The local yum
THIS ADELAIDE COUPLE BUILT AN HONESTY STALL TO SHARE HOMEGROWN GOODIES.
Buying farm-fresh produce from an unattended highway stand is a bit of a novel experience for country-bound day-trippers, but Koren Helbig and Carmelo Scavone reckon the much-loved tradition – more commonly known as an honesty stall – works just as well in the big smoke. Last September, the green-thumbed couple set up their own version out the front of their Adelaide rental. Dubbed The Local Yum, its shelves are packed with Koren and Carmelo’s homegrown vegetables, gourmet preserves, seeds and whatever else they happen to be cooking up that week. To claim the goodies, passersby simply drop their payment into a cash box or transfer money to a bank account (the numbers are provided on a laminated sign). “We had a lot of people say, ‘Oh, that’ll never work. It’ll get stolen in the first week,” Koren says. “Luckily, I had this great mentor who told me, ‘Give people a chance to be honest – you’ll be amazed at what happens.’”
Only two kilometres from Adelaide’s CBD, Koren and Carmelo’s house looks much like any other inner-suburb abode – except for the fact their backyard is brimming with an enviable array of fruit trees, herbs and vegetables. The pair don’t consider themselves gardening pros – Koren is a journalist and digital marketer, and Carmelo is a physiotherapist – but both have a keen interest in permaculture and biodynamics, and the idea of sharing their backyard bounty, as well as starting a conversation about how food gets from the earth to our plates, has always appealed to them.
They’d been sitting on the idea of an honesty stall for a few years, but things only got serious when they scored some rickety wooden shelves for free. With the help of a neighbour, Carmelo quickly zhuzhed them up and bolted on a secure cash box. Their total set-up cost was $12. “Rustic is definitely the word,” Koren laughs. “We thought, the shittier it looks, the less likely it is to be stolen.”
There’s been one minor theft so far – someone swiped a bunch of seed packets – but the response from the local community has been overwhelmingly positive. “We know so many more people now,” Koren says. “It’s weird, because I’m quite introverted, but it’s been so fulfilling having these conversations every morning with people passing by.” The stall has taken on a life of its own, too, with visitors leaving behind their own gifts for the community, including eggs, quandongs and makrut lime leaves. “A garden just makes you feel abundant,” Koren says. “It’s so cool to meet people who feel the same way.”
It’s important to Koren and Carmelo to share stories online of how their products came to be. Their mushroom salt, for example, was the result of a foraging expedition where Carmelo collected 40 kilograms of porcinis and dried them for weeks, stinking up the house in the process. Having grown up in Italy where harvesting and preserving food was a family tradition, he knows how much work it takes to make something edible. “I want to give people an understanding of what’s behind the food we eat all the time,” he explains. “There’s so much effort put into it.” Koren agrees: “Overall, food is undervalued, so we hope people can start to understand why it costs what it does.”
When the couple isn’t tending to their own garden, you might find them excitedly harvesting olives down the street, picking berries from a neighbour’s lilly pilly (with permission, of course) or sniffing out edible weeds. Foraging is a big part of their ethos, and their finds often wind up on the shelves of The Local Yum. “It goes back to showing people that there’s food growing all around us,” Koren says. “It doesn’t always have to come from the supermarket.”