The gift that keeps giving

This afternoon, Mary, our neighbour, called me over to help pick her mandarin and orange trees.

In her sixties these days Mary can no longer balance at heights.

I grab a ladder, a bucket, our sixteen year old son and head next door.

With our heads high up in the branches we pick and pass down bucket after bucket of ripe mandarins and oranges to Mary.

Mary explains to my mystified son how her dad planted a mandarin and orange side-by-side so they grew into what now appears to be a large single tree with two types of fruit.

We finish picking and share a few sweet and juicy mandies together.

Mary’s mum, shuffles out the back door to join us. Her eyes brighten when she sees buckets and baskets overflowing with fruit.

As a thank-you our bucket is filled, the rest, Mary will make into marmalade, cakes or share fresh with her cousins (that’s Mary’s beautiful citrus in the bowl above).

As we go Mary’s mum squeezes our hands and says, Grazie mille, over and over. I see my son’s face soften and we are literally touched.

In the fifties and sixties Mary’s mum and dad came in the wave of post-war migration from Italy and Greece.

With the migrants came their heart trees – the keys to Mediterranean cuisine.

Right across Carlton, Fitzroy, Brunswick, Northcote, Coburg, Thornbury, Preston and Reservoir a veritable urban orchard of lemons, limes, olives, grapes, persimmons, pomegranates and stone fruit was planted.

For the following generations who moved into the inner-city the fruit trees presented a conundrum – without extended families and preserving skills how could this all this amazing annual abundance be used?

In 2004 CERES had a go at answering the question with the launch of The Urban Orchard, Australia’s first produce swap. 

The idea was simple – a swap table appeared outside CERES Grocery each Saturday where people could bring their excess produce and/or take something they wanted home.

Swapping soon extended to herbs, vegetables, seedlings, seeds, preserves, cakes and more. It became as much a social project as a way share produce as people made friends sharing recipes, preserving and gardening tips.

Initial fears that some swappers would take too much were ill-founded – it turned out that people were almost always too generous in their giving and too polite in their taking. 

Starting a produce swap was so simple that swaps began popping up across the country and not long after around the world.

At Fair Food we’re celebrating almost 20 years of produce swapping by asking people to drop their excess lemons or limes which we’ll redistribute to fellow Fair Food members.

Our first drop-off came last week and have been popped into fruit and veg boxes – so if you have found an unexpected lemon or lime you know where it came from.

Here’s how it works;

Bring your lemons and limes to the Fair Food warehouse in Preston (we’re opposite the old Bunnings by Northlands) and we’ll make sure they find a home.  

Just remember to email us at info@ceresfairfood.org.au to let us know you’re coming and we’ll make sure we’re around.

Have a great week

Chris