TREE SCOUTS Geo Kendall and Bonni Goldberg are scouting Southwest neighborhoods looking for fruit trees that could be harvested to help feed the hungry.

Couple seek fruit tree owners in SW for ‘no-brainer’ mitzvah

By DEBORAH MOON, The Jewish Review

article created on: 2011-07-15T00:00:00

Havurah Shalom members Bonni Goldberg and Geo Kendall are busy walking around neighborhoods in Southwest Portland looking for fruit trees—surely there must be more than the 65 trees registered with the Portland Fruit Tree Project. Afterall, the project has about 400 trees registered in Southeast Portland and nearly 300 in Northeast Portland.

Portland Fruit Tree Project is a grass-roots non-profit organization that registers fruit and nut trees in Portland to empower neighbors to share in the harvest and care of urban fruit trees. Registered tree owners can decide each year if they want the group to harvest their trees that year. The project organizes people to gather fruit before it falls, with half of the harvest donated to local food banks and the remainder divided between volunteer harvesters and tree owners. The project also offers tree care and food preservation in hands-on workshops, which are free to those who register their trees.

Southwest is an underrepresented area, according to the project’s executive director Katy Kolker. It’s also the quadrant of the city with the largest concentration of Jewish families.

“As Jews we have a lot of information about gleaning in the Torah and we are committed to help repair the world,” said Goldberg, who with her husband Kendall is a volunteer tree scout for the project. “Here is a way we can really make a difference without having to commit time or money—it’s quite literally in our backyard. I think it’s a no-brainer mitzvah.”

Goldberg is well versed on Jewish tradition having served as executive director of Portland’s Florence Melton Adult Mini-School from 2004 to 2008. She is a recipient of the Song of Miriam Award, which honors women who volunteer their time to strengthen the Jewish community. She brought the Matan Mother-Daughter Bat Mitzvah Program to Portland about four years ago. Currently, she is on the 2011 Rejewvenation Committee, which plans the annual women’s event at B’nai B’rith Camp each fall.

She said she heard about the fruit tree project about three years ago and has participated in the group’s volunteer picking parties. She said it is a fun way to meet people and to get some fruit for your family while also ensuring local families with food insecurity get some wholesome produce.

“We have a lot of people in our community with food insecurity,” Goldberg said. “And we have people with fruit trees growing fruit they can’t possible use. Here is a way to redistribute. When you are food insecure, fruit is hard to come by—it’s too expensive.”

Kendall said he grew up as an “urban forager” in Maryland. As a boy, he said he and friends would visit old orchards in their neighborhood and harvest the unwanted fruit from the aging trees. Now an avid gardener, he said he likes the concept of providing fruit to hungry families.

Registering a tree does not commit the owner to allowing the Portland Fruit Tree Project to harvest it each year. Tree owners make the decision if they want the project to harvest the tree each year depending on their own need for fruit and how much fruit the tree is producing that year.

Registered tree owners are invited to take the project’s workshops for free and have the option to sign up to host a tree care workshop in which their tree receives care. Kolker said that they do get more requests to host tree-care workshops than they can accommodate, but registered owners are the only ones eligible to vie for the open slots.

So if you see a couple in green T-shirts peering into your backyard, don’t be alarmed, they are just looking for fruit trees. And if they see any, they will leave you a flyer about the project and a registration form if you want to participate.

For more information on the Portland Fruit Tree Project, call 503-284-6106 or visit www.portlandfruit.org.