Crop Swaps might have started across the ditch but Cygnet is tops in the local market scene

There was a great deal of rhubarb at the summer solstice crop swap held in Kate Flint’s barn at Cygnet recently.

A fine bunch of artichokes offered for exchange at the Cygnet and Surrounds Crop Swap.

THERE was a great deal of rhubarb at the summer solstice crop swap held in Kate Flint’s barn at Cygnet recently.

It had been raining just before the Saturday event and much in the garden had suffered, but not the hardy old perennial.

Kate began the Cygnet and Surrounds Crop Swap in July last year, and already we were at number 13.

Number 11 in October had been a standout when about 50 people tried to find standing room in her barn.

It is difficult to say definitively where such ideas as crop swap spring from, but I like the version that it started more than four years ago in Merrilands, a small town near Mt Taranaki on New Zealand’s North Island.

According to a YouTube video, there one Franziska von Hunerbein was flush with rhubarb and wanted to make jam, but this required some lemons, of which she had none, yet trees in just about every garden in neighbourhood were dripping with them.

“I became courageous and asked if people would be happy to give me some lemons,” she said.

They did, and received a pot of rhubarb jam in return.

It got Franziska thinking about setting up a formal mechanism for people with a glut of one item to be able to swap it for something else they wanted, and Merrilands Crop Swap was started.

At Cygnet, people are invited to bring whatever they have to exchange from 11am.

At about 11.30am, everyone in the room explains what they have brought.

Jan Marciano has a brand new house and a building site rather than a garden, so she brought three trays of fresh home made spaghetti.

Bud Driver has brought multiplying spring onions — they grow in a bulb and any “clove” can be planted to grow more.

He also has a bundle of kitchen knives “not really a crop, but they do seem to multiply” and stalks with blackcurrants still attached.

Sophia Venant, aged 21 months, eating blackcurrants at the Cygnet crop swap.

Before the swapping begins, Sophia Venant, nearly two years old, had eaten four of the stalks clean of their berries.

Among the contributions from her mother, Rani, was some menthol mint, which, if rubbed on your legs enabled you “to work in the garden later into the evening”.

One woman contributed some garlic and lamented: “I could have bought zucchini and berries but I thought there would be heaps of that stuff.” In the event, the tables were bare of that stuff.

John Herriot had a Bramley apple seedling to swap — the result of a grafting workshop he attended run by Huon Producers Network.

There are plants, seedlings, seeds, herbs, scones, lemons, lettuces, artichokes and worm wee.

You could exchange skills (a cook might turn a grower’s eggplants into babaghanoush) or devices.

Once everyone has had their say, Kate (strategically located next to what she most desires — in this case the multiplying spring onions) gives the go-ahead.

It is not a matter of bartering but merely taking what you want from the tables.

There is no unseemly scramble but a thorough job is done, and there is nothing for Kate to clean up at the end of the process.

Always a gardening state, Tasmania hits above its weight in crop swapping.

There are 23 crop swaps in Australia. NSW has the most with eight, then comes Tassie with six.

But the action does not stop on the day of the crop swap, with social media coming in to play.

Here are some offers between swaps from various Tasmanian Facebook pages:

“I’m after some comfrey plants if anyone has any. Can trade eggs, rhubarb or jam. Thanks.”

“Would anyone have some sourdough starter? I could swap for rhubarb?”

“Hi, I’m looking for capsicum, eggplant and chilli seedlings, happy to swap for native flowers, eggs, sourdough starter or strawberry plants.”

“Wondering if anyone would like some duck eggs in exchange for lavender plants?”

“Does anyone have milk kefir grains? Can swap for eggs or daffodil bulbs.”

“So many feijoas and I don’t like them — would love to swap for a few kilos for potato onions or a butternut or two.”

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