Elephant Poo Resources in St. Helena!

BAKSHEESH! Let me explain.

St. Helena is a small town right up the road from my tiny village of Rutherford. If you know wine, these two towns are very important for their contributions to the wine industry in Northern California. They are also tourist destinations. Normally, this makes me grumpy. This week I had a lovely surprise.

I work in St. Helena, so I see the shops every day. I see the $700 shoes and the $300 silk tank tops. A shop opened in town and I decided to go in. I saw a sign on the door I hadn't noticed before. "Fair Trade" Wikipedia has a very good entry on Fair Trade at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade For those of you who do not want to link, Fair Trade is a social movement in which you buy products made by people in less developed nations from shops that help these marginalized people achieve economic success. You could buy similar things at Macys, Pier One, Cost Plus and other places. In a free trade store, the person running it is a member of a federation of stores that pledge that the middleman isn't making the dough, the artisan is making a fair wage.

I wandered into Baksheesh and found many interesting products. I got a cute brown glass and bronze bead bracelet that fits! I also got a long necklace that has brown, bronze and gold tone beads. My very best find was elephant dung paper. Candi, who works at Baksheesh asked me if I was finding everything. I had found too much! I love the little onyx candle holders and plan on some for the parlor. I was standing in front of the elephant poo stationary and pointing at it. THERE IT WAS!!! POO PAPER! I was carefully picking out samples. The samples have elephants on them from behind. They had many other versions that had birds, leopards, and elephants from the front. I got a box of note paper and a card. I am sending the card off to Tama tomorrow.

Paper made from herbivore droppings is very medieval. It was done mainly in warmer climates where greening the fields was done using poultry droppings rather than the rougher herbivores like horses, camels and elephants. In those places, where poultry were economically feasible all year, the manure could be used for paper products. (Horse, camel and elephant droppings have a lot of seeds and can promote weeds, so they were used for other things more often than used for fertilizers.) The process for making paper is rather involved. It is also a big secret. I told Candi this and she knew the supplier, who I think is in Sri Lanka. Candi is going to try and hook me up with the purveyor's to learn how to make poo paper! Watch this space!

The paper is very reasonable. A very fancy poo paper box in canary yellow with cut outs of mango trees, elephant grass and a bias of a momma and a baby elephant's backsides. The paper inside is bright pink, soft pink, canary, soft yellow and natural. Comment in the blog and I will send you a sample! The hand of the paper is soft and it is very absorbent. It is as though you make construction paper with bamboo or silk. You can see what the elephant had for breakfast too! So far, everyone Candi says they don't do mail order at Baksheesh because they don't know day to day what they will be getting from the artisans. I like her selection better than that at World of Good's website.

For those of you who do visit Napa Valley or Sonoma, please stop by Baksheesh and support merchants who support the Arts and Sciences in less developed nations.