No food left uneaten: a monthly food exchange grows in Northeast LA

One Saturday a month, a group of Northeast L.A. residents meet at someone’s house for about 20 minutes. They each bring a bag of goodies and empty it on a table. Each time, they leave satisfied with somebody else’s contributions. What are they sharing, you might ask? Food! What else?

Neighborhood food exchange

Hynden Walch founded the Hillside Produce Cooperative in 2008. Walch said the financial crisis left her cooking and walking a lot to make herself feel better. On her walks, she’d see gorgeous fruit that had fallen off of trees, left to rot in the street. In an effort to create a space for free food and help eliminate unnecessary waste, Walch set up a food exchange.

“As much as you might like lemons, no one can use 50 pounds of them by themselves,” Walch said. “It’s basically a chance for people to share homegrown and homemade food for free, with no money and no dibs and no interference from anybody.”

Sharing abundance

Even though the economy bounced back, people kept sharing.

April Sakai currently manages the cooperative in Glassell Park and got involved after looking for a place where she could give donations from her abundant grapefruit tree. She now switches off with other participants in hosting the exchange. Once you sign up on the email list, you get the date, time, and address.

Walch said the exchange started off where people would drop off the produce at her house and leave. Volunteers would then divide the produce equally in bags and drive around to the members’ houses and drop them off.

Sakai said that membership increased during the pandemic when food scarcity in grocery stores was an issue and people were home and growing more food.

How it works

“With the membership growing, that got to be a big deal, a lot of work driving around, so it evolved to a drop and swap, which is what it is today,” Walch said. “You come over with your contribution, there are tables and blankets laid out on the floor, you set your contribution out, look at things, and then it's exactly 11 a.m. Everyone struggles to take whatever they want until everything's gone, and the whole thing only lasts about 20 minutes.”

According to Sakai, there’s about 700 contacts on the cooperative’s database, but they average about 25 people coming every month. Some people come once in a blue moon, others move away but stay in contact and come back every few years.

“I ran into somebody who recognized me from the co-op on the street the other day. And it's like, ‘I've been to your house.’ I'm like, ‘Excuse me?’” Walch said. “‘Yes, the Hillside Produce Cooperative. I have such happy memories of doing that with my son, and we'd come to your house and we'd get the food and it smelled so good and I just have such great memories of that,’ and I'm like, ‘Oh, it's still going!’”

Everyone’s welcome

Walch said growing produce is not a prerequisite for participating. People bring baked goods, homemade wine, almond milk, nut butter, eggs, honey, herbs, flours — everything you’d find in a farmers market.

“It's great to take things home and be able to just receive the bounty, but they don't want to be like freeloaders or not [participate] with the sharing and with the community,” Sakai said. “So they will think of ways to contribute that you're like, ‘Wow, that's really out of the box.’”

“Our membership grows some exotic stuff,” Walch said. “I’ve tried some amazing things like I’ve never seen before, and it was so fun to get your cooking skills out and go, ‘Ok, how do I use this dragon fruit?’”

Walch said she’s been blown away by how generous people are and how nice it's been to not have money be a part of the organization.

“With the co-op, it does not matter how much money you have or don't have. You can glean fruit from trees on city land if you want to or need to,” Walch said. “It's a nice place where you can be beyond that — the contents of your checkbook.”

How to participate

• Email freefood@hillsideproducecooperative.org to join their contact list
• Or request to join their facebook group to become a part of this food-centered community.