What is a Trug?

 

                          What is a Trug?                     10/6/2021

This could even go under the category of things you learn while reading Children’s Books. Was over in Adelaide recently visiting the family there and was asked by Miss 3, to read her a story before bed; and she picked a Paddington Bear Book for me to read; and  it had him buying a trug from a garden supply store. Not being English I had not heard of the word or object before but from the picture in the book worked out it was some king of basket.

 Not totally satisfied with that, I decided to look it up on the Web using my old friend Wikipedia. From it I gleaned the following information: A Sussex trug is a wooden basket. It is made from a handle and rim of coppiced sweet chestnut wood which is hand-cleft then shaved using a drawknife. The body of the trug is made of five or seven thin boards of white willow, also hand-shaved with a drawknife. They may have originated in Sussex because of the abundance of chestnut coppice and willows found on the marshes. Nails or pins used are usually copper, to avoid rust.

Shapes and sizes became standardised, the most well-known shape being the "common or garden" trug ranging in volume from one pint to a bushel. However, there is a diverse range of traditional trugs from garden and oval trugs to the more specialised "large log" and "walking stick" trugs.^”

  Another site on the web, added this information: “The word Trug is a derivation of the word Trough and was originally used for measuring grain and seed volume, hence the variation of sizes. As mechanical scales eventually replaced the trug as a tool of measurement, the trugs were then utilised as a basket for carrying garden produce and hand tools. In a recent nationwide survey by a popular gardening magazine, the Sussex trug was voted the fifth most essential gardening accessory.”

 

 And just in case you think there may be some connection between a trug and the Melbourne outer suburb of Truganina, there isn’t.  Again according to friend Wikipedia, “The suburb is believed to be named after Truganini, who is generally accepted as the last full-blooded Aboriginal Tasmanian woman, as she had visited the area for a short time.”

  So there you are! Today, you get two for the price of one; Learning what a trug is, and also learning where Truganina derived its name. That is if unlike me, you didn’t already know!