Food swapping: a fast way to free, homegrown food - The Guardian

Apples for eggs … the food swap in Altrincham. Photograph: PR

I'm worried about my coconut milk caramels. Inside their paper twists, they look like small, soft brown slugs and no one wants them. There is interest in my marmalade, honeycomb, blackcurrant pastilles and flapjacks though. Even the sludgy-looking spicy blackberry chutney has attracted some offers. Meanwhile, my bid card for the caramels remains blank.

I'm at my local community centre in Altrincham, near Manchester, where the Apples for Eggs food swap^[1] is celebrating its two-year anniversary in a frenzy of cinnamon buns, fruit leather and homemade pesto. The idea is simple: three times a year, when there is a lot of produce about, members meet to swap homemade, grown or foraged food. No money changes hands, and it's accepted that everything's been made in a home kitchen. Swapping has proved popular as a way to absorb gluts, get hold of unusual varieties of produce and meet like-minded locals.

When founder Vicky Swift set up the group in 2011, she was joining a growing international movement. "We had an allotment, with the usual gluts," she says. "I was thinking: 'Maybe there's something I can do with all this food.' My other half, Jim, said: 'Why don't you just swap it?'" Organising individual swaps via Facebook had limited success. "I researched food exchanging, and came across the LA Food Swap^[2] . They have guidelines for setting swaps up, so we gave it a go."

Apples for Eggs now has 159 registered swappers and events in York, Ormskirk, Henley and Stoke, with Brampton in Cumbria the newest swap. There are many similar events across the UK (find them at foodswapnetwork.com^[3] ) and in Brazil, Denmark, France and the Netherlands.

Homemade jellies and syrups. Photograph: PR

At the community centre, bids are being made. Here, your produce is your currency, and swappers are cruising the room, noting their interest by filling in bid cards at the 15 different stands before the big exchange starts. I am hopeless at growing anything so I'm offering homemade sweets and bakes, and hoping to take green stuff home. It's not looking bad.

Martin Dolce is offering "anything" – within reason, I expect – for a bag of blackcurrant pastilles. And Sarah Walmsley has got a kilo of tomatoes for a stack of my salt caramel flapjacks. But these are expressions of interest, not promises. Dolce (whose runner beans I covet) explains that when it's time to swap, you've got to move fast. "The first time I was forewarned that it would get a bit frantic. I thought: 'I'm a businessman, I can handle it.' I didn't know what was going on and I missed the choice stuff. Now I proactively go and grab something I like: you want that, I've got that, boom. The first five minutes are crucial."

According to Swift, Altrincham was an unusual location: "It's not necessarily a home produce-y place," she says. "Friends said I should do it somewhere a bit more right-on. But I've made some great friends, and found all sorts of other community projects." Specialist knowledge is exchanged alongside produce. "It's lovely to seek advice from locals, rather than referring to a recipe book or a celebrity expert," Swift says. "There are experts in our community who really know their stuff."

Swapping isn't for everyone. Nicki Jones, whose stand is loaded with cakes still warm from the oven, loves it, but adds: "This would be my mother's worst nightmare. She couldn't bear the thought of having anyone else's things." Happily, this ick factor isn't much in evidence today – the focus is on getting a good swap.

Fired up by Dolce's advice, when the frenzy descends I make a beeline for my top picks. I miss out on a few things, but after some friendly but determined bartering I go home with apples, raspberries, muffins, pesto, chard, garlic, eggs, rowanberry and apple jelly, horseradish, Jerusalem artichokes, sausage rolls, runner beans and biscuits, which seems ample reward. And, miraculously, no coconut milk caramels: in the end, they all got swapped.

References

1. ^{^} Apples for Eggs food swap (www.applesforeggs.com)


2. ^{^} LA Food Swap (lafoodswap.com)


3. ^{^} foodswapnetwork.com (www.foodswapnetwork.com)