Farm Barter

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Her next move was to pay for beauty-parlor services with home-raised frying chickens. In a nearby town she met a garage and filling-station owner whose hobby was raising baking chickens. The garage keeper wished to have setting eggs and newly hatched chicks and was eager to swap gasoline, motor oil, and mechanic's services for them. Mrs. Harris happily provided her share of the barter from home sources. She next located a grain-mill operator who agreed to swap ten barrels of well-milled flour for fifty bushels of her wheat, also to grind her corn to meal on shares.

Mrs. Harris, an accomplished pianist, for several years had been contributing music for the farm women's club to which she belonged. The club director asked if she would be willing to take part in the club's convention in Baltimore, all expenses provided in return for playing the piano. The Barter Lady accepted happily, bartering about six hours of musicianship for a much-enjoyed four-day vacation in the big city. Next, she swapped home-raised roasting chickens with a coastal steamship line for a vacation cruise for her family.

The Harrises suffered some rather serious surgery bills and found that, while most merchandise became cheaper as farm prices fell, surgery fees stood fixed. A local dentist accepted fresh fruits, fine berries, native fowl, and farm-fresh eggs in payment for dental services for the entire family But the surgeon kept sending bills for the two appendectomies until the Barter Lady learned that he cherished one thing above all others—an old-fashioned week-long fishing vacation. Mrs. Harris offered to supply a simple but enticing fishing vacation, complete with homecooked meals, live minnows, crayfish, night crawlers, catalpa worms, red worms, grasshoppers, and moral encouragement in settlement of the surgery. The surgeon eagerly accepted, proved himself an ideal house guest as well as an able fisherman, and marked the operations paid in full.

Again the Barter Lady had to meet her taxes. This time she permitted county and state highway crews to dredge and load out sand and gravel from some of her acres which front on Chesapeake Bay. Her taxes were met, and in celebration she tried a variant of barter. She traded a standing walnut tree as down payment on a piano. When wool prices tumbled to less than half the usual farm-door low, she had her wool clip milled into finished warm cloth. She personally shaped the cloth into sample-measure double blankets, crib blankets, and auto robes, all warmer, softer, and more generously sized than those sold in stores. She then bartered the homemade woolen goods for school books, shoes, suits, dresses, and other family needs. The strategy here was especially fine. Nobody wanted shorn wool. But when it was changed to warm cloth, many were eager to swap for it.

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