The concept is simple – just create an account, post what you have (veggies, fruit, nuts, seeds, starts, or other goodies), and indicate what you’d like to trade for. And you can browse the listings, looking for things other folks are ready to trade.

There are some legal considerations that include this note: San Francisco Bay Area Residents, please note: Because of a comprehensive produce quarantine in place for most of your region due to the light brown apple moth, we unfortunately can’t allow items under quarantine to be posted on Veggie Trader. For more specific information on the quarantine and the areas affected, please refer to the California state department of agriculture website. I tried doing a test post for plums from my Sebastopol location and it worked fine…you’d probably need to wade through the CDFA web site to get the specifics of how this might affect your posts.

Here’s a screen shot of a search I did for trades in my area:

I was disappointed in the selection — this is for a 100 mile radius! But the folks at Veggie Trader have thought of a way to help me with that….they provide printable fliers you can post to help others in your neighborhood learn about the site…increasing your chances of making some good local trades.

I’m looking forward to trying out Veggie Trader as the summer harvest begins to peak!

Thanks, Steve, for passing this along!

Link: Veggie Trader

But there are bright spots, and the Georgia Street Community Collective gives me a lot of hope.

Here’s their mission:

The mission of the Georgia Street Community Collective is to provide the residents of our community with:

Health
by maintaining the Georgia Street Community Garden and Market

Education
by establishing and maintaining the Georgia Street Community Center/Library

Leadership Skills
by providing positive role models

Protection
by having the Community Center/Library to give the youth a place to meet, and to

Rebuild and Sustain
Our Community: One House, One Block, One Neighborhood at a Time.

Their gardens were started by Mark Covington on empty lots that he cleared and began cultivating. Covington’s vision continued to expand and now includes a vibrant community organization that includes everything from gardens and local food activism to neighborhood reading nights.

Reading and movie night at Georgia Street Community Collective.

You can see more of what’s happening on Georgia Street by following their weblog. You might enjoy Lamra’s strawberry commercial, where the superiority of fruit from GSCC over store-bought is clearly demonstrated. And folks, let’s click through on that “Donate” button there. This is a group that’s clearly doing work that makes a real difference.

There’s a good article about Georgia Street Community Collective from the Detroit News: Urban gardeners nurture nature in Detroit.

Links: Georgia Street Community Collective and the GSCC Blog

From The Case for Natural Building on their site:

Natural building is any building system which places the highest value on social and environmental sustainability. It assumes the need to minimize the environmental impact of our housing and other building needs while providing healthy, beautiful, comfortable and spiritually-uplifting homes for everyone. Natural builders emphasize simple, easy-to-learn techniques based on locally-available, renewable resources. These systems rely heavily on human labor and creativity instead of on capital, high technology and specialized skills.

If you’re not familiar with the beauty of natural building yet, check out the slide show on the NBN site for some most excellent inspiration.

Link: Natural Building Network

Much like a farm CSA, San Francisco Bay Area customers receive a box of produce and fish on a weekly subscription basis throughout the season. The only difference is that instead of farmed produce, we deliver a seasonally rotating selection of all wild foraged food; And just in case you don’t know the first thing about cattail rhizomes or wapato root, we give recipes and suggestions on how prepare your edibles. Wild mushrooms (Chanterelles, black trumpet, morels), nettle, miners lettuce, cattail rhizomes etc….

Our mission is to rediscover a forgotten food system, reducing carbon miles,while helping to build a local food economy based on a true respect for the skills of our rural neighbors. Through a network of individual foragers, all harvesting what they know best (and getting 50% of the profit), we can bring an amazing array of selections to your table. From mushrooms to nettle, apples to sea beans, mustard greens to halibut, few weeks will be the same. In addition to food, subscribers will be first in line for guided forages, going out into the woods to learn about what they can glean from the wild.

The folks at forageSF also supply well-known restaurants like Mission Street Food and Chez Panisse. Boxes can be received biweekly or monthly, with the cost per box ranging from $20 to $80 depending on the types of foods you want to receive. And if you forage yourself, you can also participate and share the profits!

Check out the forageSF Blog also, especially if you’re interested in learning more about foraging for yourself.

Links: forageSF; forageSF Blog

Photo from womensherbalsymposium.org

Three times a year women from many backgrounds of life gather together in great celebration for four full days of inspiring Herbal and Sustainability classes, gourmet vegetarian meals, talented campfire capers, amazing handcrafted marketplace items, Rites-of-Passage Ceremonies, powerful campfire drumming and dancing, refreshing swimming hole dips, and conversations with remarkable & inspiring women!

This year’s symposium dates are May 15-18, 2009, May 22-25, 2009, and Sept 4-7, 2009. See the web site for more details!

Link: Women’s Herbal Symposium

Sustainable Seed Company was founded by Farmer John, who’s also known for founding the online community of backyard chicken enthusiasts, Wine Country Chicken Chat (and watch for more on chickens here later this week!).

We started this vegetable seed company because we want to be healthier, stronger, and more local in our food sources. We wanted to bring the food back to the backyard!

What you’ll find here is heirloom open-pollinated seed varieties, most just 99¢ per pack.

Farmer John, founder of Sustainable Seed Company, and Friend.

By the way, they’re also having a photo contest to build their collection of product photographs…submit yours for a chance in a drawing for a $100 gift certificate.

It’s really great to have a local seed company. I think I’m going to grow some giant pumpkins for chicken feed!

Link: Sustainable Seed Company

Dustin Zuckerman of the Santa Rosa Tool Lending Library.

Becoming a member is as easy as getting a library card at any regular public library. The web site offers an extensive list of tools, and reserving them is as easy as sending an email with the details of what you need and when you can pick up and return the tools. Permies will find a lot to love here…need a pole saw/pruner or fruit picker? Maybe a measuring wheel for some design work or a chop saw for a quick building project? Borrowing tools saves you the expense of buying something you might only use once, AND it maximizes the resources that were used to make, ship, and sell that tool.

Incredibly, Dustin runs the library out of his apartment…I see it as a great example of overcoming all the objections those little voices in your head will have to prevent you from doing something you believe in. Dustin has taken his vision and made it a reality, despite any number of objections people might raise. Yes, people do return the tools. Yes, he’s found a way to make this work with his landlord. Smart guy.

You can read more about Dustin’s tool library in the North Bay Bohemian and Press Democrat. Recently, Dustin asked me to be on his board of directors and I was happy to accept. I’m really delighted to be part of such a great community resource!

Link: Santa Rosa Tool Lending Library

From farmers markets to retail stores, market channels are expanding for locally produced foods in response to booming demand; yet meats remain a challenge due to the infrastructure required for processing and marketing. Many Sonoma County residents would like to buy from local ranches that practice humane treatment and environmental stewardship. They also want to support Sonoma County’s ranching landscapes and heritage. The Sonoma County Meat Buying Club will provide this opportunity.

Here’s what a box looks like:

We get the “small” sized box, which is about seven pounds of beef and pork each month for $65 a month. There’s usually about five pounds of beef and two pounds of pork; some months, a chicken is included and the total box weight is more than seven pounds. And sometimes there are other types of meat, too. View this photo to see exactly what we’ve been getting over recent months…you’ll probably have to zoom in to see it.

Like our vegetable CSA, our meat CSA provides a newsletter and recipes in every box. Not picking the cuts to buy ourselves has turned out to be a benefit rather than a constraint. We enjoy getting new things to try…I would have never bought goat meat in the grocery store, but we were delighted to make a meal event out of it:

Almost all of the meat we eat comes from our monthly box. It’s a good size for two people, although we do have to be clever about leftovers to use the larger cuts. Grass-fed beef does need to be cooked a little differently (not as long) as industrial beef, and we’ve really enjoyed the taste of everything. If you’re an omnivore and enjoy some meat in your diet, this is a great alternative to growing your own!

Link: Sonoma County Meat Buying Club

For a one-time $75.00 membership fee, you get a glorious box of truly sustainable “beyond organic” veggies for just $17 per week.

Laguna Farm is located on 30 acres adjacent to the Laguna de Santa Rosa, northern California’s largest freshwater marsh. Using sustainable farming methods that protect soil resources and water quality, we help to preserve our adjoining wetlands, as well as the larger community. Our method of growing stewards the earth as a living system and connects us with nature. Community support connects us with each other. We feel that living and practicing agriculture based on this interconnectedness can lay the foundation for physical, cultural, intellectual and spiritual growth.

Laguna Farm has been providing organically grown produce to the Sonoma County area for over 20 years through direct sales at farm markets, retail stores and fine restaurants. Our growing standards are above and beyond those of the National Organic Program (NOP), which, we believe, has compromised the original intent of the organic community. For this reason, we at Laguna Farm have chosen to drop our organic certification, though our commitment has not changed. We now refer to our produce as “beyond organic,” since we follow farming practices that are more stringent than that of the NOP. We believe you will be able to taste the difference in the living food that we produce.

We’ve loved being participants in the Laguna Farm CSA from our very first box:

In addition to the box, we receive a weekly newsletter that discusses the contents of the box AND provides recipes using seasonal ingredients. Those recipes are really useful, and they’ve really expanded our repertoire of dishes.

I have to admit, we were hesitant to buy into the program…I thought it would be better to decide what to buy at the grocery store, and I wasn’t sure we’d feel it was worth the price. But I’m really glad we put aside our doubts and joined. Being a member of Laguna Farm is a complete experience: picking up our weekly box and browsing the farm store is a treat, and the experience is connected over the week of preparing meals with seasonal, sustainable foods.

Link: Laguna Farm

Transition towns were started by permaculture designers Louise Roone and Rob Hopkins. Their ideas and recommendations were adopted their home towns of Kinsale, Ireland and Totnes, England and have received significant attention. Their work is discussed in detail in the book by Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience.

Sonoma County permies take note: there’s a meeting of Transition Sebastopol this Thursday:

Talk on the Transition Town movement by Jennifer Gray (founder of the second Transition Town in the UK)

Thursday, Jan 15 — 7:30 PM
Aubergine Cafe, 755 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol
Free (great food and drink available for purchase)

Presented by Transition Sebastopol (8th official Transition Town in the US).

Jennifer will share her experience in setting up a Transition Town, and the nuts and bolts of engaging our community in working through the steps of Transition.

Discussion on the Transition Town model to follow, with a brief presentation by the Transition Sebastopol initiating team on how you can get involved locally.

What is a Transition Town?

It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change?

They begin by forming an initiating group and then adopt the Transition Model with the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in their community to kick off a Transition Initiative.

See Transition Sebastopol or Transition United States for more event details.

Other nearby transition town efforts include Transition Cotati and Transition Willits.

This is our first post under the category “Invisible Structures”. Invisible structures are ways we apply permaculture principals to intangible processes and ways of organizing.