The fun part of living in the countryside and having a great garden that produces plenty of things independently is to exchange crops with neighbors, friends and colleagues and these past few days we’ve been exchanging a lot! It all started with plums… like last year I harvested about 20kg of plums and left the rest on the trees. I pickled 2kg, made syrup with an other 3 and gave away the rest, to our pottery teacher, to friends, to my secretary and other colleagues at the university. I also harvested fuki, Japanese plums or sumomo (スモモ) and strawberry tree fruits today and gave away plenty around too. When you give away crops, usually you receive other crops or the result of what you have given after a preparation. It’s a kind of barter. So we received plenty of fruits and vegetables. Plenty of potatoes… and my favorite neighbor knows how much I love them tiny, so she kept me the smallest ones just like my grandfather would do. She also gave me cucumbers, parsley and flowers to plant that were growing rogue in her garden.

From some other neighbors we received jam and fresh fruits, which I used to make a version of the almond sable with jam in large version (picture) and in tiny bites. A real treat!!!

We also received big potatoes from another neighbor… I’m thinking of making gnocchi with these ones or just mash them, you’ll see soon enough. And finally we received pickled plums and pickled ginger from my colleagues. Super delicious with rice!!!

I really love this! It makes the effort to harvest more, give away around very fun and entertaining, without any expectations… but then sometimes you receive something unexpected, sometimes nothing but that’s fine also since it’s giving away… it just makes people happy!