It started back in early spring, when we had a glorious stretch of sunny and warm. I looked out at the mass of bees and blossoms on the plum tree and thought to myself, "it's going to be a good year for plums (and apples)." As it turns out, I was right.
But it was also a good year for strawberries and raspberries, and somehow the finite resources of empty jars and shelf space dwindled long before we got to plum jam season. In our house, it's the last hurrah of summer when we pick the late-ripening plums and add foraged blackberries, a sort of bookmark on the jam shelf: once you get to the plum-based jams, you know that season has come to a close.
So what to do with the excess plums this year? It turns out the answer was staring us in the face, as we have joined an informal online group that arranges shared buys of various local produce. I put out an offer, and a few people responded. It's a perfect match: we still had plenty of fruit to use up every last jam jar, and the excess was magically transformed into a handful of bills.
Yes, the bills were the intermediary that I traded for the spuds, but it somehow felt direct, taking the same worn three bills that had been pressed into my hand only a few hours prior and pressing them into the hands of the farmer, so, yes, I agreed with Little One that it was indeed magic, transforming purple plums from the front yard into purple potatoes on the supper table.
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The post script to this, is of course, that money is a kind of magic, based on mutual trust in a system. In a time when we hear terms like mortgage-backed derivatives and bankrupt brokerage firms bantered about, it's a good reminder, seeing how those leathery slips of paper can represent real value. It's pretty easy to follow the trajectory of those dollar bills, but how much of our economy is that firmly based in the real and tangible? Yet another compelling reason to keep it local.
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