Every year for the last 4 years I have traded raspberries for broccoli.  One of the women at the farmer’s market makes jelly to sell and she and her husband grow lots of broccoli and a few other vegetables and sell the extra at the market.  About 6 years ago I got my first box of broccoli to freeze.  I would get three bagful for $5.00 and that was enough for us.  Then the next year I talked with her and we worked out a deal to swap for raspberries and that is what we have done.  Last year I gave them some of my plants that were growing outside the area we want them to stay in and she was very pleased.  This year when we came home and I dressed the raspberry bed I found 8 plants in the clothes line area so I dug them up and potted them.  As the year has gone on I found we lost a lot of the bearing cane this winter so altho I didn’t lose any raspberry plants I will have a much smaller crop this year so I called my friend and told her what had happened.  She said she still wanted to trade for the plants so today we arranged to meet at the Farmer’s Market to swap.  She had a big box of first cut broccoli crowns, Beautiful!!  I wanted to pay for them but she would not take the money, she wanted the eight plants I had and a promise that next year I would have either plants again or berries or both.  There was nothing else I needed at the market so we went to the feed and seed store in town and got some Seven, two handles and some bean and summer squash seeds and come home.  By break time we had washed the already clean broccoli, blanched it and got it into the freezer.  I got 13 quart bags chucked full of broccoli spears and one crown for dinner tomorrow, wonderful trade for 8 plants  I no longer needed.  And my small chest freezer is getting full with beets, beet greens, spinach, cauliflower and now broccoli so winter is looking well fed and we haven’t even started the canning yet.   This is the best part of farming.  Have a great day.