With the shortening days and arrival of the rainy season, we have declared the official conclusion of the 2012 Community Fruit Tree Harvest. These past few months we harvested over 13,000 lbs of apples, pears, grapes, and lest we forget, plums!

We couldn’t have done it without the dedication and leadership of our volunteer harvest leaders: Amelia Swinton, Cassie Hibbert, Ely Paysinger, Kate Knox, Rita Smith, and Sam Jackson. They put in many, many hours of work, not just harvesting, but scouting trees, hauling ladders and delivering fruit to food banks and meal programs across the city. In addition to our enthusiastic new volunteers this season, we were fortunate to have veteran volunteers return, including Cassandra Donovan, Jan Smith, and Steve Gall, who have been part of the Community Fruit Tree Harvest for years.

To celebrate the end of the season, we made applesauce! Different varieties of apples were set aside from a couple harvests in October to be processed at our applesauce canning workshop. Thanks to a generous donation of space made by the Wallingford Community Senior Center, and volunteer facilitators Anne Kelly and Rachel Wang, we were able to offer this workshop for free.

Thanks to all our volunteers for a fantastic fruit harvest season!

The prep work: peeling and coring apples

We used Anne Kelly’s antique food mill to turn cooked apple chunks into smooth applesauce!

~Amanda Lee, Harvest Coordinator