October's Riverton Community Market

It was hard to know what to expect for this market considering the wild weather we had experienced a few days before but we went ahead as planned since there was power and willing people! One conversation I came away from the market pondering, was around making a plan for a potential future event (where power and communications are down). I'm thinking now, while it's fresh in the mind, is a good time to sit down and write a list of any items that it would be useful to have if there was another outage - extra batteries, torches, tealight candles and jars, gas and burner for cooking food, bottled water, etc. It would definitely be good to have some provisions stored away, especially if the power was down for longer! A few of us are thinking it would be useful to learn some practical skills that we could draw on should we need to - like making a rocket stove (a highly efficient stove you can make with bricks for cooking food/ boiling water just using twigs), a bucket washing machine, a method of filtering water using sand and charcoal etc. We could run some workshops and learn from each other - let me know if you're keen!

The baking competition went ahead with five delicious lemon cakes. Mine was highly experimental as I'm on an egg-free diet at the moment so decided to substitute the eggs in the recipe for 'flax eggs'. It actually tasted pretty good (which can't be said of all my baking experiments - ha) but did have the confusing look of a banana cake. The winner, with her beautiful cake, decorated with dehydrated Riverton-grown lemons, was local lady Lauren. Congrats Lauren - it was a stunning cake!!

The raffle (aka basket of love) was won by local lady Donnette. It's funny because as she walked away after buying the ticket I joked with her that I'd call her later to let her know she'd won - very cool!

The next market falls on Sunday the 30th November. The baking competition has already been decided... it will be chocolate chip cookies (I have a good recipe up my sleeve for that one!). We look forward to seeing you all then. Meanwhile stay warm and safe out there!!