Successful Swaps

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Twenty or more herbs, for instance, go to a friend who operates a health food store In town: I trade mine for vitamins and health foods that we could never afford otherwise, and my children made their own spending money last year by gathering and drying the herbs and selling them to the store (a good lesson for them on how to make and manage their own money). One farmer in the valley has an Irrigation ditch plumb full of wild peppermint and lets me take It all. He hates the mint- says it clogs up the flow of water in the channel -but what a help to us! The wild foods aren't trusted by most folks here, so we keep those ourselves and eat 'em to our hearts' content.

Drying herbs is hard and tedious work (we use only fresh air and sunshine to do the job) but for all the good things we've gotten and the swell folks we've met in exchange, it's well worth the effort, and just as valuable "trade goods" as real gold could ever be.

Elm Cowles Wolf Creek, Ore.

I'd like to share this swap with MOM and all her readers ... a fair trade in Itself since she's the one who prompted It.

Trying to rejuvenate an old trailera 15-year occupant of our backyard-was more difficult than I had expected. I'd repaired the bull joints and packed the wheel bearings, but the secondhand 16-inch tires I needed to got her rollin' just didn't seem to exist anywhere. When a helpful junkyard dealer finally used his radio to locate some tires for me and gave me directions to find them ... I figured my problems-at lastwere over.

Well, the tires were nearly bald, but I was desperate and agreed to pay $10 &piece for them. Then, while waiting for the attendant to wrestle the rubber off their old split rims, I checked on the possibility of using different wheels, ones for which tires godsons might be easier to find. The Chevy map we found flat would fit, though, were out of my price range ($40 each for wheels and tires), and I decided to stick with the 16-inchers.

As I continued to wander around the yard-still waiting for the tires-I noticed that the rest of the crew was making lift-out gates for a spiffy flathed truck ... and having a terrible time at It. That's when I thought about MOTHER and what she teaches ... and decided that there was no time like the present to stick my foot into this bartering business. So I sought out the yard boss, told him I was a carpenter and had my tools with me, and suggested that we work out some kinda trade. His ear-to-ear grin was the only answer I needed.

Well, I whipped my truck around and took charge of the construction In a minute. Once the boss saw that I knew what I was doing, he hollered to his helper to get those nice Chevy wheels ... find some equally good tires ... and put 'em together for me!

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