In the past few weeks I have been the recipient of quite a number of food gifts. I have made it my goal to pass forward as many as possible, sharing the depth and breadth of the bounty that has arrived on my doorstep as the season of harvesting approaches. Here is what is possible.

When the chive blossoms bloomed early in the summer, I stuffed a whole bunch in some lovely glass jars, and filled them to the top with white vinegar, which has turned a breathtaking shade of magenta in the intervening months. This past week I gave most of them away. One of the women to whom I gave a jar of chive vinegar keeps bees. She shared with us a huge, sparkling jar of her golden, homegrown honey.

A couple of years ago my friend’s husband filled in the pool with dirt and planted a garden in their backyard. This is no ordinary garden. You could easily feed a family of 10 and all their relatives from what is coming out of this garden. My friend’s solution is to hand paper bags to everyone who comes over to visit, and encourage them to pick whatever they’d like. I brought home purple basil, tomatoes of every variety, beets and spent green beans. I turned the tomatoes and basil into a great big salad for a large group of guests. The beets are in the refrigerator, fermenting into an old-fashioned tonic called “beet kvass.”

My friend and her husband were a little bummed about all the green beans they didn’t get to pick in time. No worries, I said, popping one open to see four perfect white beans speckled with red. They will be planted next spring. In both our gardens.

This has been a bumper year for squash in my mother’s garden. She and Chef Ira showed up weeks ago with a huge box filled to the top, and there’s a lot more where those came from. We roasted squash of every color and shape, and fed them to a different group of people than the ones who ate the tomato-basil salad. We also continue to be privileged to share and enjoy lovely round loaves of pecan bread brought by a friend with a heart of gold.

Then my mom and I harvested all the elderberries out front. We made elderberry syrup, which turned out amazing, and shared that all around. Both tart and sweet at the same time, it’s definitely not something you get to eat every day! Then my niece showed up with homemade apple sauce to which she had added a few peaches. “Apples, peaches, and cinnamon, and NO SUGAR!,” she happily proclaimed. And we shared that around, too, at yet another large gathering of people.

None of this was scheduled or organized. None of it was intentional. It’s an informal community of sharing one’s wares. And it’s not just fun, or good for your social connections. It markedly increases the nutritional value of your diet. There’s food all around us, whether from the crab apple tree on the tree lawn across the street from your friend’s home in suburban Cleveland (from which she and her talented children made a magnificent cobbler) or from the quince bushes that someone planted in front of your home, when it was their home, at least 50 years ago. And I haven’t mentioned the apple cake and chocolate-covered almonds that arrived yesterday, or the applesauce that is boiling away on my stove at this very moment…

It starts, simply enough, by giving something away.