Summer fruit

Trying to live in a sustainable way is not income dependent. It is always nice when you can give a gift of something that you have produced at home and be rewarded with unexpected exchange. This week we had lunch with some friends, we took them a couple doz eggs which they were delighted with and then presented us with ten small jam jars. I am always short of small jars, we never buy anything in jars so I find myself running short from time to time, we normally would take a jar of jam or preserve if visiting friends, but always forget to ask if they will return them when the contents have been consumed. These jars came as a real blessing as I had almost run out with the last lot of lemon curd I had made.

Two days later we visited another friend, again taking her eggs, this time the exchange was three pounds of Blackcurrants. This is now five pounds of jam which we will use over the winter months to flavour our Yoghurt. This particular friend has the most wonderful Permaculture garden, when she bought her cottage just eight years ago all that she had was three acres of boggy ground with daub and no top soil. Over the last eight years she has, single handedly turned this most unlikely piece of ground into the most perfect oasis. She grows all her own food using true Permaculture methods, apples and plums abound as do all the soft fruits, her veg thrive. She is truly in touch with the earth.

She also has an excellent blog which is well worth looking at.

Permaculture Cottage.Wordpress.com

In this day and age people are going to have to rethink their values, many people are now unemployed and crops are failing world wide. Food is set to become a luxury, for some people, even in the UK this is already happening. For many years the peasant life has been ridiculed, yet this at the end of the day is the only true sustainable life style. A land owning peasantry is the only basis for a civilised society. Working together as communities is the only way the human race can survive in the long term. You make something you give it as a gift, in turn the recipient will give you something, there is no need for money as exchange. Just good will and intent.