Saturday, June 11, 2011

Bartering In The Neighborhood


In the summertime, some children watch pets while friends are on vacation and get paid to do it. It makes a pretty great, relatively easy beginning job. My neighbor has 2 very large dogs and 3 miniature horses (it is vitally important that it is known that they are not ponies, but real miniature horses. There - now it is clear.). One of the miniature horses is a baby, making it therefore a miniature miniature horse. Last weekend, I fed the animals for them so that they could go to their granddaughter's dance recital down in Burbank (the big city). In true Garden Farms fashion, I did not accept any paper money for doing this (that would be a rip off, because it is so easy to feed these animals), but my neighbor needed to give me something. She often gives me fudge or chocolate cake or brownies for feeding the pets, which is ok (we are, oddly, not a big chocolate family), but this time she gave me a couple of really useful items, pictured here. A bag of lemons (they don't grow up here - it freezes in the winter) and a wheelbarrow full of horse droppings. GOLDEN! The lemons are inside, being used up slowly but surely. And the horse droppings are out in the corner of the garden, slowly decomposing. I would have put them in the compost pile, but Max the Dog kept eating them (what a disgusting creature!) so I had to put them where I could fence them off. Now that's a payment we can really use!

2 comments:

Carrie Squires said...

This is awesome!! And, strangely, what a good and thoughtful neighbor! haha.

Pappas fam said...

Carrie - She has plenty to go around, so let me know if you want some (poop, that is, not lemons unfortunately)!