Free food - not foraged - but thankyou presents

BHB

Prinzessilein wrote: »

Many years ago, when I was still a child, we lived in rural Devon for a couple of years. One afternoon a friend popped by to visit my parents and present them with....a brace of pheasants!...He explained that they had been flying rather low and had hit his car, killing them instantly!!!....it was some years later that I was told that this chap would have pheasants unaccountably 'fly into' his car with surprising regularity...and apparently rabbits did the same thing! (6 poor rabbits all hopped in front of his car on the same morning!).....

I think my deer WAS actual road kill ..... Freezer full of venison......

candlelight_2013 wrote: »

It is lovely to receive and also good to pass on
Candlelightx

Exactly, we have a smallholding so eggs and veg are given away regularly. One day we will give away eggs, and someday out of the blue some rhubarb will appear on the doorstep.

zaxdog

Haunch of venison from a work mate's husband who is a ghillie. Duck eggs and cabbages from a neighbour.

My boss has self catering holiday cottages and passes on any tins the guests leave. As I work for a wholesaler any stock up on the day is packaged up and delivered to the town soup kitchen :T

Mr Zaxdog gives away any excess fish he catches.

Bobarella

Wow how amazing. What a lovely situation to have going on. Although a whole dead deer is a bit much!

Although we are in London so a bit different we have been given permission by our neighbours to come round & pick their apples as they don't want them.
We've taken cake to various neighbours when babies have been born etc.

kboss2010

I was given a pheasant by a local girl at uni whose dad had a freezer full which we had with our Xmas dinner in halls.

We're mostly given things by parents:

Boiled sweets
Chocolates
Bread and rolls
Cakes
Gardening gloves
Eggs
A sewing machine (!!!)

- we're very lucky

[Deleted User]

We have an allotment and a big garden and a polytunnel and a greenhouse
so quite often have massive crops that we can't use the whole of so we give away the surpluses and in reciprocation other plotholders and neighbours share out their surpluses with us and other folks. The thing we get given most of is apples, particularly windfalls as we make cider and the village gives us all their windfalls rather than compost them. We share out the cider too. We are also often contacted by anyone wanting to get rid of fallen wood or wanting a tree taken down as the village knows we have a woodburner. If we get massive surpluses i.e courgettes and runner beans we put carrier bags full over the fence of our local sheltered accommodation flats as the ladies who live there will always share them out amongst themselves and that goes for most other allotment holders with surpluses. It works well and helps everyone.

[Deleted User]

tonight when I came home from Dds she gave me a bowl of left over veg as there wasn't enough for her tribe but more than enough for me for tomorrow nights dinner :):)I sometimes also get fresh fish from the chap down the road as neither he or his wife eat fish ,but he loves going out sea fishing :):).I also get veg from my gardener as he gets quite a bit of stuff given to him during his various rounds of his customers Last year he brought round 10 left over turf rolls for the bottom bit of my garden that were left over from a job plus a nice buddlia bush that a lady told him to bin as she decided she didn't like it after it had grown (there's nowt so queer as folk )

Butterfly_Brain

We have lovely neighbours and we all share our produce, figs and olives from our turkish neigbour who always brings me back things from Turkey such spices and Turkish teas, bags and bags of plums from next door, cucumbers and tomatoes from DH's Aunt, she always seems to have a glut of them, apples from the inlaws, even though we have apple trees of our own allbeit young trees.
We send in return pears, runner beans, cabbages, kale, blueberries, lettuce, beets, parsnips, turnips, chillies and herbs.

MIL has just sent me a fennel plant with the warning to keep it in a large pot, because it spreads everywhere.

LameWolf

We don't usually receive anything in this way (in some ways I'm glad; as a vegetarian, I'd faint from horror if someone handed me fish, pheasants, rabbits or deer) but one time Mr LW helped an ex-colleague in his search for work - the chap was being threatened with redundancy and was getting ready to job-hunt, and where Mr LW works were starting to advertise vacancies. In the end, the redundancy didn't happen, but the chap and his wife still brought us a load of greengages as a thank-you..... 25 lb of them!!

Our next-door neighbours are very good about bringing our wheelie bin and blue glassware box back into our carport for us on bin day, as they know I have difficulty doing this, so we give them a jar of HM jam from time to time, as a thank you.:o

In my role as a host for a dog-sitting service, I do sometimes get Yule presents from the dogs - chocs, shortbread biscuits, and on one occasion, some fancy soap!

System

We are very lucky in that my OH's dad is a farmer. They live quite a way from us so we don't see them very often - once every few months maybe. But when we do, we get huge bags of potatoes, carrots, onions (red & white) and bags of various nuts and dried fruits. It really helps to keep us going.:T In return, I take cakes up to them when we go.

Mum will occasionally give us some runner beans from the garden and friends let me raid their apple trees. Most are just glad to see the back of food that would otherwise go to waste.

MandM90

This is a lovely thread.

One of the locals at our pub is a cheesemonger and frequently brings LO cheese and other things from fellow stallholders, like live crabs(!) hot foil wrapped baked potatoes, bread and veggies. He usually lines them up on the bar and implores people to take them. Such a sweetheart It's a lovely little pub and we're always fending off pensioners trying to buy us drinks!

My next door neighbour is also a keen gardener so we exchange seedlings/plants/seeds. I give her plenty of eggs and she gives me chutneys, veggies and plants, plus lets us borrow lots of equipment.

My MIL, MILs friend and I pool all our apples and my MIL gets them juiced/turned into cider and redistributes between us all.

I often give the in laws eggs and in return we get elderflower cordial, all sorts of home grown fruit/veg and foraged things. Plus plenty of free and delicious meals sat round their kitchen table