WANNA TRADE

Enlarge Image Image Gallery

How to barter with anyone for anything.

By Don Green

WHEN WE WERE KIDS, BAR-tering was the way we acquired the things we felt were the necessities of life: Mom's chocolate-chip cookies were traded for your best friend's mom's homemade popsicles. A Willie Mays baseball card garnered a half-dead frog, a cat's-eye boulder marble, and a broken slingshot.

While many us left our bartering ways behind when we entered the world of "real" money—as well as the real world of stress, tension, and headaches of living in a cash-oriented society—many of us, in this time of recession and rising housing costs, are rediscovering bartering as a way to get what we need in life.

For the last few years, I have moved considerably away from paying with cash to bartering for many of the essentials and non-essentials of life on my 150-acre farm. By using the bartering method, I'm able to channel most of my cash flow back into my farm operation and away from everyday living expenses. My need for ready cash has greatly diminished, and the fun of bartering has relieved some of the financial pressures of modem living.

Anyone can barter, whether they live on a two-acre lot or a 5,000-acre farm. I started my adult bartering career with two acres of strawberries I had planted to sell on a pick-your-own basis to supplement my income. A neighbor who lived on a nearby dairy farm spied them. We struck a bargain. For each four cases of my strawberries, her family would manure one acre of my land. My fertilizer bill was cut in half.

That small taste led me to search out other possibilities. Within a few months I bartered strawberries for foodstuffs, tailoring, and services such as small-equipment repair. I even bartered strawberries for the glass on my new greenhouse that started my produce business and then for radio promotion spots advertising the produce during the tourist season!

Now, with a surplus of melons and other produce. I realized there would be a certain amount of waste. I asked another farming neighbor if he would like the waste as a diet supplement for his hogs—and in return, at butchering time, he could dress a hog for my freezer. Later, in return for inviting a few of his friends, he roasted and served the pig at my annual harvest party. I hosted and furnished the side dishes and enjoyed a great amount of free publicity for my fruit farm.

I once bartered almost an entire party for 300 people. The local chamber of commerce approached me about using my farm for a party for television, radio, and newspaper personalities coming in from the three major cities in our state, in hopes of obtaining publicity for our area's attractions.