barter

so the entire point to a survival garden is to survive,
but that assumes that you have bad enough conditions to need to do that 
barter is a neat way to get things that you had not planned on needing,
but for it to work you (and everyone else in your community) need to have something to trade,
this use to work because most people made something they could trade,
but almost no one makes anything anymore, and this is a big problem, 
you could just trade what you have stored, but that will run out, and just is not a good long term solution,
just like storing food up, you will run out at some point, so that is why you need to grow it,

so the easy thing to trade for a farmer is seeds,
it often costs you very little to get them if you are growing things anyway, and they tend to have high value,
food is likely secondary because you will likely want most of that, and it tends to be less valuable than the seeds.
but something like making rakes from wood, and you grow the trees,
or mining something,
you could take raw materials you don't have and craft them into something useful as well, but then you are trusting a supplier.
I like the idea of making beer and wine to trade, or maybe making rope...
most of the things you could be making can be done inside on bad weather days,
so it is not like it is going to cost you time you needed badly for other things,
these 2 websites might have some neat ideas for you,
http://www.notechmagazine.com/
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/


also related to this,
the advantage of a city is manufacturing,
you likely have big roads and ports,
and lots of people,
it is easy to get lots of people in one place to make things,
so if you are in a city and can't escape, then get to know your farmer,
and find out what they want manufactured, and then figure out how to trade that for the food you want.
and remember that you don't need power tools to do it if you set things up correct.
even in a horrible bad economy you can build way more in a city in a garage with just a few friends than I could ever hope to build out here, and yes, I will trade you food or seeds for farm hardware I need.

and yay, this is my 100th post on this blog  ^_^