A record breaking year for the Fruit Tree Project!

This year the Fruit Tree Project harvested over 50,000 lbs of fruit and vegetables! It was only made possible by our AMAZING team of over 200 volunteers, who collectively spent more than 1,400 hours harvesting from backyards and farms. All of this adds up to less food waste and more fresh fruits and vegetables being distributed to vulnerable members of our community. THANK YOU to everyone who participated in the Fruit Tree Project for making this possible.

While it was a great year for growing food, the hot dry summer meant that fruit ripened more than one month earlier than normal and some crops prematurely dropped their fruit. Despite these difficulties, we still managed to have a record harvest. With over 300 home owners registering their trees to be picked, we were able to use our resources to help them pick their fruit and share the harvest. We also had three juicing days, where volunteers could bring the apples that they had picked through the Fruit Tree Project and turn them into delicious and fresh tasting juice.

This year we expanded on the scope of the Fruit Tree Project to include farm gleaning. Farm gleaning meant that we were able to go beyond simply picking back yard fruit trees to helping farmers with their over abundant crops that otherwise wouldn’t have been able to make it to market. It was just our first year for farm gleaning, but it seemed to fulfill a need, with over 7,200 lbs of food being harvested by volunteers at farms in our community. Volunteers picked everything from sweet peppers to blueberries, which provided a much needed fresh food source for our local food banks.

The Fruit Tree Project truly is a celebration of our community.