If you live in Wallingford and have a pear, apple or plum tree you're not using, you may be interested in the Wallingford Community Fruit Tree Harvest.
As part of a pilot program, two Seattle organizations, Lettuce Link and Seattle Tilth, have developed a program to collect unwanted fruit from Wallingford fruit trees for distribution to local food banks.
A program past-due
Lettuce Link, a program of the Fremont Public Association, was created in 1988 to give low-income Seattle families access to fresh, nutritious and organic produce, seeds and gardening information. Tilth, a Seattle nonprofit established in 1978, promotes the idea of organic gardening in an urban setting.
The two groups will work together to recruit people who will volunteer their time and others their trees for a good cause.
Ashley Sullivan, a Capitol Hill resident and volunteer with Lettuce Link and Tilth, thinks the program is past due.
"I felt like there was really a need for it in the community," she said. "There's a lot of food that goes to waste."
According to Kim Madalinski, Lettuce Link's special-projects coordinator, it has always been possible to donate extra fruit to food banks - it just hasn't been well-known.
And, she said, fruit is the most expensive thing for food banks to purchase, so they usually don't have a lot of it.
But "through a simple project," she said, "we can link that resource to the food banks that need them badly."
An experimental project
If you do, however, have a tree with fruit to spare, you must live in Wallingford to be able to utilize this program, at least for this year.
The Wallingford Community Fruit Tree Harvest is an experimental project, Madalinski said. Seattleites have been calling for such a program for years, but taking on the whole city would have been a little too ambitious, so they decided that since Lettuce Link is based in North Seattle, Wallingford would be a good place to start.
But if you live outside Wallingford, she said, don't worry. The people at Lettuce Link will be happy to connect you with your local organizations or give you helpful suggestions about what to do with your extra fruit.
The program will be "sort of a middle man" between community members and food banks, Madalinski said. In addition, people at Lettuce Link can give fruit donors pointers about the quality standards the food banks require.
For example, food banks want fruit that is not mushy and not too old. They look for ripe fruit, and check to make sure there are no worms.
"It should be something that you want to eat," she said.
Sullivan thinks the older members of the community in particular, who may have the most difficult time getting the fruit from the trees, will be huge beneficiaries of the harvest.
They picked apples, pears and plums for the program because they're the easiest to find, pick, store and transport, Madalinski added.
The University District Food Bank, 1413 N.E. 50th St., and the FamilyWorks Food Bank, 1501 N. 45th St., will be the two primary beneficiaries of the program this year.
Jake Weber, director of FamilyWorks, said it will be nice for the agency's food bank to have a better balance of fresh, healthy food, as well as canned and other nonperishable food.
That way, she said, the people who use the food bank can get their fruit, and instead of spending money on healthy foods at the grocery store, they can use their money to, for example, pay for bills or medications.
Legally speaking, Madalinski, Lettuce Link and Tilth have done their research, and there's nothing that says they can't do what they're doing.
There are no laws that say an apple must have a stamp of approval before someone eats it, Madalinski said.
More help needed
Volunteers will start harvesting on Aug. 17 and will continue through Nov. 5, on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings.
The group already has people who are interested in helping to pick from the trees, but people with trees with excess fruit are still needed.
As for the future of the project and expanding to the rest of the city, it's still a little premature to plan anything, Madalinski said, but they'll take careful notes on what happens this year and take it from there.
To donate, contact Seattle Tilth at 633-0224 or lawn&gardenhotline@ seattletilth.org.
To volunteer or for more information, contact Lettuce Link at 694-6754, or visit Lettuce Link and Tilth's respective websites at www.fremont public.org and www.seattletilth.org.
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