Each year hundreds of fruit trees in urban areas go unpicked for a number of reasons, including the fact that people don’t notice them, people may not be physically able to harvest them or there is just too much fruit at one time.
With this in mind, An Taisce’s Green Home team came up with the idea of an Urban Harvest whereby local groups, churches, schools and enthusiastic individuals would come together to harvest the abundance of fruit in their area during the autumn.
The fruit collected during the harvest could be dispersed amongst volunteers and land owners at a Harvest Fare where jam-making, preserving and apple pressing demonstrations would take place.
1. Mapping the treesIf you are interested in taking part in this project or have noticed fruit trees around the city, the Green Home team would appreciate if you could help map the fruit trees on both public and private land using this Google Map:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=200146165615008946765.0004a7df299f79b85f8ba&msa=0&ie=UTF8&ll=53.271835,-6.284566&spn=0.021738,0.055747&z=15
2. Unite with other urban harvesters
The Green Home team would also like to find out if there are other groups who are already carrying out similar projects and would be interested in joining forces.
“The aim of the project is to reduce the amount of perfectly good fruit that is wasted each autumn,” says Niamh MacDonald of An Taisce. “Allied to this is the considerable mileage much of the food we eat has to travel. The project also aims to raise awareness about the value of fruit trees and local food production in terms of human health, nutrition and ecology. This is particularly important when it comes to our children as a recent study conducted by the Irish Heritage Council has shown children are increasingly detached from nature.
“We are encouraging people to organise their own harvest. The harvest could be two neighbours harvesting a cherry tree at the end of their garden or on their street, or a group of people going up the mountains to collect blackberries. People can also use the map to find trees on public land that they could also harvest.
“We would like people to document their harvest and what they use the fruit for by taking photos and writing a few lines about how they got on and then sending it to us.”
