Butter for rum: blizzard sparks boom in bartering

Before grocery stores reopened in snow-covered St. John’s, N.L., on Tuesday, locals took to the age-old, yet ingenious way of surviving — bartering.

Faced with shuttered stores for four days and a state of emergency there was little else people could do.

When Andie Bulman, a chef and caterer with the Artist Cafe, wanted to make some blueberry crumble, she put a post on Facebook asking for butter and brown sugar, in exchange for top-quality tonic water. However, exchanging alcohol seemed to garner the most success.

“I’ve been doing dry January, so I mostly used my booze as leverage,” Bulman said. “I traded vodka for butter, gin for butter, rum for butter.”

Bulman wasn’t alone. Many people in the provincial capital region of nearly 180,000 were caught off guard by the storm that virtually shut down the city. That’s why there were massive queues to get into stores when they finally reopened. Even with the city advising people to buy enough food for 48 hours — some were too daunted to wait in line and others, by the time they made it to the stores, found some shelves practically empty.

Hence the bartering done in person and through social media may continue. Cigarettes, beer, and chips quickly became storm currency during the past few days.

Lea Mary Movelle posted to a Facebook group making a request for toilet paper in exchange for alcohol.

“We’ve been lucky enough that it’s the only thing we’ve run low on, and the community quickly rallied to get us several rolls,” she said. “Most people didn’t even want our booze! The offer is still good though.”

A post by Kathryn Burke on Facebook led to a good deed when people pitched in to deliver chocolates, veggies and sausages to a wheelchair-bound woman living in a senior’s complex who was running low on her diabetic pills. The delivery helped her out until she could get more pills.

What many have realized is how precarious island living can be — especially if supplies aren’t available.

It didn’t take long for Steph Power, who is part of the St. John’s food-sharing co-op Stone Soup, to realize that not everyone’s comfortable asking for help.

The ad-hoc group, which formed during the state of emergency, put a bin full of non-perishables such as pasta, canned food and cereal out on a snowbank downtown for anyone in need. The contents were quickly snapped up and similar bins have popped up around the city.

Meanwhile, some stores will open on Wednesday again.