The world of barter—go on, give it a try

Our growing season has ended, but it’s starting in the Northern Hemisphere. Time to get your bartering network organised.

A while back, Chloe brought me three wonderful chunks of quince paste that she’d made from fruit gathered from our venerable quince tree.

Quince always take me back to 1982 when I first arrived in Australia. There, in the middle of my new backyard, was a tree I’d never seen before. Turns out it was a quince and I suddenly had the challenge of figuring out how to use the fruit. In an effort to get on top of the abundance this tree delivered, I bought cookbooks only if they had a quince recipe.

About that time, I also enjoyed reading food-related newspaper columns written by Michael Boddy.  One of his articles focused on quinces and gave me some local inspiration. I wrote him a letter about my quinces and more.

Imagine my surprise when he included that letter in the ‘Friends by Mail’ column in the first edition (July 1989) of his Kitchen Talk Newsletter. Actually I wasn’t that surprised, because he asked if he could use it.

Just so you know, I haven’t been thinking about that letter all this time. Yesterday, I was dusting one of our many bookcases and came across a ring-binder with all 20 issues of Kitchen Talk Newsletter. So I thumbed through and found the letter.

I decided share it here, because it covers a topic worth thinking about. Here goes. 

Ripe figs now cost almost $2 each. Ours are free.

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Australia’s balance of payment might look healthier if more of us returned to the barter system.

My first taste of Canberra bartering came a few months after we moved here in 1982, when we had the kitchen tiled. The tiler tore the sleeve of his coveralls and I stitched it up. A few days later, when it came time to pay him, he said, ‘Thanks for mending my coveralls. Better knock $10 off the bill’. I was stunned and thrilled. And it didn’t stop there. The tiler’s mum, who lives in Cooma, now gets some of our quinces every year.

Unfortunately, bartering is usually confined to the zucchini and tomato season. Anyone with a glut of fruit searches tirelessly to unload the bounty on others, who also usually have the same glut.

Kitchen Talk Newsletter, very first issue

To make the barter system work effectively, it’s important to widen your circle of friends to include anyone who’s got a glut different from yours. It’s even better if your garden produces some rare delicacy—the things that cost ninety cents each when you can find them at the market. In our corner of Canberra, we’ve combined both tactics with excellent results.

I must confess that our house came equipped with many rare desirables. The fig tree produces three abundant crops annually. They are the perfect variety for drying and make wonderful jam when combined with ginger and almonds.

In summer, friends cluster around this mammoth tree and eat the figs fresh. Sometimes I’ll arrive home to find a bag of tomatoes, capsicums (bell peppers), chilli peppers or zucchini plopped by the kitchen door and a note saying, ‘Thanks for the figs’. Once we gratefully received a lemongrass plant.

Quince lovers will trade almost anything for quinces off the tree. When our quinces travel to Cooma, jars of honey and quince jelly come back.

I’ve never tried making quince jelly. I stick to quince cheese. A rather Turkish Delight-type delicacy that takes forever to dry. Perhaps that’s because my batches, drying outside, are inevitably left out in the rain during at least one unexpected autumn downpour.

Nevertheless, the quinces and quince cheese have reaped wonderful returns of pears, kumquats, pumpkins, Jerusalem artichokes, tomatoes and zucchini.

I’m especially pleased about the Jerusalem artichokes. Never plant them in your own backyard—they’ll overrun the place.

And, by the way, never sit under a quince tree between January and April (Southern Hemisphere). Mature quinces are rather like coconuts, and I remember my husband once quoting some article that said falling coconuts were one of the major causes of death and injury in coconut-growing areas.

My article

We chanced luck this year by having a special luncheon under the quince tree in January. One guest was an ageing Australian literary figure. It was difficult to concentrate on the conversation while I envisaged a front-page newspaper article on this National Treasure being hospitalised after being bonked by a quince.

I willed the quinces to stay on the tree and nearly fainted with relief when he departed unbonked.

Our cat is equally lucky. He bears the name of Quincy, based solely on his preference for lying under the quince tree during the ‘dangerous’ season.

For the rest of the year, he is quite happy to sleep under the harmless feijoa bush—yet another good bartering item. This year’s bumper crops brought trades of more pumpkin, silver beet, passionfruit, lettuces, mushrooms, tomatoes and two kinds of tomato relish.

Our garden’s plums, apples, apricots, strawberries, rhubarb and lemons also enter into the exchange picture, but I have to draw the line at sharing grapefruit and nectarines. We barely have enough for the family.

But bartering needn’t been confined to food for food. Child-minding can reap delicious benefits. Every Wednesday I shuttle our daughters, as well as several other children, to and from after-school dancing. I end up the winner—with thank yous of free-range eggs, raspberries and sour cherries. And to help balance this success, I often send back a jar of homemade mayonnaise.

An abundance of figs

I guess that’s the key to happy, civilised bartering. No one ever really mentions money, or even suggests bartering. It just happens. Someone says, ‘I have this mountain of figs. Would you take some off my hands, please?’ A few weeks later, the happy recipient knows where to get rid of excess pears, or whatever.

A recent advertisement in The Canberra Times tickled me. Someone near Wamboin was advertising free firewood. Apparently there were a number of fallen trees, just waiting to be cut up and carted away. There was a phone number to call for directions and a footnote, which said, more or less, ‘Take as much wood as you like, just leave 10 percent of the take by the homestead’.

What style.

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The pics here are from one of our bumper years. Graeme, who happened to be minding the house and dogs as we travelled, harvested the bounty and let everyone know to collect what they wanted from the picnic table in the backyard.

Over the years, we’ve lost a few bargaining trees. The apricot and apple went during some renovations, and the nectarine keeled over. There’s a replacement peach tree.

P.S. I’m decluttering. Does anyone in Australia want my collection of Kitchen Talk Newsletters? If I need to refer to them again, the National Library holds a full set.

Two sizes of tomatoes on offer. Damage on the quinces (at right) is caused by greedy cockatoos.