The Lone Zucchini

Today I raffled a zucchini for $50. It was a bargain really.

My friend Anita and I had put a $1,000 value on the lone, large zucchini (as a joke) at a stall we held to raise money for our favourite cause. Everything else - organic chillies (see below), spinach, parsley, pumpkins, eggplants and rosellas - had a fairly regular price attached to them. But the lone zucchini? What do you charge for it?

"A thousand bucks!" I joked to Anita. So we duly wrote it up on the price list.

Later, at a meeting in the same venue for the same cause, I announced that during the half-hour tea break a 'special' zucchini would be raffled to raise funds.

I went to the stall, retrieved the lone zucchini (which hadn't been snaffled up for a thousand big ones!), placed it on a bread-board and proceeded to approach people who were queuing up for refreshments.

"You need tickets!" Ann, a lovely, older (than me) lady whispered in my ear. Within seconds she was tearing up a blank notebook she'd found in her purse and writing out the ticket numbers on little ragged squares almost as fast as I was selling them.

The tickets were $1 each.

We sold 42 tickets in about 30 minutes. I thought 42 was a reasonable place to stop - 42 being the answer to Life, The Universe & Everything according to the late Douglas Adams.

I asked someone who hadn't bought a ticket to think of a number between 1 & 42.

17 was the lucky number. A man called Keith was the lucky recipient of what I bet is the most expensively priced zucchini in human history - which he got at the bargain price of a dollar.

$50 is a drop in the ocean. But what fun I had dropping it in the ocean. And if something's fun to do - you keep on doing it!


Left: A cup of our organic 'rosella' tea.