A Labor of Love.

Heber Valley Self-Reliance Group.

By Loralie Pearce
Last updated September 9, 2024

“I think self-reliance and self-responsibility and self-accountability will help you as a parent, a teacher, a citizen, and a friend.”
– Henry Rollins

Heber Valley Self-Reliance Group’s mission statement is “to provide the Heber Valley community and surrounding community members with a clear moral compass, necessary educational resources, training, and support to acquire self-sufficiency, resilience, sustainability, and readiness.”

Cultivating Community Self-Reliance through Education and Support.

Emergency preparedness and self-reliance have always been an important part of Mike Petersen’s and Russell Olsen’s lives. Years ago, Mike decided to share his knowledge with other residents by offering a community emergency preparedness and self-reliance fair. He invited Russell and Sandra Olsen to teach a few classes. People from all over Wasatch County came out to the high school, eager to learn. The fair was a hit! So, they did it again the following year. By the third year, there was so much interest that Russ suggested they create a non-profit organization. It was a great idea; partnering with the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Department and other like-minded residents, they started Heber Valley Self-Reliance Group. The group’s mission is to work with community residents, leaders, officials, businesses, and other local non-profits to create “an emergency preparedness plan and provide community fairs and classes to help citizens within the community understand the importance of individual, family, and community preparedness; to create a supportive network with members with a clear moral compass, to learn from one another, and to empower our community to embrace self-reliance as a way of life.”

For Russ, self-reliance is his way of life — it’s in his blood. Russ grew up in Oak City, Utah, and shares, “I was raised in a totally self-reliant community. We didn’t have a store. Every single family raised food for themselves and their animals. They had big gardens because they lived off them all year. Several families also had orchards in addition to the community orchard that everyone took turns tending. When it was time, we would all gather the fruit and vegetables and can them in the canning building.” Russ reminisces, “It was fun because everybody would get together and sit in a circle and shell peas, the kids would play and run around, but they also helped — everybody helped. It was how we lived, people gathering together, making quilts for the newly married couple, and just traditional things like that; that’s how I grew up.”

Wasatch County’s shared history of self-reliance with other early settlements is part of what drew the Olsen’s to the Heber Valley to raise their family. He explains, “When we moved here, I was like, I would like to see my place and this community go back to their roots — the best we can. Can we totally do that? I don’t know. Can we create enough interest so we can encourage people to start?”

Everybody has to start somewhere — right? Enter the Heber Valley Self-Reliance Group; helping create interest and encouraging others is why Mike, Russ, and others began the group. When Mike Petersen, who is currently serving our community as a member of the National Advisory Council for The Monument of the Americas: Christ in America Garden and the America Covenant Garden, had to step away, the Olsen’s took over running the organization. The couple saw a need to focus and expand in various areas, and both agreed that education would be their top priority. With decades of experience as teachers, Russ and Sandra understand the importance of giving people the opportunity to learn how to do things themselves, whether that’s figuring out how we learn or understanding the differences between mushrooms you can forage and mushrooms you should stay away from or discovering your inner blade-smith and bush survival skills. To encompass everything they wanted to offer, the Self-Reliance group developed six key focus areas to help encourage success with short-term and long-term self-reliance and self-sustaining goals. The Pillars of Self-Reliance are water, food, energy, health, communication, and safety. Under the water pillar, residents can learn how to find natural water sources, harvest rainwater, purify water, and store water. If someone wants to understand more about HAM and CB radio, classes offered through the safety pillar should be on their radar (pun intended). And, if you’re thinking of going off-grid, check out the hands-on workshops presented through the energy pillar.

Speaking of pillars, the Heber Valley Self-Reliance Group recently joined forces with the Wasatch Community Foundation under the WCF’s Human Services pillar. Russ explains, “I talked with and got to know Tom and Marilyn Fowler when we asked them to come and talk to our organization, and he [Tom] said that he didn’t realize we were doing so much for the community. So, he was quite interested. […] What they were trying to do and what we were doing worked very well together, except their self-reliance program was not as well developed as ours. So, we were invited to come in and replace that program.” Russ excitedly continues, “I’m really happy at this point that we did that because I feel like both organizations together have an opportunity to reach more people and have a greater effect on the community.”

In March, the two organizations helped sponsor the Emergency and Self-Reliance Fair held at Wasatch High School. The event was attended by approximately 2,000 people. More recently, WCF helped sponsor the Self-Reliance Group’s annual Labor of Love project. Russ explains, “We feel like a big part of becoming self-reliant is establishing a strong community that is willing to work together. So, we work hard to have projects that help invite the community to come together. For instance, the bean patch we just completed weeding with the youth during our Labor of Love project on August 7th. We felt that it was important for us to get the youth of the community involved. We had about 100 youth from different organizations, religious organizations, the high school, and so forth, and we just had a great time.” Russ seems to beam with joy as he continues, “It was so fun to just talk with the youth, and they said, ‘Oh, this is really fun!’ Many of them had never done something like this before, yet they were working and learning together. Most of the youth groups have said they would like to do this again. So we’ll schedule more of those types of activities.”

The bean field is just one of several fields where the group plants hardy foods they can grow to help feed those in need within our community. Last year, they planted potatoes, and over 800 families came out and harvested them. Russ shares, “They had a wonderful time. We had kids running around to see who could find the biggest potato, and people who had just moved here said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’ And so I think that it helps us to show people that move into the community that there is a community spirit — we are neither religious nor political — it’s a community. Our goal is to bring the community together. The goal is not to come in and take over but to help individuals, families, groups, and communities maintain or start their projects, in addition to helping with education and resources.” Russ continues, “We also don’t want to just give food away but to encourage people to come in and become themselves self-reliant. We [The Self-Reliance Group and the WCF] don’t want to enable people; we want to help people become self-sufficient, to help encourage people and say, ‘We have a project that you can participate in and be able to share in what we raise.’” One of the projects they have in the pipeline is working with the USU Extension Program, Heber City, and Muirfield Park to offer community gardens where families who don’t have the space can come and plant a garden. The Olsen’s also run their family plot as a working garden where people can go and see how everything is laid out, what plants and trees grow best in our area, walk through their greenhouse, learn about composting and bio-energy, and participate in hands-on workshops, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg! There’s so much to learn from them and their farm. Russ shares that after years and years of hard work, as of this year, they are 100% self-sufficient, meaning they do not need to walk off their farm to provide for themselves and their family. That’s an incredible accomplishment and one to be proud of. He also shared how happy he would be to see others within Wasatch County achieve this same goal.

Another project … to quote The Princess Bride, “No, there is too much. Let me sum up,” I could fill an entire year’s worth of magazines with articles dedicated to talking about all that Heber Valley Self-Reliance Group has done, is doing, and plans to do. I’m not exaggerating. Additionally, the lifetime of experience and knowledge Russell Olsen has and wants to share is priceless — in value and quite literally — as 98% of all the group’s weekly classes, workshops, and events offered are free to the public.

At the beginning of our conversation, Russ said, “You know, people ask me often, ‘Do you really think that you could make Heber self-reliant?’ and I say, ‘No. But, the closer we can come to that, the better we’ll be,’ especially if we have another problem like Covid or something worse. We don’t know anymore in our present condition. Could we help this community be sustainable for a month, two months, three months, just by working together?”

It’s an intriguing question. Could we put aside our political, religious, and personal opinions and beliefs to come together for the greater good? I’d like to think so. We won’t solve all the world’s problems, but who knows, we might solve some of our own as we weed side-by-side, becoming friends one garden row at a time. After all, it takes a village, and the Heber Valley Self-Reliance Group, Russ and Sandra Olsen, and a plethora of community members are ready to help us become a little more self-reliant through their ‘Labors of Love’.

What’s The Difference?

To be self-reliant is to be reliant on one’s own powers and resources rather than those of others; to be self-sufficient is to be able to provide for yourself, especially with food production, with no help from the outside world; and to be self-sustainable means that you can be self-sufficient for many years or the entirety of your life.