Successful Swap

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As you can see, trading fed this unfortunate family for several months. A very sad story ended happily thanks to some good, old-fashioned bartering and good, old-fashioned hard work.

Nora W. Betzler
Elmira, N.Y.

Last year's garden yielded bumper crops of green beans, carrots, and beets—much more than my family and friends combined could use—so I began looking for ways to barter the excess produce. Before long, I'd made two very successful swaps!

I traded twenty pounds of green beans to a local dairy farmer who has a lot of fruit trees on her land ... and in exchange, she let me pick all the pears, cherry plums, and mulberries that I wanted.

I still had a sizable quantity of carrots and beets left, however, so I went to our local health food store and talked to the owner. She's an elderly lady who doesn't have the time or space to grow her own food, and when I suggested that I swap her my organically grown produce for items in her store of equal value, she happily agreed!

In both cases, everyone involved was satisfied, and we all intend to continue our trading ... as well as our new-found friendships!

Jennifer Jacobs
Red Bluff, Calif.

I belong to a baby-sitting co-op in which mothers of young children "swap" a few hours' time to keep doctor appointments, run errands, or just relax without denting the family's budget for child care. Needless to say, I find the system very rewarding ... and my children enjoy the scheme since they're able to make new friends and share time with playmates they wouldn't otherwise see very often. Some members join just for this reason . . . since, especially in the kind of rural area where we live, it's often difficult to expose a pre-schooler to a "group environment" without nursery schools.

Here's how our system works: A group of interested women—who learn about the coming organization of a co-op through ads in the feed store, grocery market, and church paper—get together to lay out the ground rules (what's expected of the sitter and mother, general rules of behavior and discipline, etc.).

We then issue about 20 units of sitting time to each member: our group uses twoinch squares of construction paper—each representing 1/2 hour of sitting for one child—as scrip (try a different color for each participant . . . it's fun to see who has what later on). Finally, distribute a list of the mothers, their phone numbers, and the times they're available to all members.

The simple arrangement works well for two to twenty mothers ... providing all have an equal chance to earn and spend scrip. At the outset we hold a few coffee gatherings in various homes to "break the ice" and ensure that the women will use the services of all participants. If a member ever runs out of paper tokens, she can spread the word that she'd appreciate first consideration when a sitter is needed.

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