Local Economy

Surplus eggs = great barter material! In the past few days, they've been traded directly for maple syrup, and "zooked" for other tasty things. We had our early winter Zook barter event last night, and eggs were a hot commodity. Our zook balance (each is worth about $1) has stayed steady, but there was some good activity! All products are made by Zookers, usually with a good list of local or personally grown ingredients. If people don't grow everything themselves, they can usually say who did.

One person sent blueberry-apple conserves, but her family already has eggs of their own. So, a fellow "zooker" gave me 2 zooks for a dozen eggs, which then I gave to the blueberry apple conserve family to buy a jar. A very satisfying system! In the past, I've zooked my knitted washcloths, cookies, nut-n-honey chews and W's brought onions and garlic. I wish I had more preserved things to share, but am usually able to come up with something to earn zooks to spend. And the hens are a great help to that equation. It's a local barter/trade society in a very small format, and we only meet every few months. But maybe someday it can grow...there's lots of talk of focussing on local economies in the days of post Peak Oil, of course.

And how else could I say that my idle knitting habit of making too many dishcloths has earned me great things to eat? See the link bar... I've been spending some of my day off figuring out to edit a tiny snippet of html. Fancy!