Pambula Food Swap

This month we held Pambula’s inaugural food swap.  Although it is probably not the best time of year to hold a food swap as many people’s gardens are slow and not as much is growing as in the warmer months, I figured we just had to do it.  I had been talking about it for months and I thought if I waited until everything was perfect it wouldn’t happen.  So I just told a handful of people who I knew would be interested , made a date and told them to come.  Then while we were organising it, it morphed into a food, clothes and recipe swap.  The idea of the recipe swap is to bring along one of your all time favourite recipes and share it, then we all get something new in our repertoires.

 
Pambula's Inaugural food and clothes swap.
 
Pambula's Inaugural food and clothes swap.

There wasn’t much prep to do.  On the morning I just tidied up a bit, made some bikkies for morning tea, the girls made lemonade, I made a big pot of chai and at the last minute I ran into the garden and collected some produce.  Everyone turned up with baskets ladened, and morning tea to share and we spread it all on the table. Being Winter there were a lot of lemons between us, and parsley but there were also great things, like kaffir lime leaves, which means I can let my poor tiny plant grow a bit before I pick all it’s leaves, some chillies which we’re just about out of on our bush, some rocket, and most exciting some olives for pickling.  There were sourdough starters, limes, rhubarb, plants and seedlings and a variety of winter greens.

 
Pambula's Inaugural food and clothes swap.
   
Pambula's Inaugural food and clothes swap.

Clothes were swapped and traded, I nabbed a couple of new jumpers, one home crafted, the kids grabbed whole new outfits and even Alex managed to find a few tops. I also now have a few new recipes to try. When you’re cooking dinner your family every night it gets a bit challenging to keep it exciting.

It was a beautiful morning.  There were about ten of us who all live in our little corner of Pambula, some who hadn’t met before.  We all got together and talked gardening, food, animals, kids, and everything in between and in this way we have just created our own little community. So now we have a group of us, that will gradually expand as words gets around,  who will get together each month  and share ideas and knowledge and just feel more connected to our own little community.

To read more about food swaps and how to start one yourself, check out Issue two of Pip, out late August.  Subscribe now to receive it on your doorstep hot off the press and avoid missing out.

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