One of the cool projects we heard about at EcoSuave was “Not Far From the Tree.” They are a non-profit organisation in Toronto that “help fruit tree owners make use of the abundance of fruit that their trees offer by dispatching teams of volunteers to harvest it for them. One third goes to the fruit tree owners, another third goes to the volunteers for their labour, and the final third is distributed (by bicycle or cart) to community organizations in the neighbourhood who can make good use of the fresh fruit.” Last year (2008) they picked 3003lb of fruit!

We thought this was a GREAT idea and will consider calling them if our lonely pear tree is as abundant as it was last year.

Here are some similar organisations in the rest of the province and Canada:

• Appleseed Collective (Guelph, ON)
• The Hamilton Fruit Tree Project (Hamilton, ON)
• The Fruit Tree Project (Vancouver, BC)
• Lifecycles Fruit Tree Project (Victoria, BC)
• Nanaimo Foodshare (Nanaimo, BC)
• Richmond Fruit Treee Sharing Project (Richmond, BC)
• Harvest Rescue (Nelson, BC)
• SADI Tree Fruit Project (Summerland, BC)
• Powell River Fruit Tree Project (Powell River, BC)

Tags: fruit tree, local eating, Not Far From the Tree, urban farming

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Gardening, Green Living, Local Eating in Toronto. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.