Only one orange tree today, and only 40 lbs of fruit for me to take to Martha’s Kitchen. They were good, sweet oranges, and the yard, new to us, had nice apple and pear trees. Lots of smelly dog poop, though. While we were at that house, a young man stopped to talk to us. [...]
I tried, unsuccessfully, to get invited to the Kellogg Foundation’s Food & Society conference in downtown San José back in April. Although it looks as though the conference won’t be coming back, through the miracle of Facebook, I’ve found a video made for the conference that features Village Harvest and Full Circle Farm. It’s pretty [...]
It’s a joke among knitters that making a project from one’s stash always requires one to go out and buy more yarn. I often feel that way about cooking with the produce that comes to me: using up four baskets of strawberries requires a cup of sugar, two cups of flour and and egg, and [...]
Today we finally harvested a loquat tree, and the timing was perfect. The fruit is ripe and juicy and sweet. It was our third house, after three oranges that only gave us 460 lbs (after about 700 lbs last year) and a small grapefruit tree. Loquats grow tall, and the fruit has to be cut [...]
Actually, I’m not complaining about citrus, especially if moving on would mean harvesting 50-foot-tall loquat trees. We hit three houses today, harvesting 1,300 lbs of oranges, lemons and, yes, grapefruit. Some of the trees were tall enough as it was. At the last house, the homeowner showed us the mama bird that comes back every [...]
Tuesday mornings are Village Harvest time for the well-oiled machine that is the San José crew. We were back down to our fighting weight of eight regular volunteers, and we powered through four houses in south Willow Glen. Of note was a truly enormous lemon tree. We used to be the Grapefruit Disposal Squad, but [...]
We’re enjoying a bumper crop of volunteers lately for the San José crew at Village Harvest, so this morning we split up first thing. Five of us went to a house we’ve picked for the past few years, and spent an hour and a half picking kumquats. The house also has big apple and plum [...]
If you have fruit trees that produce more than you can use, and you live in the South Bay, then I hope you will register your tree(s) with Village Harvest. But if you live elsewhere, or would just like to join a more informal network of fruit sharers, then check out Neighborhood Fruit. While groups [...]
Tuesdays are Village Harvest days, at least the San José team that’s my usual posse. Heather, aka La Jefe, has been doing a sterling job of scheduling fruit that is not grapefruit, and we had two lemon trees today. One was in the backyard of a townhouse in one of those little pocket developments that [...]
Continuing the fava bean coverage, yesterday, I led a Village Harvest group that collected 430 lbs. This is definitely a new direction for Village Harvest. I joined the intrepid Mountain View crew, led by wonderful Karen, that meets every other Sunday at the Mountain View Community Services Agency, and brings the harvest back there. I [...]