Fair Trade Blog

It’s hard to mistake with it’s huge slightly fuzzy looking leaves and sturdy, sour stems. Because Rhubarb is unique, we decided to name our new store after it.

Last week we threw open the doors on our newest retail space that features food, gifts, and artisan works from the Driftless Region. Our new place is right next to Driftless Fair Traders in the Hotel Fortney. It wasn’t easy to round up all the great products we currently have, but there are more, and we’re working to offer all the best of our region.  

Since Driftless Fair Traders has a global focus, we started thinking about what we could do to promote the local economy.  Our area is rich in agricultural and artistic heritage, so we decided to bring it all together in a celebration of our area.  

Kickapoo Coffee is just one of our great products.  They were awarded a high rating in Consumer Reports last year among Fair Trade coffees.  Their roastery is just down the road from our store.  We have cans of their robust and fragrant whole beans. 

Sweet Prairie Farm honey products is another local line we are completely excited about.  They’re located in the little town of Coon Valley just a half and hour from here.   Their honey cremes and body care products have us all buzzing. 

Leslie from SpinDrift Weavers just brought in a basket of her handspun yarn from her sheep herd.  We chatted about a customer that bought one of her handmade scarves this last weekend.  There are so many wonderful stories behind all of our local finds. 

If you stop by, you can also pick up LuSa Organics soaps and body care items, Papa Pat’s Farmhouse Recipe jams, soups, and pancack mixes, Martha’s Hot Mustard, and Potter’s Crackers. 

Rhubarb merchandize isn’t available online yet, but one day soon, you’ll be able to order a little taste of the Driftless Region no matter where you are!

I’ll bet a lot of you wonder what our name is all about. Fair Trade you understand, but “Driftless?” After living here for over five years, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the region in which I live is quite unique.

We have a stunning new poster that shares our distinctive area with photos and graphics by Rick LaMartina.  Most of each sale goes to the Crawford Stewardship Project,  a group focuses on preserving the natural integrity of the Driftless Region.

Some 10,000 years ago, retreating glaciers left behind silt, clay, gravel, and boulders which filled in the features they had covered. This fill is called “drift” and turned much of the Midwest into flat land and rolling hills. 

Our region of the Midwest proved to be an obstacle for the advancing ice, and the glaciers slid around this region.  Untouched by grinding layers of ice, our home was left with deep river valleys, majestic bluffs, rock outcroppings, springs, and caves. The Kickapoo River, which runs past our front yard, is thought to be one of the oldest rivers in the world. 

Not only is the craggy, distinguished face of the Driftless Region special, but the underlying rock turns out to be unique as well. Karst is a type of limestone bedrock that has been made permeable by the action of acidic rainwater.  Over thousands of years, the slow erosion of rain water has produced a complex network of channels, caves, tunnels, shafts, and other features.  Underground water circulates quickly in the Driftless rock — up to 300 feet per day compared to a few feet in other types of rock layers.

The porous nature of the region makes it fragile.  Pollutants and bacteria can migrate quickly into wells and springs, collecting in areas used for drinking water. 

That’s why more and more people are taking up the cause of preserving our unique environment.

Keep shopping your good values!

Patricia Lewis, who lives with her canine companion in Canada, has been a good customer. We share a passion for the Arghand Cooperative, which I have written about in the space many times. Patricia started by buying their distinctive soaps from us. Just recently, she bought Arghand scarves that we first began offering earlier this spring.

I ask her to send me some thoughts about her recent purchase and this is what she had to say. 

Discerning shopper?  Travel the world and find the same stores, same malls, selling the same merchandise you find in your local mall at home?  Handcrafted treasures are increasingly going the way of the dinosaur, now pretty much in the stages of the polar bear — threatened.  Cheaper mass-produced, often synthetic assembly-line goods are taking their place.  Our culture, one that clearly embraces uniqueness and individuality, is also disappearing. Doesn’t have to be entirely so.

Make a statement with your purchasing power — support handcrafted treasures made by traditional methods that date back to antiquity, at the same time fuelling little economies that enable people to live self-sufficently and also pass down their dignified crafts to the next generations, who can also take pride in their talents, works of art, and honest labours. 

Celebrate your lovely new purchase and wear it smartly.

Buy smart, dress smart. I like that. Thanks, Patricia.

Keep shopping your good values!

Spring.  Time for the new.  Time to clear out the not so new. 

Ten turns of beads and bangles!   These Kenyan bracelets wrap your wrist in color.

Bright and shiny.  Silver earrings made in Chile to add a little sparkle in just the right places!

Intriguing Haitian wall hangings.  Each time you look at the Voodoo art design, cut and shaped from reclaimed oil drums, you’ll see something slightly different. 

Clothing on sale.  All of our blouses are discounted!  Need something cool and breezy this season?  How about a colorful top from Ecuador? 

Keep shopping your good values!

… and Start a Revolution!”

Zendik Arts Farm is an intentional community in West Virginia that believes you can change the world by expressing yourself. Their mission statement says they believe in creative survival and social change through the arts.

We carry the T-Shirt that expresses their core values. By wearing their T, you can tell other people to “Stop Bitching and Start a Revolution.”

They’re organic cotton and come in cool colors including natural, mustard, galaxy blue, and pomegranate.

Wulf and Arol Zendik, an unconventional and somewhat controversial couple, founded a commune in California in 1969. Wulf evolved the belief that nature’s ultimate purpose is to expand consciousness and that our choices influence that evolution. Based on this thinking, the current community, lead by the Zendik’s daughter Fawn, attempts to use earth-friendly systems to sustain themselves on the farm while promoting their message of change.

Their message and their T-Shirts definitely get people talking.

Keep shopping your good values!

Mother’s Day is upon us once again, so many of you are thinking about what to give your mother this weekend that will delight and honor her. Well, I ran across this from Maureen Mackey of the Portland Green Living Examiner.

Her list of ten ways to honor your mother and Mother Earth.

1. Give her that old standby, a bouquet of flowers, but look for the VeriFlora logo that indicates the flowers were sustainably grown. You can find VeriFlora blooms at flower shops and grocery stores, including New Seasons, Safeway, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.

2. Don’t forget that other time-tested Mom favorite, chocolate, but search for fair trade chocolate at your favorite chocolate shop or grocery store.

3. Give her house, or even one room, an eco-friendly Spring Cleaning with green cleaners.

4. Plant a tree in her honor.

5. Show Mother Earth you appreicate her beautiful nature by walking or bike riding.

6. Go see the movie Earth, which celebrates our planet and the creatures who live on it. Look for local theaters and showtimes here.

7.  Buy her fair-trade jewelry, so she knows her adornments were crafted sustainably and the artisans who created it were treated fairly.

8. Visit a Farmer’s Market to buy locally-produced food.

9. Buy your mother fruit or vegetable starts and offer to help her plant them.

10. Consider becoming a Zoo Patron to suppport wildlife conservation. 

Happy Mother’s Day!

Keep shopping your good values!

Working with artisans to create new designs for fresh products was one of the great opportunities I had while in Ecuador last January.

We met with many providers in their homes to work on new pieces. While in Otavalo, we treked up a hill on the edge of town to meet with a family that makes jewelry from tagua nut, seeds, and other natural materials.  Christopher, my host, calls their pieces Jungle Jewelry.   The pieces are bright and bold, and sometimes have sophisticated designs.

Both slight, with classic Otavalan features, the couple presented their latest samples for us to study.  After looking at the new designs, lively collaboration began to develop.  Mandy, a college student from Michigan, and Gabriele, one of our guides, graciously agreed to be our models and we began decorating them with piece after piece.

Sample pieces evolve into better designs for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes, slight changes can make a piece more comfortable or practical to wear.  Occasionally, a piece can be changed slightly to make it more exciting or attractive.  At that particular meeting, we began to play with the idea of using Tagua discs with varying cutout shapes as elements in necklaces and bracelets.  That discussion resulted in intriguing new designs for a whole matching set including earrings.

All this hard work benefits everyone involved.  As we were leaving the couple’s home, tired, but eager to see the new samples we had developed, Christopher, pointed out that they had added onto their modest home for their growing family.

Keep shopping your good values!

The central market in Otavalo, Ecuador, is a riot of color, texture, sound, and experience.  We spent lots of time looking for the new and interesting during our stay in the city last January.  

I don’t know why the ugly dolls (as we started calling them after my first sighting) caught my attention.  Ragged and worn looking, they have the appearance of being loved a little too much.  Or perhaps, they charmed me for having been born from nothing, just scraps of this and that sewn together into a form recognizable to everyone. 

I brought back a few for the shop.  They remind me of the essence of Fair Trade — taking what you have and creating something new and wonderful out of it.

Just this week, both the president and General Petraus made the astounding assessment that America and NATO are losing the war in Afghanistan. After eight years of fighting and attempting to rebuild that country, we are failing.

If you haven’t heard what Sarah Chayes, founder of the Arghand Cooperative, has to say about how to get out of this mess, here is a link to a guest interview she did on the Rachel Maddow Show this past Tuesday.

In the brief segment, Sarah advocates for making the Taliban irrelevant instead of working to defeat them on the battlefield or subvert them by negotiating with willing elements.  Both solutions have been floated by the new administration, though Obama has said that a larger military presence is certain.

Sarah also described the life and death struggle of everyday life for Arghand’s members.  I hope you watch her interview.  We’re all concerned about the future of the country as well as the little cooperative we’ve come to know and love through the wonderful soap they make.

I hope you watch this enlightening interview.

Keep shopping your good values!

Watching tagua go from scruffy looking nuts to beautiful carved animals was one of the unforgettable experiences I had in Ecuador. 

In Washington’s workshop in a little village near Montecristi, I watched as a proud little elephant emerged from the single nut he picked from a loose pile against a cement block wall.  

In his shop, which employs several people and supports Washington’s family, there are several stations with grinding and polishing tools. At each station, the carvings are carefully shaped and manicured into beautiful, but unique, perfection.

First he cut the top and bottom off the nearly 3-inch traingular shaped nut.  The solid white flesh was exposed as he took the squared off nut to a grinding station.  Quickly and skillfully, Washington held the nut against the grinding wheel to begin to give it a shape.   The hump of the back emerged, then the head, followed by the legs.  Last, the beginnings of a trunk poked out of the head.  He held it up so that we could see, while explaining what he was doing.

Next he took the newborn tagua elephant to a polishing wheel. After grinding, the surface of the elephant was grainy and dull.  Achieving the glossy finish of the final product took several polishing steps.  Washington continued to work on the elephant by polishing away the rough edges and further refining the shape of our new little friend. 

After taking off the rough spots, Washington took out his portable drill and began scoring details into the surface.  Then he drilled small holed for the tusks. 

Finally, our little elephant went to the last station.  Here, one of Washington’s workers continued the polishing process.  The little elephant was polished several times with finer and finer sand paper on the wheel. 

At last, just as in real life, our elephant got little tusks which had been shined on the same wheel. 

It all took less than twenty minutes, but was certainly more involved than I would have imagined.  There is much more work required than we saw.  The nuts have to be collected by liberating them from massive fruit pods that look like a giant spiny clutch of eggs.  

Washington is one of the most skilled tagua carvers in Ecuador.  We’ll be featuring some of his work soon! 

Keep shopping your good values!