Sunday 31st August
Report written by Celine (she/her or they/them)
Rachel, Annie and I joined 11 members of the Abundance project to help harvest 4 apple trees from a public orchard near the Millennium gallery so that they can be distributed to good causes and saved from waste.
We picked apples and separated the best (“first”) which are given to local community group from the virtually good (“second”) which are virtually perfect and third which are not donated but saved by some volunteers for cooking. Volunteers also get to take seconds home!
It was a superb turnout of volunteers on a gorgeous day. Many hands make light work and together we picked 151kg of first, 43kg of seconds and 13kg of 3rd - over 200kg in under 2 hours is an incredible harvest!
Abundance Founded in 2007 by Stephen Watts and Anne-Marie Culhane, Abundance is a volunteer based organisation that rescues, shares, cooks, and processes fruit which may otherwise go to waste from right across Sheffield. Most of the trees we pick are in private gardens, where we leave 10% of fruit for wildlife. Abundance If we pick a public fruit tree we leave at least a third of the fruit unpicked so it is available to the community. Tree owners have the first share, then they donate the fruit they don’t want, volunteers have some and we share the best fruit with the community (e.g. food banks, lunch clubs, support centres) The rest we cook, preserve or juice together in the community. We love exploring sweet and savoury ways to cook and preserve fruit and sharing recipes. Everyone who joins a preservation workshop gets the recipe and a jar of chutney to take home. All events are an opportunity to meet new people and strengthen social networks, as we are a friendly bunch!
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