local forages

a few weeks ago i wandered around my neighborhood picking mulberries. tons of mulberries. i came home and put them in the fridge and ate a few here and there and then was too busy to do anything with them before they molded BUT, i felt that at least i had given the little free fruits a chance at a second life, rather than them lying on sidewalks, getting trampled and sworn at by people who's yards they came from. it makes me feel terrible to see fruit go to waste, uneaten by it's owners or the neighborhood birds and squirrels.

i wonder if this comes from a childhood of foraging. i remember picking pomelos and avacados and mangos from neighbors' trees and gathering coconuts on the beach in hawaii as a kid. and of course the summers were filled with picking fresh fiddle heads from ditches and forested streams, wild strawberries in roadside fields, raspberries from abandonded rockpiles, blueberries in the forest company owned bogs (which had a kind of guerrilla feeling to it like "hey-big logging company that tried to rape this area of all the trees and vegetation, look at all these magnificent blueberries you left. you missed out, big time!"), and tagging along with my parents as my dad collected hundreds of cutting and suckers from abandonded heritage apple trees while my mom dug up chunks of the perennial flower beds remaining from farm houses long gone.

so, i was so excited to find these two links, and find that i am not alone. both of these talk are groups that have attempted to map out fruit trees in public spaces that others can pick. the first one, fallenfruit, is based in LA (i cna just imagine the wonderful fruits there!) and has done some maps in other parts of the country. the second one, a group based in portland, actually maps the trees and schedules group harvests where 1/2 the fruit goes home with the volunteers and the other half goes to community food banks. what a wonderful use of this naturally occuring food! (the only thing is to be cautious of sprays that the owners or the city applies to the fruit...other than that, gather away!)

http://www.fallenfruit.org

http://portlandfruit.org/WebPages/About.html