Storage was needed in peasant economies for various purposes: feeding the household, ensuring supply in times of shortage, and, besides, accumulating surpluses to be sold in the market for cash. With the latter, peasants paid rents and taxes, serviced debts, and purchased goods. Storage was thus a cornerstone in the process of transformation of a production factor and wealth asset – land – into monetary incomes for consumption but also an aid for the subsistence of the household. In this chapter, we explore the vast constellation of possessions peasants used for storing their foodstuffs: their materials, appearances, and the everyday practices around them. The constant tension between supplying home and the market ensured that these items, of minute relevance in our modern material culture, accounted for a significant part of the material culture of medieval peasant food.

Indigenous perspective on aging is different from what we are used to seeing in our current culture. In native culture, it is not only important to be respectful of your elders but responsible for caring for them. You learn very quickly that elders are a part of your life because they teach you what you need to know. Elders are the architects of the culture. They instill the traditions. Now we have the great distractions of technology—distractions that take us away from what our generations begore us gave to us. In Native communities, elders and young people are held in high esteem. Young people are the purpose for it all. That’s why elders have an obligation. Everyone must understand their obligation to the next generation, especially as we grow older . You always have the gift of youth inside you. But it’s up to you to rekindle it and to bring it back. It is our duty as elders to live, not just for ourselves, but for the generations of young people coming after us and for the earth.