As a self-founded, self-funded, and self-directed organization we dropped the ball on coming up with a good name. Fortunately our friends and neighbors picked up the slack. This is a small selection of names thrown around until “The Locovores” (like local-vore but more crazy) finally stuck. 

• KAYASS (Krazy Alaskan Young Adults Slowly Starving). Coined by Ari, Kathy, and I in a hot tub the November before we began. The same conversation where we declared ourselves 100 percent committed to the project and 15 percent logistically organized. These numbers never changed much but the name stuck around for a few months. 

• The Commune. What else do you call four college age people all living together in a small house growing potatoes and sharing underwear? 

• The Core Four. Fifteen people toyed with the idea of doing this project. While we did zoom calls about fundraising and logistics we differentiated “the core” and those crazy enough to commit their whole year. 

• The Ones With All the Potatoes. Someone at the dump who came up with this when we’d been in town for about a month and we’re starting to be known. 750 potato plants were a good identifying factor.

• DUMBASS. Larry Landry’s tasteful modification of KAYASS when he discovered that we’d overestimated the carrot seeds we needed to by 40,200. 

• Frat House. Iris was trying to separate our house from my parents. We were the frat, Hank and Ani the sorority. 

• Starvation Club. I can’t remember who came up with this in the onslaught of starvation jokes at the beginning of the summer. This one phased out in August when we started growing and catching things but still made it onto our answering machine. 

• The Teenagers. A name from the lovely loquacious seven year old Jojo who visited to paint our nails and teach us dance moves.

• The people giving away all that food. Atticus heard this one on the ferry sometime in December. Apparently word was starting to get around we were, in fact, not starving.