My kitchen table is the focal point of my Oakland, California apartment. Scratched up, the veneer held in place with Elmer’s Glue, it’s a constantly shifting still life of garden seed packets, farmers’ market produce, and flowers.
In one corner, nectarines blush amongst the pluots and French prunes. An avocado lolls beside them. Heirloom tomatoes ripen on a cloth napkin. Persimmons slowly soften.
The best thing about it, though, is that the table mostly holds food that was procured without money. Neither my roommate Kelsey nor I can afford weekly trips to Whole Foods, but the Oakland gift economy, and the bartering that goes on at the farmers markets, have taken care of us and kept us well fed, throughout this past summer and fall.
“Workers and farmers at farmers markets often trade food between themselves, freely and generously,” says Severine von Tscharner Fleming, farmer and director of the Greenhorns. Farmers, being rich in resources, but often cash poor, have historically looked to bartering to provide themselves with the things their own farms don’t provide.
Interestingly enough, barter systems often arise during financial crises. For example, Cuba in the 1990s shifted to bartering when the value of the local currency declined, and imported goods became scarce. In times like these, with Occupy Wall Street protests happening and a stagnant employment rate , it seems natural that crop swaps and jam trades are appearing across the nation, and people at the market can be seen trading cheese for bread.
Kelsey’s involvement comes from her farmers market job with Blossom Bluff Orchards – part of the benefit is trading the damaged “seconds” that are still good to eat with workers at other stalls. But sometimes people come by that don’t work at the market, trading things from home, like eggs, or cupcakes.
She also trash-picks — finding bruised patty pan squashes and lightly damaged tomatoes that are too ugly to sell. They look perfectly fine on the table. They taste fine too.
Sometimes we have so much food, we recirculate it — gift it. And most of the time, people give back. One day, the collards growing in our backyard were beckoning to my friend Matthew, so we let him harvest them. A few days later, he came back with some slow-cooked collards, blackeyed peas, and corn cakes.
The lovely thing is this keeps happening. Marmalade appears on the kitchen table, or a delicata squash plant. New kale starts from a crop swap appear. It’s been pretty amazing to eat so well and spend so little money.
As it turns out, these exchanges could be considered examples of how gift economies work, where people freely give and receive from each other, instead of using currency to procure goods. The act of giving and receiving binds the community together.
And bind it does. A casual acquaintance becomes less casual when they offer you something of theirs. It inspires trust and goodwill. It’s a sign that they thought about you, and it changes the way you think of them. With or without the use of money, movement of food within a community nurtures it.
