We piggy-backed on the nearest Tractor Supply Animal Swap for our most recent meetup in hopes that we'd get more random strangers dropping by.  And the location was successful in that I spread Egyptian onions to another half dozen homes and met some interesting people.  Unfortunately, I don't think any of those people are interested in our our meetup group.

Sarah, Mark, and I brainstormed over lunch afterwards and concluded that our meetups have had too high of a barrier to participation.  After all, even if I say that you can come to a swap with nothing to share, most folks would feel odd about showing up to take if they don't bring something to give.  So we're going to try more of a traditional meetup next time, with everyone converging on Sarah's place just to hang out and get to know each other.  (Date to be announced --- join our group if you'd like to hear more details as they come down the pike.)  Mark's also promised to come up with a more melodious name that still gets the point across.

Building like-minded community is tricky if you're extremely picky and antisocial, but we'll keep plugging away.  After all, B.J. is proof that interesting and interested people live right down the road --- our job is to find them.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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