Local volunteers stock food bank shelves with seasonal produce

By Elizabeth Ridgeway, Special to the Town Crier

Village Harvest volunteers Ellen Loebl, left, and Karen Hurst pick oranges from a tree at a Mountain View residence to donate to local charities.

That fruit tree forgotten in a corner of the back yard, with ripe fruit speckling the lawn, has a new calling: feeding the hungry of this community. Village Harvest, a local volunteer organization, wants families to turn their fruit trees into a healthy source of food for the area’s low-income and disabled population.

Village Harvest, which began as a 4-H project for a few enthusiastic gardeners, now has about 150 volunteers and has harvested 79,465 pounds of fruit so far this year. Its volunteers collect from those who won’t be using their backyard fruit, such as the elderly and moms busy with children, as well as harvesting at larger commercial sites.

The Mountain View/Los Altos team harvests on the 2nd and 4th Sunday of every month, and is seeking more families who will open their back yards for an hour or two.

“This valley is such a fertile growing region of our country that it doesn’t take much to get a fruit tree to bear,” said Joni Diserens, the founder of Village Harvest. “Most of what we are harvesting is from neglected trees that can survive with just the basics: sunshine, air and water.” The group is just finishing pears and summer citrus, and will soon be harvesting the apples and persimmons of autumn. Abundant citrus fruits in fact make winter Village Harvest’s busiest season.

A backyard fruit tree usually produces more than enough fruit for a single family, and local food banks eagerly accept donations of surplus produce. Village Harvest helps through both education and harvesting to organize collection and distribution of produce that would otherwise be going to waste. It delivers 50 percent of its harvest to the Santa Clara branch of America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s largest hunger-relief organization, which networks with different agencies to distribute food to soup kitchens, shelters, day care centers and other aid providers.

Village Harvest also donates directly to the Community Service Agency of Mountain View, whose Food and Nutrition Center stocks fresh fruits and vegetables as well as food staples. The abundant produce of this area has made it possible for local food banks to offer healthy, fresh food to their clients, as well as nutrition and cooking classes.

“The new health guidelines recommend eating five fruits and vegetables of different colors a day,” says Diserens. “A serving of fruit is a small apple, or about 4 ounces. If you figure we are averaging 250 pounds from a single orange or apple tree, that ends up being about 660 servings.”

Through its partnership with the Community Service Agency, Village Harvest borrows trucks to transport the 700 to 1000 pounds typically gathered on a weekend morning. Because of the expense of crop harvesting, private orchards often donate their crop to Village Harvest when it does not meet exacting market standards, or when they no longer wish to make the investment of harvesting.

Volunteers of all stripes are welcome to help- at a recent French prune plum harvest, toddlers chipped in. Ladder-less harvesting techniques make the work safe for a range of abilities, and Village Harvest has several teams of disabled volunteers.

“Homeowners interested in a visit from the local team should have about 150 pounds of fruit; an average apple or citrus tree would almost certainly meet that,” Diserens says, as 15-foot trees typically have about 250 pounds. Using ladderless techniques, fruit tree owners can easily harvest their own fruits and vegetables to make a tax-deductible donation to the Community Service Agency. All non-perishable produce (no figs, loquats or lettuce as they squish too easily) is welcomed by the agency, even unusual items like pineapple guava or kohlrabi.

In addition to providing food banks with produce, Village Harvest has been experimenting with sustainable food programs, such as giving away seedlings and the “giving tree project,” which gives low-income clients of the Service Agency their own fruit trees and a lesson in tree maintenance.

“We didn’t know if people would even be interested, but there was a wonderful response - everyone was excited at the idea of being able to grow food for their family. Each one of those fruit trees has the potential to feed a family for a month,” Diserens says.

Diserens and other volunteers also preserve the fruits of their labor as part of the Jammin’ Team, a group that makes jams and jellies to raise funds for Village Harvest. Fruit too soft to enter the food bank system becomes boutique preserves sold at area stores like Common Ground and on the Village Harvest Website. The group meets monthly (or whenever fruit is ripe), and newcomers with any level of experience are welcome.

“There is nothing like homemade preserves - we work hard on our recipes to make them taste as much like the fruit as possible, which a lot of the time means low-sugar recipes,” Diserens says.

For more information, to donate or to volunteer, visit www.villageharvest.org