I have a nice neighborhood. There are a couple of families that we share a lot of stuff with, and the ones that aren't that chummy at least stay out of your hair and smile and wave when they see us. I spent a lot of days sawing out lumber on a neighbor's sawmill so he could stockpile materials for an addition for his daughter and grand-daughters, then I spent even more days helping to build the addition. I use my tractor to till his garden. He let's me start plants in his greenhouse, and made a mini-greenhouse for my wife and me out of aluminum and salvaged windows. He and his daughter also helped my wife and me build a raised-bed flower garden with stone walls. They also helped us (and provided the cement mixer, molds, sand, and some cement - I bought the rest) to make cast-in-place concrete pavers for paths between the flower beds and the new herb garden that we'll put in this spring. When the neighbor on the other side of me broke the rear universal joint on his plow truck last month, I took my tractor over there and finished his snow-removal. He'll get me back, somehow. That's the way it goes up here on the hill.
The neighbor with the sawmill shares labor, fuel and maintenance costs on a large Ford tractor/backhoe with another neighbor, so I can get some excavation work done for free, if need be. When the Ford was out of commission for a few days, I used my Kubota to move logs and stage them on the rack leading to the sawmill. When I needed to excavate my septic system in preparation for installing a new drain field, that excavation work was done for free. I have helped the owner of that backhoe rebuild motors for his seemingly endless fleet of old trucks and helped him repair his snowmobile engine. He's a darned good welder/fabricator, so when I needed a new rear bumper for my truck, another neighbor who happens to be the fire chief gave me some iron pipe and material for brackets, and the other guy welded me up a new bumper and helped install it. He also welded me up a pair of boat-racks for my truck out of materials that yet another neighbor gave me. He is mechanically skilled, but when he has an electrical problem with one of his trucks or his camper, I show up with my meters and tool-kit. There is a VERY robust underground economy here.
There's no way my wife and I can eat all the food we grow in good years, because we plant enough extra to ride out possible problems like drought and wet and mold. Non-gardening neighbors get free vegetables from us when we have extra. The neighbor with the backhoe is squeamish about gutting out animals, so when he shoots one, he calls me, and I dress it for him, and he sends me home with the heart and liver, and makes sure we get steaks and ground venison, too. The last time around, the neighbor with the sawmill found out that I was going to dress out a deer, and asked me to wait until he could get his little grand-daughters out there to watch. They were fascinated! I showed them the stomach, intestines, kidneys, heart, liver, and lungs. Later, I took them some heart and liver. Unfortunately, their mother is not a good cook, and I think she botched the preparation because the girls were ho-hum about some of the tastiest meat to be found in a deer.
