we have the ability (and the right) to change it together — that is the essence of food sovereignty.
