So you’re canning and fermenting based on last month’s challenge: Preserving.

If you stay this course you might find yourself with quite a few jars of the same thing, wouldn’t it be fun to trade your bounty for your friends’ goods? 

photo courtesy of Jo Ann Santangelo

You’re also in luck because Annette announced the new challenge theme over at Sustainable Eats. Her year long UFH challenge has rocked all different kinds of useful urban householding skils, and this month is BARTER.

There are lots of ways to barter and swap, including a few ideas surrounding food that have appeared recently here on the blog:

• The simplest way is to pair up and make trades with one friend. Read about my weekly egg barter.
• Another cool way to trade food with friends is to start a small swap group. Read about Katy’s swap group in Indianpolis.

photo courtesy of Katy Carter

• And, finally, yet another way to share food with friends is to start a Facebook page, print out a few swap sheets and invite your neighbors to a full-on food swap. 

New logo courtesy of the AMAZING Dana Harrison of ELEVEN Design Initiative.

When Emily and I started Food Swap Network, we wanted to make it easy for folks to gather in their communities with their homemade goods. We now have more than 70 swaps in our network, spanning the US, Canada and even overseas! We hope you’ll consider pulling together a group in your area and joining the network. 

Now for the Urban Farm Handbook September challenge: I challenge you to employ one of these three methods of swapping food or homegrown goodies with friends. At the end of the month, Annette will publish a post in which everyone who participated can link up and tell us about a whole lotta swap action for chance to win some great prizes, a copy of The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking included!