When Bracken and I arrived home from our trip to visit family in Florida, we were overflowing with eggs around here. We got home late at night from a long day of travel and the next morning, before we’d so much as unpacked our suitcases, I wasted no time in calling up some of our neighbors and asking if anyone was in need of some eggs and if they’d be interested in trading. One neighbor traded us eggs for some salmon and halibut. (Can I hear a WOO HOO?!) Another neighbor traded us eggs for salmon, elk, and beef. Then they asked if we’d be interested in trading for some frozen blueberries next time. Are you kidding me? Yes please! We were very grateful for those trades! Isn’t it wonderful when people can share with each other what they have an abundance of and everybody goes home happy?

One thing that has been so hugely helpful for our family while living on a humble income, has been trades. (And also the fact that Jeff is so darn handy in so many areas and can fix so many things!) I can’t even begin to say how much trades have meant to us. We trade regularly during market season with some friends at farmer’s market, for fresh fruit and vegetables. This winter we’ve been eating more winter squash than we ever have before because one of our neighbors had grown extra and was happy to trade with us. It would have been cost prohibitive for us to buy so much winter squash ourselves. Over the years, trades have been such a blessing for us and I know I’ve written about this topic so many times before. What I love about trades are the connections formed.. bringing neighbors and friends …communities together. There’s something really satisfying about people coming together, exchanging, and all benefiting by receiving something they need, love, or appreciate.

When we started raising chickens here again, we decided to get more chickens to supply more eggs than our family needed alone. We wanted to have plenty of extra eggs to trade or to sell. During fruit season, another neighbor of ours likes to trade eggs with us for extra fruit and with that in mind, we wanted to have an abundance of eggs. Right now we have a few neighbors interested in eggs, but we still have extra. So I thought I’d write this post today to see if any of our other local friends would be interested in trading for or buying some farm fresh eggs?

Oh, and we also have some duck eggs. We feed our chickens and ducks Scratch and Peck Feeds. It’s all organic and doesn’t contain soy or corn. They have a nice big yard (part of the year they get to free range around the garden) and we bring them treats every day. Bracken gives them grit and oyster shell on a regular basis and he helps gather the eggs. We have such a variety of breeds, giving us so many different colors of eggs. Each carton looks like a work of art to me! We’ve settled on selling a dozen eggs for five dollars, which will help us with the cost of buying a bag of feed each week, and which feels like a fair and very reasonable amount to us. (Trading for food or something else we need is helpful too!) We’ll be bringing a cooler full of eggs with us to Eugene tomorrow, so if you’re interested, please send me an e-mail at: tarynkae21{at}yahoo{dot}com and we’ll make arrangements to get you some. (Oh and if you happen to have extra egg cartons you’d like to share, we’d love those too, thank you!)

.

Do you trade regularly? Sometimes? Every now and then?
What are your favorite trades and what do they mean to you?