"Our pantry is growing a gift economy, energising our community's store of generosity, fed by the story of sharing."
Sally Gillespie lives just across the park from the pantry she's describing. Originally from New Zealand, she has spent most of her adult life, on and off, in this pocket of the inner west, and settled here in 2004. A writer and climate psychologist, she coordinates the Whites Creek Community Garden on Annandale's western edge.
The pantry
The pantry is a well-built cupboard at the street front of the community garden, with a coloured perspex door and signs made by fellow gardeners, and the deal is simple: leave what you can spare, take what you need. It exists because two neighbourhood problems solve each other. Over summer, gardeners head off on holidays and "there'd be all this food that wasn't being picked and eaten..I don't like food wasted," says Sally. She now knows there are locals doing it hard who check the pantry daily. "Food security is a real issue for a lot of families on lower incomes, higher mortgages or whatever."
She has long admired food pantries elsewhere.. Her gardening community was keen when she put this idea to them, and fellow gardener Ross Baker took it from there, designing it and leading the volunteer build. "He didn't just want to bang a few shelves together. He went and sourced beautiful coloured perspex, so we've got this gorgeous door." A council grant paid for the build, and officially the pantry is kept up by both the Community Garden and the adjacent Food Forest. "It has all been done by community."
Sally had braced to come down every day and clear junk out of it, but what turns up instead is generosity. The other day someone came past with two big cartons of canned and packaged food. "It just filled the pantry up, and then more stuff arrived the next day, and then it was pretty well all gone the day after."
How the pantry works
The donation rules fit in a breath, within use-by date and unopened.Sally calls them "the only rules we have". Canned food goes fast and so does fresh, unopened toiletries are welcome too. "Most of us have got food at the back of our cupboards." From the garden side, it's seasonal, and right now the Food Forest is digging up heaps of turmeric. Sally has done the maths: "$60 a kilo down at the market, or free from our food pantry."
And if you're hesitating at the door, Sally has heard that one before. "Sometimes people feel they need a bit more permission. Like, is it okay if we use it? It's not just for people in the community garden?" It's there for everyone, gardener or not.
A bare pantry, so please drop some supplies down
The balcony garden
Sally came back to Annandale in her 40s, newly married and house-hunting with competing priorities: she wanted a garden, while her husband wanted room for his huge collection of books, "and in the end, he slightly won". They landed in a townhouse where all she had was a balcony garden, until he came home with news. "There's a community garden down the road." She put her name down and settled in for the wait. "I had to wait two years." These days the queue is longer still. "We have a five-year waiting list."
The Mulberries
Ask which tree in the Food Forest brings the most happiness and you get "Oh, that's such a tough question" before she settles on the mulberries. “They are such a part of neighbourhood life. Every spring, kids and families come down to eat the juicy sweet mulberries. Spotting and picking the ripest ones are part of the fun. We also have native raspberries close to the mulberry trees in the lower half of the Food Forest, which are very popular. Kids so love foraging berries and also the self-seeded tomatoes in the Forest, it’s such an essential learning for them about where food comes from and its seasonality.”
Connecting community
Sally has spent years writing about community, She reckons every suburb connects differently. Annandale is quite a mix, with students, young families on long hours, older residents, some f social housing and some very high income households so I asked her straight: what can actually help to connect a mix like that? Her answer came in two parts. "Just turn up. Community can't find you if you stay at home." The proof is close to hand: these days she can't cross the park to her own plot without stopping for a hello. The second part is what you do once you're there: "making time to chat". "There's a lot of heavy stuff going on out in the world, but the chats you have in the park often focus on the lovely things." And when the difficult things do come, a community with that easy connection behind it has something to draw on.
The ten-year version
At the end I asked for the blue-sky version: ten years, no chance of failure. "I'm very into this idea of sharing economy and sharing resources." Her version has fewer households owning one of everything and more community gardens, because "the need out there is enormous", a pantry outside every one, sharing hubs anyone can reach, and councils funding back up support to help keep them running. Underneath it all sits a different question about the stuff we own: "How can I share this? as well as “How can we become more food secure.”
[If you interested in keeping up to date with Sally she writes at sallygillespie.substack.com]
(with thanks to Sally)
PS All are welcome to join the Whites Creek Food Forest working bees held on 2nd, 3rd and 4th Sundays of each month at 2-4.30pm (winter) or 3-5.30pm (in daylight saving season). All tools are provided. For further details visit whitescreekfoodforest.org.