Portland Fruit Tree Project
Non-Profit Harvests Fruit for the Needy
Katy Kolker found herself dismayed over the fruit that Portland wastes year after year and knew that something needed to change. "There were so many people in our community that have limited access to healthy food, especially fresh produce," she tells us at the NE office of her non-profit, Portland Fruit Tree Project. "It was really clear that a connection needed to be established.” The Fruit Tree Project was born in 2006 to make this connection. The organization’s goal is to preserve the fruit that may just be forgotten about and give it to the needy. For example, the team can take the pears from that hundred year old overgrown tree in your backyard that would otherwise fall to the ground and rot and give them to a mother who can’t afford to give fresh fruit to her children.
The non-profit Portland Fruit Tree Project was born in 2006 from this connection; Kolker spoke with us in its NE office. The organization’s goal is to preserve the fruit that may just be forgotten about and give it to the needy. For example, it can take the pears from that hundred year old overgrown tree in your backyard that would otherwise fall to the ground and rot and give them to a mother who can’t afford to give fresh fruit to her children.
The Portland Fruit Tree Project began by hosting “harvest parties,” which are still its principal events today. Describing them, Kolker says, “People who have fruit trees and aren't able to pick all the fruit will register their trees with us. We'll organize these events to go out with eight to fifteen volunteers and harvest the trees. At least half of the fruit goes to a local food pantry in the area in which we're harvesting and the other half gets distributed to the volunteers who go out and pick with us. And we leave some for the tree owners, too, if they want. Though usually they've had their fill by the time we get there.” The fact that volunteers split up to half the bounty means that they can leave a harvesting party with pounds and pounds of delicious fruit, but the highest quality produce goes to the food pantries.
Interest in these harvest parties has grown rapidly across the city. The Portland Fruit Tree Project held eight of them in 2006, while this year it's planning on having more than 60, and most times the parties have waiting lists for volunteers. But no matter how much the teams bring in, there's always demand for more. “Food pantries always could take more and more fresh produce, especially since there's been increasing demand at food pantries over the last few years,” Kolker tells us, pointing at the recession. Fruit harvested includes plums, cherries, pears, Asian pears, apples, figs, persimmons, grapes and kiwis. “Fortunately there's a good diversity of fruit tree types that can grow in our climate, so often times when it's a bad year for one type of fruit it's still a good year for other kinds,” Kolker explains.
Fruit tree owners can register their trees at the project's website. Currently, it has over 1,000 trees in its database. Asked if she has a guess as to what percentage that is of the fruit trees in the city, Kolker responds, “I wish I knew... We're always getting new tree registrations, but I still feel like there are a lot of fruit trees out there that aren't being harvested. I think we're on the way to the goal of harvesting almost all of the trees that are underutilized in the city, but I think there's still a long way to go.”
Special harvest parties have taken place for the past three years at an organic pear orchard in Hood River. There are around 150 fruit trees in the orchard, rather than the handful in someone's backyard that are normally harvested. All the fruit is donated to the Fruit Tree Project and the Oregon Food Bank, which brings "these big harvesting totes out there, which we fill up. Then it brings one of its big trucks to take the fruit back to Portland." Kolker reveals, "I think [the owner] bought the property because he wanted to be living in a beautiful place, not because he wanted to be a farmer. He contacted us in hopes of having the orchard be producing food for the community instead of it being a business venture. It's pretty cool!"
In addition to harvesting fruit, the Portland Fruit Tree Project teaches classes on how to care for fruit trees, like pruning and pest and disease management. It also shows how to preserve all of that fruit you've harvested, with methods such as canning and making fruit leathers. The teachers are volunteers with a lot of experience in their area of expertise. For example, Kolker say of one of their classes, “the woman who's teaching the workshop has 30 years of food preservation experience, and so she's excited to share her knowledge and skills with other folks.”
The Fruit Tree Project teaches people how to take care of trees, and also has teams of tree care volunteers. “The intention of our tree care programs is to first provide opportunities for folks who are able to care for their own trees to learn how to,” Kolker notes. “It can be kind of daunting, especially if someone moves into a place where there's a huge overgrown tree and they don't know what to do with it. We make all our workshops free for people who have trees registered with us. The other goal is to provide tree care to folks who might not otherwise be able to care for their trees.” This is where the tree care teams come in. Kolker tells us being apart of one is, “really fun. It's both a great educational learning experience and also a chance to apply what people are learning by caring for trees that are producing fruit for the community.”
Another program the Fruit Tree Project runs is a series of three community orchards. The first is a small test garden at their office at NE 19th and Killingsworth. The second is the Green Thumb community orchard, which, Kolker explains, is “actually an old, historic orchard that was neglected for a while until we came in to manage it in partnership with OSU Extension and Portland Community Gardens.”
The third orchard is the Sabin Community Orchard at NE 18th and Mason. This was a project undertaken with the Portland Bureau of Transportation, who owns the land, and the Sabin Community Association. The organization asked the community for input on the design of the orchard when it was planning it, and had “probably about 20 people from the neighborhood come out to share their thoughts and visions and desires for what could be in the place -- everything from plant types to bike parking or a bench. We used those ideas to create the basic design,” Kolker recalls. “Part of the orchard is your standard design, with the big fruit trees with mulch underneath, but the other half is more of a food forest, with an over-story of fruit trees and an under-story of fruiting bushes and fruiting vines.” Growing there are most of the common fruit trees the team harvests elsewhere, but also some uncommon ones like paw-paws and mulberries.
The Portland Fruit Tree project is a wonderful non-profit, and there are many ways you can get involved with it. One is at the Sabin Community Orchard. “We have monthly work parties there, the second Sunday of each month,” Kolker says. “The work parties are called work and learn parties so usually there's a theme depending on the season and which projects are to be done.” That and the other orchards and gardens also have teams of volunteers that commit to working in them long-term.
Volunteers can help with harvesting parties, which are in full swing now in the fall, join a tree care team, become a tree scout on the lookout for more trees to register in your neighborhood, and more. If you have a fruit tree on your property, sharing your fruit is a great way to contribute. Details on volunteering and registering trees can be found on the Portland Fruit Tree Project's website.
You can also help financially. A Friend of PFTP campaign was recently launched, which Koker says, “is like a monthly donor opportunity, for folks who want to give a small amount but give it regularly on a monthly basis. It provides a base of sustained support, so it's huge for us. In October there will be incentives for people becoming part of the PFTP.”
Another great way to support the Fruit Tree Project is to attend one of its Orchard Banquets, in which well-known local chefs serve a meal at a Fruit Tree Project harvest site. Kolker explains, “We're creating a really special event, a chance for people to see some of the fruit tree project sites that we work with, have a delicious meal and have it cost the same or less than it would be if someone went to one of these chef's restaurants and had a full meal.” The dinners are $45 each, including wine, or $120 for the series of three, and “will be emphasizing local organic produce and have a fruit theme."
At one point in our interview, I asked Kolker if the Fruit Tree Project might move from fruit trees to things like nuts, and, in her response, she gave a good summation of the organization’s future and present. “I think a couple years down the road we might get to the point where we have larger capacity where we can broaden beyond just the fruit trees. For now we have our work cut out for us busting our butts to get to as many fruit trees as we can. That’s what is bringing about this massive amount of produce. Lots of people want it and lots of it is still going to waste.” But a lot less of it is now, thanks to the efforts of the Portland Fruit Tree Project.
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