Register your fruit trees and help PMS Green team help feed the hungry!

Help build a PUSD Service Learning project--

gleaning Piedmont fruit trees to feed the hungry

Piedmont Middle School's Green Team needs the help of scores of
community members to realize a long term goal -- a local gleaning program, run
as a service learning project for secondary students to gather your surplus
fruit for the Food Bank network.   It's simple for you to help: just
register your fruit trees on a secure website to indicate you might have a surplus crop.  When
your tree is ripe, then you can confirm a surplus for harvesting, and a
supervised student team will come glean the surplus.   That's it; you
will have done a great service by allowing us to do a service.

PMS Green Team partners with Contra Costa County's non-profit The
Urban Farmers.  Our students have
contributed to their efforts, which have expanded steadily over the last five
years, and they're on pace to glean and distribute 50,000 pounds of fruit in
2013.  Now we're bringing these efforts
home, to build a successful backyard gleaning program within Piedmont and nearby
Oakland.  

You start by registering your tree on the secure www.theurbanfarmers.org website.  Doing so commits
you to nothing more than receiving an email before the harvest time you predicted
-- that email will ask if you want a team to come glean the surplus and donate
it to the hungry.  The Urban Farmers and PMS 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 PMS' popular all-day 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 our 200+ students to spread out in small teams and glean all in one day.
  Likely trees include apples, figs, citrus, and pears.

Maybe you just need to look out your window today and identify the
candidate tree in your own yard.  Maybe
you know a tree on your block that ends up dropping much of its fruit, and you
are willing to talk to your neighbor. 
Maybe friends or family members in surrounding Oakland neighborhoods have
a tree or three?  Let's get them registered!

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

Questions? Want to help?  Local
contacts:  PMS teachers John White (jwhite@piedmont.k12.ca.us), Stella Kennedy (skennedy@piedmont.k12.ca.us) or Jon Elliott at
tei@ix.netcom.com.