What would you barter with?

I've got an oxy/fuel setupand a decade of welding experience, so if you can break it I can fix it.

 

As far as where and how I would barter, I live in a rural area and figure that after the initial shock wore off and maybe even before that a lot of the neighbors and locals would be looking to swap what they had plenty of, say corn, hay, critters, etc for what they didnt have. So I would be bartering from here at the farm where I would most likely be staying. As far as the extra security, if you have the means to feed them and can pick the candidates who could at least be counted on to point the gun at the right folks, then Im pretty sure folk willing to take their chances as security would be plentiful.

 

I'm trying to keep several extra bottles of Jack Daniel's around for trading purposes. I also am learning to make my own wine and mead. And there are all those pecan trees up behind the house.

But my main barter item is going to be SALT. I buy extra every time I go to the store. You need it to live, to preserve food, for seasoning, for canning, for some kinds of tanning, it's in every recipe, you can even use it to brush your teeth, and, at least around here, once it's gone you can't go out and dig up more, because there aren't any salt mines around here. To get salt back in my area is going to require some kind of transportation infrastructure, and I fear things may well get bad enough that we won't have one.

 

I agree with you on the salt Gallowglass, great bartering item. I've got just a little put back but not really enough to be trading it out. I need to work on that.

 

Very good point about salt. Recently read of a place in South America where they have been looking for a lost gold mine since the spanish arrived. The area had a lot of gold in the temples and in the graves, so they knew they must have a gold mine. It took them 500 years to figure out that they had a salt mine and the rest of the world traded them gold for their excellent salt. We tend to ignore the fact that you can't eat or drink or really use gold or silver. It is a store of value and it is only of value if the guy with salt will take it. If you were really in TSHTF situation, how much would you give for beans or rice or vegatable seeds on the xxx day when everything is gone.

 

We have a salt mine not that far away. I can't stock bottles of Jack, for some reason they seem to disappear, especially when I have friends over and we start smoking cigars . Jack and Coke, a good cigar, and life is good.

 

what about some basic first-aid supplies to trade and barter with.i keep a few sutures around also..what would you give to get a big hole sewed up??or how bout some antbiotics.....big bottle of pencicilin...i read in a old survival magazine where they sent the girl through town with a needle to get some antobiotics for someone that was bad sick.alcohol and peroxcide might trade well.

 

Maybe I'm missing something but for me I would rather stock the things I need or may need instead of stocking things to trade for what I need. If you need them then others will as well and the price will be very high, if you can even find the item. Personally I would never trade salt, ammo, or any other thing that I cannot produce.

 

You do have a point OG, but If someone does have plenty of storage space, some barter items could come in handy.

For instance.... Even though I don't usually drink, I might consider putting back a couple bottles of whiskey, as I may be able to trade them to someone at a later date for fixing my car when it breaks down (something you can't stock up for). Or perhaps a couple pounds of salt would get you seen by a medical semi-professional, or if your goats are sick you could barter with the veterinarian.

Also, there's the issue of less than permanent shtf scenarios, like hurricane Katrina was. Things are going to be rough for a while, but it's not a permanent situation, so you can be more liberal in the trading of your goods knowing you'll be able to restock in a few weeks or months.

 

After Katrina, we were near Bienville salvaging boats and living aboard one of our salvage barges. The locals that remained mostly lived in tents and tag-along trailers and money was really tight for them. They would barter labor, fish, crabs, shrimps, whatever they had for getting help refloating their boats. I refloated one big boat for a nice Browning Satori. It was pretty amazing working around these people that were trying so hard to pull their lives back together when just down the road in NO, the folks were looting and crying that the government wasn't helping them fast enough.

 

There are some things you are likely going to forget about stocking, and Murphy will always play a hand. So my big thoughs on it would be for things like tradeing stuff you have a surplus of for say the plumbing fittings you need after a pipe bursts that you dont have or have enouph of, or maybe for things that you couldnt afford before hand, like say a top of the line firearm that the owner has several of and it is no longer worth as much to THEM as a pound of salt. There would also be tradeing for labor, say your barn burns down and you need to rebuild it, might be nice to have a couple strong backs to help with it. Then there is just the fact that VERY few folks have the space or means to store EVERYTHING they would need to get along in reasonable comfort (as in more than living in a hut hunter gatherer style) for say 20 years.

You for instance have goats but maybe you didnt get enouph hay put up that year to get them through a hard winter or what you did get (and or maybe the pasture) burned or was somehow lost. You would need to barter for some more hay, which in that case would likely be some milk or goats for the hay.

Even the mountian men who mostly lived beyond the frontier, still went to the store when they hit town or a tradeing post a few times a year.

I do agree though that planning on just stocking up a huge supply of barter goods and being able to live off of the goods you trade for would not be a good plan, but being able to do a bit of resupply on things you need that others have surpluss of could be useful.

 

Well there are some good points. We try to be as self-reliant as possable. As far as our goats or us getting sick, well we have a fourty acre pharmacy Labor and things that I can regrow/remake I would barter with. But unless it were live or death or pretty close to it I wouldn't trade off things that I couldn't regrow/remake if it were a long term deal.

OGM

 

That's no joke Quig. My grandad used to have about four windmills on his place, now there is not one. There is still one next door on his brother's ranch. If my place was bigger I would have one on it. If I get the chance to have one I will.

 

I cannot do it right now, as I really need more land. The 75 acres behind me is tied up in court, but if I could acquire some of it I would really think about it.

 

IMO thats one of the big things where a lot of folksgethung up is in thinkingthat theyneed goods to barter with that are not renewable. Most folks out there today would have ABSOLUTELY no clue how to make soap after what they had from the store ran out but (to simplify it just a little) all you have to do is run boiling water through wood ash a few times then add that water to rended fat, boil out the water then pour it into cakes. That could be a good barter item/skill, for labor from someone else to help you a good meal and a dry place to sleep has been common throughout our history. Being able to butcher and especialy preserve meat from livestock for others could easily provide you half the meat from the animals slaughtered. Being able to tan hides and or make cloth could be valuable and if you can take that to finished clothing then you would likely become VERY popular for folks to be wanting to know what you would accept as payment after say a year nad their store bought clothes are hanging off of them in shreads and so on.

What you could barter with COULD be some extra goods you set aside but I would figure those would be 'special reserve' things to barter, like say if your daughter came of age at that point in time and wanted to get married and you wanted to be able to trade something to someone for a wedding dress or some other very significant trade as opposed to daily stuff. For the daily stuff I would figure tradeing renewable goods and services to others would be the main thing simply to make it so you dont have to be your own cobbler, blacksmith, dentist, Dr, saw mill, grain mill, construction crew, taylor, butcher, gardener, hay farmer, grain farmer, brewer (if you would like to have an occasional beer or glass of wine), and fill every other job there is to provide all of the things we use. While it can be done at least to a point it just makes it a lot easier if you can do a few things well and let others do other things well and swap the excess back and forth.

 

Ammunition. Aquire some, aquire a lot. It will be the new gold in a shtf scenario. Try eating gold.

 

I'm kinda torn on the ammo thing. I think I'd be hesitant to trade ammo to someone who wasn't family for fear they might use it against me. Maybe some 22 rimfire, but I don't think I'd give'em anything bigger.

And yes I'm aware that even 22 is quite deadly, but I think a person would be less likely to try something if that's all they're armed with. I know I'd be hesitant to try something with a 22 knowing if I didn't achieve an instant kill, it would be answered by a 357.

I don't really know where I stand on this..... guess I'd have to make that judgement call based on the person.