By Jeff Louderback
WALNUT CREEK, Ohio—Decades ago, many Americans knew the origin of their food. They lived in rural areas, grew their own food, and raised their own meat. Over time, the country’s landscape has changed, and so has the way people source their food.
Amid the rolling green hills of eastern Ohio’s Amish country, a homesteading event in its fourth year teaches attendees to return to their grandparents’ roots and become more self-sufficient.
The Food Independence Summit was co-founded by John Miller, owner of Superb Canning, and Marcus Wengerd, owner of Berlin Seeds. Both businesses are located in a region where Amish and Mennonite farms dot the landscape along roads traveled by horse-drawn buggies as well as automobiles.
The community is widely known as an Amish Country tourist mecca, but Holmes County and neighboring Tuscarawas County are also teeming with entrepreneurs focused on sustainable living products and services.
Here, self-sufficient living is a way of life for both Amish and “English”—the Amish term for those who do not belong to the Amish community.
That is one reason why the Food Independence Summit has already become one of the country’s largest sustainable living events, where experts provide insight and hands-on demonstrations about organic farming and food preservation.
This year’s event, which was held June 18–19, attracted 5,000 attendees from around the country, Miller told The Epoch Times.
“This is more than just a conference; it’s a movement by many who want to be healthier,” he said.
Homegrown food is one of the keys to healthier communities, Wengerd said.
“The summit focuses on seed to spoon,” Wengerd told The Epoch Times. “Seed is the currency of our planet. If we don’t have seed, then we go hungry. And if we don’t properly preserve what we harvest, that food will go to waste. And it all starts with healthy soil.”
This year’s event featured exhibitors and experts who offered instruction on beekeeping, cheesemaking, butchering, canning, gardening, bread making, soil care, meat processing, and growing microgreens, among other skills and tasks.
Joel Salatin, the self-described “Christian Libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer,” is regarded by many as the nation’s foremost authority on regenerative farming. He is the author of 16 books on the topic and travels around the world speaking at conferences and serving as a generously paid consultant, teaching people his methods.
Salatin was a keynote speaker at the summit and held multiple workshops.
EarthDay.org reports that the United States is losing soil 10 times faster than it is being replenished.
Large-scale farms produce most of the food but also most of the agricultural pollution, the site says, and those facilities are operated by industrial or foreign companies that “value short-term profits over the long-term health of our land and people.”
Regenerative farming “promotes the health of degraded soils by restoring their organic carbon” through practices such as no-till farming and cover cropping that reduce erosion and reliance on salt-based fertilizers, according to the site.
Salatin agreed and offered a simpler definition of regenerative farming.
“It’s all about leaving the land better off than when you found it,” he said.
“America is sick. More people are questioning the standard American diet. Food and farming go together. You can’t divorce food from farming.
“You must first have nutrient-dense farms to get nutrient-dense food.”
Salatin calls the burgeoning interest in growing produce, raising meat, and locally sourcing food a “homesteading tsunami.”
“There’s been a real disconnect between the younger generation and where their food comes from,” he said.
“People have an intuition that there is more opportunity in the country than in the city to be self-sufficient,” he added. “The problem is, we are now several generations removed from commonly knowing how to gut a chicken, tap a maple tree, and plant tomatoes.
“When you make a change from your routine in life, you need support, and that is why the homesteading and sustainable living events are important, and that’s why I do what I do.”
Salatin appreciates the enthusiasm, but he urges novice homesteaders to rein in their ambitions and begin cautiously.
“Start with a garden, start with plants; they can’t run away,” Salatin said. “Some people get too enthusiastic and get a Scottish Highlander cow they saw somewhere, and a half-hour after bringing her home, she escapes, and there are state police looking all over for her.
“Read books, watch videos, attend events, and find mentors. Build relationships with people who know how to build things, grow things, and fix things—people who you can learn from. That is the best 401(k) you can have.”
When there was a shortage of canning lids during the COVID-19 pandemic, a few local companies approached Miller about manufacturing the lids at his facility in Sugarcreek, Ohio. That led to the launch of Superb Canning, which is part of Superb Industries.
One day back in 2022, Miller was driving to dinner with the company’s business unit manager, Dave Greer. They passed a golf course where there was a micro camping festival.
“We thought about having a canning festival,” Miller said. Then, he talked to Wengerd.
“Marcus told me, ‘John, you’re thinking too small,’” Miller said. “We need to have a summit where we bring together people who grow their own food and show them how to do it—all the way from seed and soil to preservation.”
Wengerd owns the campground and RV park where they hosted the event.
“We had all the resources we needed, and we put together the first summit in 2022 in six weeks,” Miller said. “We sought as many experts and influencers in sustainable living as we could find, and now, we have plans to keep growing every year.”
The region where the Food Independence Summit is held includes the second-largest community of Amish in the world. Most live in and around Holmes County, which has the highest concentration of Amish of any U.S. county. Half of the county’s population is Amish, and many members of closely related denominations such as the Mennonites reside here, too.
Amish Country is one of Ohio’s most visited tourist areas. Visitors flock here to experience farm attractions and museums and buy a wide assortment of handmade goods and artisan products.
Bed-and-breakfasts and historic inns dot the landscape amid sprawling, meticulously maintained farms. Horse-drawn buggies are just as common as automobiles on some of the roads.
Miller said that he appreciates the tourism support and traffic, but what makes this area “perfect” for an event that encourages gardening and homesteading is its heritage.
“We live in a community where homesteading is a way of life,” Miller told The Epoch Times. “The notion of sustainable living is a deeply entrenched tradition dating back several hundreds of years—this is a community that encourages and embraces entrepreneurial endeavors.
“Take a drive down these roads, and you can find food producers and manufacturers of barns, lumber, tools, and farming supplies.
“The summit brings together people who want to become more proficient at leading a self-sufficient lifestyle, and they can get all the supplies they need with the businesses that are here.”
Melissa Renee moved to southwest Ohio from Mississippi five years ago to seek care for a medically complex child. A few years ago, she relocated from suburban Cincinnati and bought a two-acre homestead located next to Amish farmers.
She named her homestead Handwritten Hills. She documents her experience on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites. Five generations of her family have farmed, and she learned self-sustainable living skills as a child, but her transition to homesteading as an adult is an adjustment that she hopes others can learn from.
Initially, Melissa Renee said she felt overwhelmed about growing the homestead. Her Amish neighbors received a bulk order from Berlin Seeds that included a brochure about the Food Independence Summit.
“I had been laughing and joking with them that, as a new homesteader, I had no idea what I was doing with trying to figure out how to add chickens to go along with a garden,” she told The Epoch Times.
“This is the third straight year I’ve attended the summit,” she added. “Being at an event like this is not only helpful because of what we learn from the experts, but it’s also encouraging to be around other homesteaders. My children are learning skills they can use and pass on to future generations.”
Sarah Thrush, founder of PeeliesNPetals, is a social media influencer with more than a million followers who turn to her for canning and food preservation expertise. Thrush is a mother and wife from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who learned canning from her grandmothers and mother.
During the COVID pandemic, she told a friend that she had apples that she needed to can. The friend suggested she make a video of the process, Thrush obliged, the video gained widespread viewership, and her new passion was born.
“Canning has been passed down from generation to generation, but there was a spike of interest in 2020. Many people wanted to learn how to bake bread and can,” Thrush told The Epoch Times.
“They had always relied on others for food,” Thrush added. “People started asking, ‘What happens when infrastructure crumbles? How will I take care of my family?’”
At the summit, EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” documented Thrush pressure-canning beef tacos.
There are two kinds of canning, Thrush explained: water bath-canning and pressure-canning.
“My family has been doing this for hundreds of years. You just fill the jars, you put them in the canner, and you put the lid on, and then you run the canner. What that does is it creates an environment inside the jar where you can then put it on your shelf, and you don’t need any refrigeration,” she said.
“I love the canned meats and the meals in the jar, because then what I do is I batch-can everything. I‘ll do up to 40 pounds of taco beef. I’ll do all of that all in one day, and then I don’t cook tacos for an entire year,” she added.
Beginners can start with a large pot that is tall enough to submerge the jars, Thrush said.
“The most important part is to have a good canning book, because the canning books will tell you what you can put in a large water bath canner and what needs to go in a pressure canner. The food dictates which process is needed,” she said.
Homesteading has different meanings to people, Miller acknowledged.
“What it means in this community is that, ‘I’ve got a home, and I have maybe two or three acres, and I have a garden, a couple of fruit trees, and maybe some chickens.’ That allows you to be more self-sufficient,” Miller said.
“Our purpose here is to help people become more self-sufficient where they are and with what they have,” Miller added. “Any step you take to living a healthier lifestyle and knowing where your food comes from will give you more peace of mind.”