Sylvia Feldman educates participants Thursday, Nov. 10, during the first session of the organic beekeeping workshop. Photo by Jessica Paholsky

by Bethany Spicher Schonberg

Green chilis and cumin seeds are flying, pots are bubbling and spicy smells are multiplying as fast as dirty dishes. A dozen eager cooks cluster around instructor Sunil Patel as he demonstrates the Gujarati recipes he learned from his mother—with a Central Pennsylvania twist.

Cucumbers aren’t in season, so shredded kohlrabi goes into the raita. Mashed winter squash thickens the dal and beets substitute for the kuchumbar’s traditional tomatoes. Cumin, coriander and fenugreek, Patel assures us, can be grown here.

Katherine Watt work behind the scenes, washing dishes, chopping potatoes and snapping pictures. This cooking class was her brainchild, along with a recent series of community workshops that aim to facilitate the region’s transition from reliance on fossil fuels toward a more local economy.

“As it becomes harder to transport things from China, we’ll need to know how to make our own,” Watt explained.

Participants in November’s workshop series learned to make Indian food with local ingredients, as well as scarves, honey, pillowcases, bread, applesauce and compost piles.

Watt, a State College writer and community organizer, said she thinks about the end of cheap oil “almost constantly.”

Last September, Watt launched the Spring Creek Homesteading Fund blog, a virtual gathering place for creating a sustainable food system in the Spring Creek watershed. The newly-incorporated non-profit offers grants for community gardens and kitchens and coordinates community potlucks in addition to overseeing the workshop series.

Watt’s goal is to offer workshops quarterly in 2012. Potential topics for February’s series include sauerkraut-making, hoop house construction and home beer-brewing, among others. Watt’s vision for future workshops includes blacksmithing, candle-making and, possibly, changes to local regulations. She is seeking instructors for urban goat-keeping with the proviso “probably not legal under current zoning laws.”

Watt borrowed the term “reskilling workshops” from the Transition Towns network. Last year, State College signed on as an official Transition Town, community number 294, in a movement that started in Totnes, Ireland in 2006 and now spans the globe.

From Brazil to Japan, cities are preparing for energy crises by teaching survival skills that were once common knowledge: how to grow food, build houses, repair machines and, most importantly for Watt, how to spend time together.

“A big part of transitioning to more connected, mutually supporting neighborhoods that can take care of each other in hard times means people have to relearn a lot of the skills of working together in shared spaces to reach shared goals, and helping each other gain practical skills in a hands-on way,” Watt said.

So, while one could learn to can applesauce on the Internet, Watt added, “listening and talking with people and actually lifting hot jars out of boiling water are very different from interacting with screens and even books.”

The Transition Network calls the effort “The Great Reskilling,” and envisions moving beyond canning workshops to societal transformation. The network’s website proposes “retraining the construction industry to produce [sustainable] buildings using mostly local materials, and raising a new generation of farmers familiar with agroforestry, growing for local markets and relying less on fossil fuels.”

For now, more than just peak oil motivates State College residents to join The Great Reskilling as instructors or participants.

“I love making bread because my parents and grandparents and people have known how to do this for a long time. And it tastes better,” said bread baking instructor, Ruth Sauder.

“We are learning a lot of these things just because it’s cheaper,” said Nynke Vanderburg, a participant in Sauder’s workshop. “I like making my own things because I know where they come from. It’s satisfying, and you don’t use all the packaging.”

For Watt, Spring Creek Homesteading is all about preparation for a day when we can no longer take for granted items such as Indian spices and store-bought applesauce.

“I’m especially motivated by my kids and other kids,” she explained in an email, “to transform my anger and despair about being left such incomprehensibly huge ecological and economic messes into a steady resolve to be an active part of the generation that turns the corner to begin healing the planet and our social and economic systems...”