Our 4th Annual Chuckanut Transition Food Swap a great windfall for this frugal locavore.

What We Came Home With

Our 4th Annual Chuckanut Transition Food Swap was a great windfall for this frugal, locavore. For our single income family of five it is very much about the budget. Here's the run down of what was brought and what I took home. I and others freely gave as well as bartered. A real sense of wealth and prosperity circulated around. I made new alliances and expanded my neighborly network.

Went with: chocolate mint jelly, pineapple sage jelly, lemon verbena jelly, stewed plums, sauerkraut, lacto-fermented veggies, lacto-fermented pickles, poor man's capers, spicy pickled asparagus, cold and flu tea, elderflower tincture, usnea tincture, 2 different types of lichen for natural dying, tomatillo salsa, salsa and body paint.  Much of this list came from my land and labor.  I spent less $30 on things like organic sugar, pectin, vinegar and sea salt, and I without attachment gave away some great jars. 

But...I came home with: a pot of Egyptian Walking Onions, 3 lbs dried beans, hot pickled carrots, spiced currant sauce, hand salve, tomatos, Asian pears, hubard squash, pear butter, pickled sweet onions, 2 pints blueberry jam, quart of concord grape juice, raspberry jam, roasted tomato salsa,

guacamole, table grapes, 3 hand crocheted wash clothes, willow bark, dried St. John's Wart, 3 quarts peaches, sweet peppers, sedum, lilly, and a box titled "What's For Dinner" that contains ingredients and recipe for a stew to feed 4-6 people which held garden grown Delacota Squash, onions, potatoes, carrots, beets, dried herbs/garlic, and Pedrosillano beans. ..And an IOU for quince, granola and a home cooked dinner for my family of five...oh yeah and I may have also expanded my cooperative childcare group. Community supporting community is just good medicine.

Eating out of my watershed, the market, my garden, the food my husband and I cook and preserve, the informal community economic network we have connected and amplified...it all feeds into a way of life that makes me quite happy and rich.

~Sarai Stevens, Oct. 2014