Do people still share excess fruits and vegetables at gatherings?

In My Humble Opinion
1

The thread about the itch you get from pineapples brought back some fond memories of my youth. Growing up in Hawaii, in the 60’s and early 70’s, whenever there was a family or social gatherings during fruit season(mangos, lychee, star fruit), people would bring cases of them to share. This was back when lot sizes were bigger and almost everyone had a least one fruit tree in their yard. Mangos, lychee and star fruit were the most common, but sometimes there were avocados, papayas and vegetables too.

Now, mangos are handed out piecemeal to a select few at a gathering or at work and if you’re not one the few, you’re left having to gasp buy one at the market! And now people are being put in jail for stealing mangos from homes and farms! SIGH

Edit: Sometimes you’d come home to a grocery bag of fruit on your doorstep. Most of the time, a few phone calls would determine who left it, but sometimes no one would fess up and maybe it was just someone with too much to give away friends and neighbors.

2

Yes. Especially if you live in rural areas with lots of farmland.
Most of the time, people will just bring a butt-ton of corn and trade it like fruitcake on Christmas day.

3

When we have excess eggs, we give a dozen to one of our neighbors. They reciprocate with tomatoes and corn from their garden.

4

I’ve often heard it joked that you shouldn’t leave your car windows open in the summer, because if you do, someone is likely to leave excess zucchini on your seat.

And my mom hardly goes to any sort of gathering without handing out home-grown produce, home-made preserves, or both.

That said,
[Moderating]
Since this thread is going to be mostly anecdotes and personal experiences (I doubt anyone is keeping statistics of how many tons of home-grown produce are distributed each year), it’s a better fit for IMHO, not GQ. Moving.

5

Pretty much any amount over two pieces counts as excess zucchini in my book ������

6

We tell it: Make such you lock your kitchen doors in the summer or someone will break in and leave zucchini on your kitchen table.

7

My dad used to say the only time you had to lock your car in their town was in the summer. If you didn’t you’d be cantalouped. I truly love cantaloupe, but if you’ve ever had a really ripe one in your car for more than an hour when it’s over 100, you’re going to live with that smell for a few days if not weeks.

I live in town, but co-workers bring in tomatoes and peppers quite a bit. It’s known that I’ll eat a plate of raw tomatoes for lunch.

Home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes
Ain’t nothing in this world like home grown tomatoes
Only two things that money won’t buy
And that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes

8

My kinfolk still do and not just gatherings. If some of the clan knows I’m going to be passing by they will meet me at the nearest roadside rest station with several bags of whatever they are getting ready to harvest.

9

Of course we do. Pretty much constantly. Every home gardener knows that you always end up with way too much zucchini. Tomatoes, corn, cucumbers are all shared pretty typically. I frequently get extra deer meat off of people as well as trout in the spring. I give away any extra vegetables I grow. I’m not sure that we do it the same way that you do though. Usually, it’s either offered individually or just left somewhere - like the back of the church or in a work break room. If it’s coming from family, it’s usually just mentioned during a phone call. The same goes for baked goods where people make an extra loaf of bread or extra cookies or pepperoni rolls. It actually extends to lots of other things as well. Just last week, a guy at church bought a bunch of oak lumber and said I could have some since it was more than he needed.

Maybe it’s just that city people are busy scraping for themselves and don’t have a lot of extra stuff around like we do in more rural areas.

10

We do it at Church. This is in a town, but most of us have a garden of sorts. I have heard people say; “please don’t give Johnny any more apples - we haven’t used the ones from two weeks ago yet.”

I took a load of rhubarb a few weeks back and spent ages explaining how to cook it.

11

A couple years ago I was in LA over the Christmas holidays visiting a friend. They had a party while I was there, and someone brought a box full of lemons from their yard tree as a gift. I would love a box full of lemons from a neighbors tree! But not happening where I live. Sadly our next door neighbor who used to bring us tomatoes and squash isn’t there any more. He was a widower and I’d make stuff from his tomatoes and squash and share that with him.

12

I’m that guy, too. I even keep a bottle of balsamic vinegar at work for those glorious couple of weeks.

13

I mostly experience it as people bringing in a bag or box and leaving it in the lunch room. Besides persimmons and lemons and occasionally oranges, it depends on what they planted for this year.

14

We share with the younger related generation who don’t have gardens via text messaging. We share with Mistermage’s co-workers via a table at work tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. Last year we even shared a huge Grifola frondosa (at least 5 lbs of mushroom) with one of the guys there who knew how to cook it. Last week we sent about 7 stalks of rhubarb with Mistermage’s BFF to be given to a local bar owner who makes some kind of shot drink with it. My MIL must have found a new source since she has sent quite a few rhubarb cakes our way this month w/o us sending any her way.

Later this year we will give away canned tomatoes, fresh and frozen peppers and whatever else we have an excess of (fingers crossed) with the caveat that we would like the jars back at some point.