PLANT SWAPPING WITH STEEMIANS! - @SHALOMACRES & PAPA-PEPPER

This "online" community is impacting my "offline" life in many ways!

It's been a blessing to not only be a part of the amazing online community here on steemit, but also to get connected to all sorts of people in real life because of steemit. Several of the people that we periodically hang out with are people that we first met on steemit. Recently, I got to take the family down to meet Hive account@shalomacres, but we did not want to show up empty handed.

GIVING & RECEIVING

Since they are up to many similar things on their homestead (like growing nutritious foods and beneficial herbs) I figured that we would gift them a few plants that they did not have already growing. We brought some stinging nettle, witch hazel, hops, figs, and gooseberry plants down with us. In return, they made sure that we did not leave empty handed.

Before we left, Hive account@shalomacres got busy with gathering up some plants to gift us! We received some chives and some onions, which you can see being gathered above here.

These are some beautiful Golden Raspberry plants. I've grown ones like this up in Wisconsin, but we don't have any on our property in Arkansas yet, so it was great to get some for free.

Their son Hive account@randomstuff was hard at work gathering some of these raspberries for us. It's great to see families accomplish tasks together, as many hands make light work! Thanks Hive account@randomstuff!

Here Hive account@shalomacres is gathering some of their strawberry plants for us. Like many plants, they reproduce at an incredible rate and provide many extra plants to plant elsewhere, sell, trade, or even give away!

I was very pleased with the size and health of the strawberry plants. The fact that thy were free is even better! What a great gift, and it shows the blessing of trading and gifting very well. These will be delicious!

Back at home at got to work before the rain was expected to come. This raised strawberry bed was created just to receive these plants. I simply lined up the rocks on top of a layer of wood chip mulch and then filled the bed with compost and rabbit manure. We will see how they like it soon enough!

The raspberries were planted in one long row, with space to grow. These plants will run under the ground and fill in an area rather nicely. Moreover, eventually they will make too many new ones and it'll be time for us to give some away!