Trade and swaps

Call it trade or swaps, it's effectively the same thing in the world of self-sufficiency. One of the things I found early on in my attempts to become self-sufficient is that when I have a surplus of one type of produce, there are often others who are keen to swap their surplus with me. We are unlikely to produce all our own food ourselves but other allotment gardeners are likely to be producing something we ourselves have not grown. And visa versa. Eggs and jam act as a sort of self-sufficiency local currency.

So tonight, I swapped 10 eggs and a jar of lemon curd for two enormous leeks and a bunch of onions with one of the neighbouring allotment holders (see photo above). Our own leeks are still growing but our onions have now all been picked and they were not overly impressive. They are rather small so I am going to pickle them instead. Last week I swapped 6 eggs for a pile of rhubarb with one allotment gardener and a jar of lemon curd for some beetroot from another. Eggs for us are not in short supply. Today we had 12 from the hens, a record for us. One of our older hens stopped laying 6 weeks ago but yesterday started laying again. So egg production is going well and that creates a useful currency for us.