Neighbor, Can You Spare A Plum?

A year and a half ago Asiya Wadud began organizing a little neighborhood fruit exchange called Forage Oakland. It works simply. A woman with a yard full of lemon trees, say, can share her bounty in exchange for a paper bag full of someone else's persimmons when they come into season. So far, 200 people have signed up. All over the country, the underground fruit economy is growing. At new Web sites like neighborhoodfruit.com and veggietrader.com, fruit seekers can find public mulberry patches in Pennsylvania and neighbors willing to trade blackberries in Oklahoma. In Royal Oak, Mich., a woman investigated how to start a fruit exchange modeled after Fallen Fruit (fallenfruit.org), an arts group that designs maps of accessible fruit growing in Los Angeles neighborhoods. This New York Times article explores the new culture now blossoming around local fruit trees.

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