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Barter was the normal everyday method of doing business. Farmers had little or no cash. butter and eggs, hides and wool were brought into the store when purchases had to be made or accounts brought up to date. Cash transactions were the exception rather than the rule, because part of the function of the country storekeeper, as recently as my childhood, was to serve as broker for a considerable range of farm products that he could handle, store them and then get rid of to buyers who regularly came through the country collecting these goods from the general stores. In some cases, the store in city and town, would have to transport the produce he took in, in barter, to the wholesalers in city and town, or else handle the shipment of it by rail. My father on his routine trips by light wagon and team to Toronto, to buy his own stock for the store, would generally take a load of butter, eggs, hides, wool and other produce, which he would first have to dispose of, on his own behalf, in a process, you might say, of double-barter. Compared, therefore, with the storekeeper of today, who conducts a fairly simple cash or credit business, the country merchant of the seventies and eighties had a highly complex enterprise on his hands. He was a broker, middleman, agent, as well as merchant in the present sense of the word. He was integrated into the community he served to a far greater extent than is the case today. He had to know the price, not merely of the good on his shelves, but the price of the bartered produce he took in exchanged. It was a complex enterprise in more respects than in prices. My father and mother had a mental catalogue of those farmers whose butter and eggs were above suspicion. While the majority of the farmers were wholly dependable, and had as much pride in their produce as my parents had in their store, none the less, butter-triers would sometimes reveal foreign substances, or badly-churned sections in the tubs, firkins, crocks and other containers of butter brought in to the store. A butter-trier was a metal tube that was inserted into the contents of the tub bringing out a section of the contents for inspection, as a miner's drill, for example, brings forth the samples of the rock. After inspection, the sample was re-inserted into the solid bulk of butter in the tub. Many a night my mother spent "working over" inferior butter. My parents well knew those farmers whose produce did not come up to the mark. The tubs or crocks of butter brought in by those individuals were not sampled by a simple, straight down thrust of the butter trier; Ah, no; the metal trier would be thrust into the butter at different angles, so as to explore the contents thoroughly. If there were badly-churned and poorly-worked butter, my mother would remove the contents into the large wooden butter-bowl, a sort of super salad bowl, and with the butter-scoop, a small paddle-like wooden implement, would patiently proceed to "work" the butter, expelling the buttermilk, blending and salting and bringing the butter to a proper consistency. Early Spring saw bushel baskets of eggs up and down both sides of the store, which in my childish eyes was one of the longest aisles in the mercantile world. Everyone had to candle eggs, father, mother, store and house help, and even members of the young family. As far as I can figure, I was eight years old when I first candled eggs. As I claim some ability in telling a bad egg from a good one, in more fields than hen fruit, I ascribe my powers to my early egg introduction to the art. A fragrant memory of these childhood experiences, involves the hides which the farmers would bring to the store, in the raw state, of course, and often smelling to high heaven. I can hardly imagine what the merchant of today would say or do in such a case; but one of my father's duties, as general storekeeper, was to salt these hides and arrange to transport them to Toronto at the earliest opportunity. The spirit of the business was that everything was grist to the mill. And the Community had to be served." In the lake front villages of Dunbarton and Pickering, the late nineteenth century saw the beginning of many family general stores. Parker's, later Morrishes, and now Lynde's, in Dunbarton, Bunting's and later Chapman's and Dunbar's in Pickering, provided the neighboring districts with groceries, dress goods, hardware, etc. Chapman's in Pickering continued to flourish until it was sold in 1955, and the building is now used as a Post Office.