Feed the hungry, help PMS students - and have your fruit trees picked!

Be part of a PUSD Service Learning project, gleaning Piedmont fruit tree surplus to feed the hungry

PMS Green Team needs the help of scores of community members to realize a long term goal-- a local gleaning program (collecting left over fruit from your trees), run as a service learning project for secondary students by gathering your surplus fruit for the Food Bank network.  

The help we need from you is simple-- register your fruit trees on the secure  www.theurbanfarmers.org website to indicate a potential surplus crop.  When harvest time comes, if you confirm a surplus and the desire for gleaning, a student group will come to glean the surplus.   That’s it;  you will have done a great service by allowing us to do a service.

PMS Green Team has partnered with Contra Costa County's non-profit The Urban Farmers to replicate their successful, backyard gleaning project and structure in Piedmont and Oakland.  The Urban Farmers volunteers have increased the efficiency, reliability and effectiveness of their model over the last five years and they are on pace to glean and distribute 50,000 lbs of fruit in 2013. 

When you register your trees on the secure  www.theurbanfarmers.org website, you commit to nothing other than receiving an email before the harvest time you indicated, an email that asks if you want a group to come glean the surplus and donate it to the hungry.  The Urban Farmers and The Green Team will never share your contact information with anyone.  And there is no commercial component to this project.

We are especially looking for trees that are ready for harvest in early-mid September so that we can continue the all-day, all-8th grade Gleaning field trip.  This service learning event can only continue if we can register at least twenty September-ripening trees in Piedmont and Oakland for the 200+ students to spread out in small groups and glean all at once.   These trees are likely to be apples, figs, citrus, pears, etc.

Is there a tree outside your window; maybe you know a neglected tree on your block and you are willing to talk to the neighbor; maybe a friend or a family member in surrounding Oakland neighborhoods has a tree or three?  Spread the word, and let's get them registered! 

For more info about Urban Farmers and to register trees now, please visit: www.theurbanfarmers.org

Local contact:  PMS teachers John White and Stella Kennedy jwhite@piedmont.k12.ca.us   skennedy@piedmont.k12.ca.us