Meet the Scrappy Volunteers Rescuing Fruit From Your Backyard

Fruit Rescue runs open gleaning events that harvest surplus backyard fruit for donation and community use. Volunteers use long fruit-picker poles and follow safety and composting guidelines while working alongside other community members. Sessions often involve retirees and families and can clear trees in about an hour and a half. Volunteers frequently take home extra fruit, including imperfect pieces that some pantries cannot accept. Homeowners rely on gleaners to prevent waste, and Fruit Rescue is noted for reliability and thorough harvesting. The organization grew from founders motivated by concern for the planet and food waste.

Even apart from the altruistic aspect of the work, Fruit Rescue's gleaning events - which are open to anyone who signs up through the group's Eventbrite page - are a fun, family-friendly way to spend a morning. The aforementioned peach-picking session didn't wind up happening (backyard fruit can be a fickle enterprise), but my nine-year-old daughter and I drove out to Martinez's Alhambra Valley on an impossibly clear-skied Tuesday morning to harvest about a dozen Bartlett pear trees in a tidy, picturesque frontyard orchard.

Amber Martinez, who heads up Fruit Rescue's Martinez gleaning events, showed us how to use long, lacrosse-stick-like fruit-picker poles to nudge the ripe pears off the tree branches and gave a quick rundown of dos and don'ts. (DON'T climb the trees. DO place squishy, rotten pears into blue buckets so they can be composted later.) Working alongside seven or eight other volunteers - mostly affable retirees for this midweek session - we picked the trees clean in about an hour and a half, ready to move on to the next harvest site.

Nancy Hobart, the homeowner, says she's had fruit gleaners come harvest the pear and Fuyu persimmon trees on her property for the past 15 years because she hates to see food going to waste. Fruit Rescue has been the most reliable of these services. "They're so professional," she says. "There's hardly a leaf left out in the orchard."

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