Just too many to eat!
It's July and thepluot tree is an explosion of purple fruit! Everywhere there arepluots ready to pick.Omigosh so many precious purple gems. What am I going to do with them? My friend Jim drops by and takes a dozen or so, I drop off another dozen to my neighbor, and I bring another dozen to my sister. My other neighbor comes over and I catch him harvesting some for his co-workers. “These are delicious,” everyone says. Of course, I did nothing except prune and pick the fruit. I can only eat so many. The tree still has fruit to give. I just cannot let the birds eat everything. “Aha,” I thought, “I can donate the fruit to the food bank!” Previously I had donated about 60 lbs of lemons this year to the food bank so I knew how to do it.
These days there are so many people striving to make ends meet. Do I pay the rent, how about gas for my car, is there any money left for food? No, you forgot the utility bills. In Solano County. Between 11% to 12.6% of adults in Solano County and 9% of children are food insecure. Food insecurity does not impact everyone equally. It unfortunately falls among racial and gender lines with Black families making 15% and Latino families making 20% less than white families.
Solving hunger is a huge problem tied up in social discrimination and past government Byzantine policies. You cannot solve the problem unless you can eat right now! Anyone with a few extra potatoes, tomatoes, onions, or lettuce offer them to your neighbors who you know are food insecure. Collect extra vegetables from fellow Master Gardeners and bring them to they food bank. The Food Bank will happily take your produce and a monetary donation too. Got extra time from gardening the Food Bank needs volunteers too.
Second trip to the Food Bank
I took 80 pounds ofpluots to the food bank the last two weeks. That's even after I gave some away to Jim and my neighbors! There are still more purple gems in the tree. I told my sister I needed to get my ladder out to harvest the fruit. She was adamant that I would not use the ladder. I have an upcoming knee surgery and have fallen down a few times puttering around the garden. I relented and bought a fruit picker, a simple device with hooks and a basket, to get those high hanging fruit.
I am so blessed to have a giving tree! Feeding Solano County one pluot at a time.
For further reading visit the Feeding America Website: