Harvest Feast

Wow, I’m finally glad the sun has set. Harvesting today was quite a chore and I found a leak in my drip irrigation system which means I lost some valuable water that could have gone to the plants. Damn, oversights like that could cause my fragile ecosystem to collapse. Have to pay better attention to the equipment and get my boyfriend Todd on fixing that right away. But not today. It’s his birthday and I am planning a special meal. But I have get going to meet the caravan to trade for ingredients for dinner. So for now, a little plumbers tape will have to do the trick.

It’s been several months now since I built the greenhouse. When I first moved back to the area we still had a farmers market and I could trade services for products. Now we have food shortages, vegetable crops failing due to draught, fishing off the coast destroyed by the numerous oil spills and poor government response for containment. Practically everything we consume has become toxic…that is except for the food we manage to grow ourselves. That is how brown thumb here decided to go green. And I have to say I’m not doing too terrible a job.

Anyway, Todd’s birthday dinner went splendidly. I made him a tomato, cucumber, basil salad, potato pancakes (his favorite dish and a rare treat since we don’t have potatoes in our garden…yet), a quinoa desert treat made with the honey I’ve been saving for weeks and currants that I also bartered for at the caravan today. What we would have considered a light dinner several years ago has become a lavish treat. And if I could have procured any, I would have added bread to this special meal. Alas, wheat is at a super high premium and no amount of trade could buy me that. Nonetheless we are thankful for what we have and for each other so we continue to survive.

But I can’t help thinking if i can get an underground communication system up can we not distribute, share, collaborate and barter knowledge for more success in community agriculture? Someone in the caravan today was talking about a site called ReDSNET that is using distributed computing to find a cure for ReDS. Could we not get an organized system going for distributed agriculture at a localized level? Several camps working together to feed the community? Wish water was more available. i could use a shower to help me think this through…