The marketplace here is booming. Hundreds of people have shown up to spend the week. Many are drawn here by the Free State Project, which is trying to get libertarian-leaning folks to move to New Hampshire. You can buy just about anything you want at PorcFest — food, drugs, bootleg cigarettes or alcohol.

And you don't even need U.S. government currency to do it. Someone shows me a cash register stocked with tiny pieces of silver and gold.

Trying to give up the U.S. dollar means a lot of extra math. You hear it all day long. How much is silver? How many grams in an ounce? It's 8:30 in the morning, in the woods, and people are checking the precious metal prices on their cell phones. I go directly to the source. Down the hill, Ron Hellwig has set up a bank and a mint on a folding table.

Ron has invented these neat little laminated cards that contain strips of silver. He has basically created a silver-based currency with different denominations — 1 gram, 5 grams, etc.

He tells me proudly that, although he makes his living cooking, he has no permit to sell food. He's never been inspected. And he does not pay taxes. "I don't want them in my business at all," he says of the government. "If somebody wants to buy my food, it's between me and them."