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The primary goal of Vermont Garden Exchange is to provide a forum where gardeners can meet and trade products from their gardens. Oftentimes at the height of harvest season a gardener will find themselves with an abundance of vegetables that end up going to waste because there is too much, or the gardener doesn’t have the opportunity to preserve their harvest. Our desire is to unite people that could trade garden products to their mutual benefit. The forum is meant to be freeform in that a person could make an offer of “will trade tomatoes for blueberries”, or “have extra tomatoes, will trade your surplus harvest”. Also, if somebody just wants to give their surplus away that is greatly encouraged as well.
If somebody wants to trade a product such as maple syrup or strawberry jam for vegetables or another finished product, that would be in keeping with the spirit of the exchange. We’ll even go to the extent of saying “the fruits of the land”, to include trading wood, dairy products, meat, etc. The primary rule, though, is trade, give, or exchange, not “for sale”. There are plenty of other forums for selling products and so Vermont Garden Exchange will not be one of them.
In this period of economic stress it is our hope that we can play a small role in helping people find food that is healthy and nutritious without the need of money. We also believe that this will foster community by providing a forum whereby people can meet and work out specific trading relationships to meet their particular needs.
Vermont is active in the Localvore movement and this forum is meant to dovetail into that concept. It is my belief that as we come to terms with Peak Oil and the increasing costs resultant from it, more and more of our income will be spent on energy related costs which will increase the price of almost everything we buy. It is our hope that this website can help offset the cost of food, one essential item.
The food supply chain in the U.S. is vulnerable to breakdown due to our dependence on foreign energy sources. It’s estimated that ten calories of energy are used to get one calorie of food on the average plate of food served in this country. The majority of the fresh vegetables still come from California. The majority of our energy comes from foreign sources. It is obvious that it wouldn’t take much of a disruption of energly supplies to quickly impact our food supply. Garden Exchange will hopefully enable people to have some control over this situation to the extent that they choose. If you would like to contact us with suggestions or ideas which you think would add to this exchange, please contact us. This is meant to be a forum for the benefit of people, so anything which could increase that would be welcome.
