One of the things that I love about living here in Oregon is the fantastic summer produce, all mine for the picking. This year we have filled our freezer with strawberries, raspberries, and marionberries (this, not this).
Last week, my family set out on an altruistic cherry picking adventure.
Sounds noble, doesn’t it?
Well, it is, though not necessarily noble of us.
Neighborhood Harvest is a non-profit organization that helps the hungry, farmers, and people like me that love fresh produce. They are the noble ones.
It works like this: Say a farmer is unable to harvest his crop – this happens sometimes due to weather, machinery malfunctions, impending sale of the property, or a myriad of other reasons – instead of letting the food go to waste, the farmer calls Neighborhood Harvest. They post the information to their website along with a call for pickers.
At the arranged time, pickers meet Neighborhood Harvest volunteers at the “harvest party”, receive their instructions and pick as much as they like. When it’s time to go home, the pickers give half of their yield to Neighborhood Harvest to be distributed to local food banks. The rest they keep, free of charge. It’s a really amazing program that benefits all parties.
It’s not just large farms or orchards that can donate, either. Even someone with a single overproducing fruit tree can call Neighborhood Harvest and donate their fruit.
Last year in our city, a whopping 28,406 pounds of fruit and vegetables were given to the needy. Though cool weather has delayed many harvests this year, 6,440 pounds have already been donated with more on the way.
Our family picked two buckets of Queen Anne cherries: one for us, one for the food bank. Of course, I love the free produce, but even more I love the feeling that an organization’s forethought, a farmer’s generosity and my labor all work together so someone hungry can eat.
I think it made our cherries all the sweeter.
Neighborhood Harvest seems to have several chapters in the Northwest. Do you have anything like it where you live?
I think that is really a neat thing to do. Would love to do that here if something like that existed. Really neat.
I’m so glad we have this program – it just feels good to be a part of. (And I don’t mind getting free produce either. 🙂 )
I see you prefer not to say exactly where you live but I live there too 🙂 I love Neighborhood Harvest and may even have seen you at the cherry picking event. I came over from the post you had today on Modern Alternative Mama. Good job!
@Sunny – That’s great! I’m heading over to check out your blog. Maybe I’ll see you around town. 🙂
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