Windfall

Spring is here again, and I’m thinking of planting fruit trees.
We have three ancient apple trees, and a couple of newer apple trees, but I’d really like a plum tree, and perhaps I could get peaches to grow if I work at it.

And then I think about how much work it is to keep up with the fruit, and I’m reminded of my favorite gleaners story -- it's a long one, but worth it, I think.

Gleaning is an ancient tradition. In the Bible, Ruth was gleaning the fields for her mother-in-law, and some of the most ancient laws are about how much food farmers should leave in their fields for the gleaners to pick up after the harvest.

I've been a member of a local gleaning group for 12 years.

We mostly rescue food from grocery stores that's going to be thrown away -- food that the food banks can’t do anything with because it's really squishy, has brown spots, or it's odds and ends that no one can use.

Well, we can use them.

We have 80 families, and we collect all sorts of food and divide it up, from dented cans of garbanzo beans to loads of squishy tomatoes for salsa to more stale bread and cakes than you can imagine.

But every summer, we glean fruit from trees.

Summer here has the Earth throwing food at you, taunting you, because there's no way you can catch it all.

The winters are long and gloomy, and spring is magnificent and hopeful, and summer is having strawberries thrown at you for jam, and then raspberries, and then suddenly it's cherry/blueberry/peach/blackberry/plum/apple season and there's no way you could possibly freeze or can it all or make jam, and then it's zucchini/squash/green bean season, and of COURSE that's also the same time as "It's summer! Let's go to the beach and go on vacation and get chores done!"

The first three years here I was manic. I grew up with "food instability," as the current term is for being hungry and poor, and I hated anything going to waste. I made 85 quarts of applesauce the first year, and strawberry jam, and peach jam, and froze blackberries and blueberries until my freezer couldn't handle any more.

Now, after more than ten years here, I have slowed down a bit, because it’s evident that the trees will come back every year, and I know for a fact that the only thing left standing here in 500 years for certain will be the blackberries.

But I still like to pick fruit every summer.

One of my jobs for the gleaning group is to coordinate field gleans.

There are a lot of people who have fruit trees, and because people here grew up with this abundance everywhere, they don’t understand what a miracle it is to have the world throw fruit at you — having trees emphatically INSIST that you harvest fruit is no big deal.

A few years ago, a very nice woman called and said, "I have apples, plums, and pears. Can you have someone come pick? I don't want it all to fall and then have to clean it up. I didn't plant these trees and they make a huge mess."

I was still new to gleaning and didn't really know HOW to pick all of that, but told her I'd come out.

She wanted us to come on a Sunday afternoon, and I couldn't find any other takers, so I took all three of my kids and a few stepladders and headed over.

It was in a suburban neighborhood that had big lots, and at one point was on the outskirts of town, because everyone had huge old fruit trees in their yard.

When I got there, the guy who answered the door said his wife wasn't home.

"She's the one who knows about the trees. I didn't know anything about you coming, but the trees are right over there -- we never pick them, so I don't know what's all out there. I'm glad someone's gonna use the fruit!"

The woman had been pretty specific -- she wanted us to pick all of the plums, leave a few apples so she could make sauce, and take as many pears as we wanted.

I couldn't believe how much fruit there was. We picked for more than an hour, all four of us, and we loaded up the van.

Huge boxes of pears, baskets of apples, loads of plums. It was a lot of work and we tried ladders and climbing and stepstools.

Finally, my kids were DONE.

They hated me.

They hated fruit.

The never wanted to see a plum again.

I must have made Sander climb to the top of the pear tree five times to throw down more pears.

And just when they finally were about to mutiny, and I was giving up, my phone rang.

It was the lady with the fruit trees. "Are you coming? We've been waiting for an hour!"

I said, "Um. We're here. Picking. Right now."

She said, "No, you're not! I'm in my yard!"

I was at the wrong house.

Across the street from where I was supposed to be.

And the kids and I said thank you to the very confused man who was grateful that we'd gotten all of the fruit out of the way, and went across the street, told the lady we were sorry for keeping her waiting, and picked plums, apples and pears for another hour.

.

I didn’t tell anyone that story for a very long time because I felt like such a dope, but now it seems pretty funny.

Also — there are gleaner groups in every community, and this is an app to help you find local fruit. Or post in your local FB group that you'll come pick if someone has a tree they don't want to deal with. There are ALWAYS people who moved into houses with trees full of fruit they don't want. They end up chopping down the trees because it's a nuisance if no one comes and picks!

https://fallingfruit.org/