Notes on SWAPping with Artist as Family (updated 23 Dec 2016) SWAPping is a WWOOFing-style creative residency, with more time dedicated to your own pursuits than conventional WWOOFing. SWAP stands for Social Warming Artists + Permaculturists. Social Warming speaks of the agency of working together to diminish the often isolationist nature of the nuclear family. SWAPping enables greater productivity in the household and community economies so as more of our resources are accounted for and a relationship with our resources, particularly food and energy, gives us a better understanding on our impacts on the biosphere. SWAPping is an economic exchange situated in the root sense of the word economy, meaning home place. 1. Economic exchange: We barter 3 meals, accommodation and knowledgesharing for 5 hours a day of your diligent work. Some SWAPs come and they are very time specific and want to keep to their hours of work of three hours in the morning (gardening, foraging, forest stewardship, firewood collection, building, etc.) and two hours around the evening meal (either cooking, preserving, general tidying and cleaning the kitchen, or just hanging out with the kids while we cook). Others prefer to go with the flow, and hook in to the day’s needs and learn from each element of the running of the home economy. We're flexible. It's entirely up to you how you want to play it. 2. Accom: You’ll have your own little cottage, the SWAP shed or the Cumquat. It has limited wifi coverage but good enough to send emails and look stuff up but not for streaming content etc. The SWAP shed is listed on Airbnb and books out most weeekends. If we have a booking while you’re here, we'll accommodate you in the house with us. We have a single bed in the office. If you’re in the Cumquat you won’t have to move. 3. Water: We are water frugalists and also very careful what we put down the drain as it feeds the garden. Thus we shower infrequently and encourage no or little soap use, although we supply a bar of swale safe soap and some grey water safe shampoo and conditioner. We also ask that you don’t wear any fragrances (essential oils are OK) while you’re here as these will end up in the garden. 4. Human nutrients: We treat human waste as precious material and have a number of composting and recycling methods we’ll take you through once you're here. 5. Food: We eat a mostly locavore (walked-for; central Victorian; Victorian) diet, mainly vegetarian with some animal protein as it comes to us. (We snare rabbits, butcher our own poultry, catch fish and sometimes get meat from a friend-farmer who has done the butchering on the farm). We are into probiotic-rich wild fermented foods — mead, kefir, kvass, sauerkraut, sourdough etc. We make much of this from scratch. If you have food intolerances or particularities we may not be
able to cater to these, so it’s best you bring some things along with you. We would love for you to cook meals while you're with us, but if cooking isn’t your thing there’s plenty to do to help around the evening meal time (as mentioned above). 6. Mobility: We’re a bike family and we have bikes here you can use, or feel free to bring your own. The train/bus from Southern Cross to Woodend, then on to Daylesford is the only PT option that is bike friendly. Check out PTV website for (the limited) services. We are also often on foot. 7. Clothing: Daylesford is a place of extreme weathers. It can reach 40 degrees Celsius and it can plummet to minus 8. It may be very cold and wet while you're here or it may be very hot, sometimes in the same 24 hour period. Please bring a range of clothing including a hat and jacket, boots, swimmers, beanies and scarves (season dependent) as we’ll be working outside, sometimes regardless of the weather.
Hopefully this helps you with some of what to expect. We are a hard-working, lively bunch. We love having people come to stay with us to learn and share knowledges and help build the non-monetary economies that can, with care, aid in making the earth flower concurrently, year after year. Artist as Family (Meg, Zero, Patrick, Blackwood and Zephyr)