Chronicle article on backyard fruit pickers and Cycles of Change:
————————————————————————————————
Oakland’s fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree
Matthew E. Green, Special to The Chronicle
Saturday, August 30, 2008
“In the backyard of a house in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood, seven high school kids balance themselves carefully in the boughs of a robust apple tree, throwing down ripe fruit to a small ground squad.
Once the tree is stripped, the crew weighs the bags and announces the haul: 63 pounds. It’s the third and final yard visit of the day, and the group has already gathered more than 150 pounds of ripe apples, oranges and lemons.
In this part of Urban Youth Harvest, a program of the nonprofit People United for a Better Life in Oakland (PUEBLO), teenagers and young adults from neighborhoods in East and West Oakland are hired for the summer to glean fruit from backyard trees, largely in the Dimond, Laurel and Fruitvale neighborhoods, if residents don’t have the inclination to do so themselves.
The harvest is donated to low-income senior centers in the neighborhoods in which the youths live. It also goes to local youth and community programs, which sell it at below supermarket cost to residents who often lack access to fresh produce.
In July alone, more than 600 pounds of fruit was gleaned from Oakland yards. Harvests have included grapefruit, limes, apricots, plums, peaches, figs, walnuts, pomegranates and blackberries. Perhaps most striking is that most of the fruit grows year after year with little or no human assistance – and about 99 percent of it is never treated with pesticides.” [continue reading]
View video clip