Nature's Gift Economy

For this week's act mission, I had an extra difficult time finding something to do that I'd "NEVER" done before, as Alchemy insisted in the mission brief. I already do live on less than $2 a day, in the Boston area. I already am a member of a time trade group. I already do barter regularly (most notably for housing). I already have had a Google checkout processing thingie on my website for people to pay me for my work. I already do work on a sliding scale basis (you can pay me from $0 to infinity!) I even already have used Mechnical Turk to participate in micropayment outsourcing work. I already have donated most of my worldly goods to others. I already have put up my Gift Economy list of things I have to offer and things I'm looking for on my own website. And I already trashpick and freecycle and hand make most of the material goods I do still use.

I mean, isn't that enough?

Well, while I do tend to be resistant to people asking too much of me at first, I also have a fairly serious allergy to the idea of bailing on an honest and meaningful challenge (just ask my husband! :-). So after sitting with the idea for a while, I realized that I could push myself a bit more. I still spend most of the little bit of money I earn on food, as well as getting some food stamps (aka, SNAP, the US version of subsidies for food for people living under the poverty level), and that fact periodically bugs the crap out of me.

Sooooooo...

Starting this Sunday, for one week (at least) I'm going to use the currency of nature to "buy food". In other words, I'm going to eat only wild foods. I'm going to research and find as many edible plants and mushrooms in my Boston area locale as I need, to eat to feel satisfied. I'll be doc**enting the story here and on my own website, so interested folks can follow along with my experiment. And I'll be talking to wild foods experts, I hope, which should be fun and add some new characters to my story.

It's going to be quite a challenge, and I'd love people to help me, both in supporting me in keeping going, and in maybe suggesting food to look for. I know some, but a wh*** lot of the stuff I normally know that I can eat isn't growing yet, because we're still getting frosts (it snowed last Friday...), so I'm going to be having a real crash course in learning about early spring wild foods!

Yay!

Alas, it's really not blackberry season... YET! :-)