As we close out our 16th harvest season, City Fruit is excited to share that we had another successful summer of harvesting and sharing fruit to the Seattle community. This year City Fruit harvested over 28,500 lbs of fruit, which translated to about 90,000 servings of fruit distributed to our community partners! Out of the thousand of pounds we harvested, there were 15 different varieties of fruit gleaned from our urban canopy, consisting of apples, blueberries, cherries, figs, grapes, kiwis, kiwi berries, pawpaw’s, peaches, pears (european and asian), persimmons, plums, quince, and tomatoes! For more information on how we calculated our pounds to servings, click here.
A huge way that we’re able to safely and efficiently get our harvested fruit to our partners is through our beloved community clamshell donation system, where anyone can donate clean, recycled clamshells for us to repurpose into fruit containers. Throughout each summer we receive a plethora of donations at our office, which are then rinsed and inspected by our seasonal harvesters and interns for fruit packaging. Once the containers are filled, labeled with a City Fruit sticker, and packed into a crate, they’re set off for distribution! It may not seem that important of a task, but packaging the fruit before distribution helps prevent the fruit from bruising, ensuring it reaches community members in quality condition, while also saving our partners so much time in an already busy and hectic environment while trying to get food to as many folks as possible. So before you think to throw your plastic (and aerated) containers in the recycling bin – halt! City Fruit would love to take them for future use.
Among the fruit harvested, nearly 2,000 lbs (11,320 servings) of fruit were distributed at our weekly Fruit-For-All events around the city, where we distribute freshly harvested fruit at no cost. We had 17 events this year, with a majority being new partnerships! Among these were Garfield Community Center, Carolyn Downs Medical Center, Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association (DNDA), Ballard Community Center, Seattle Housing Authority, Cultivate South Park, Delridge Farmer’s Market, SeaMar, Farestart Mobile Markets, and Meadowbrook Community Center. We thank you all so much!
And of course, a giant thank-you to our 37 partner food banks and meal programs, who were able to connect the fruit to the people. Some new partnerships we welcomed this year were with Cultivate South Park, Low Income Housing Institute, Pinnacle Explorations, SeaMar, and West Seattle Mutual Aid Party. The reliance that City Fruit has on these partnerships cannot be overstated.
A particular partnership we’d like to highlight is with the wonderful Shorewood High School’s Culinary program, who for the last three years has been turning pest damaged apples that we’ve harvested into delicious apple breads. Students will make these breads by hand, and include a hand-written, laminated recipe card to be included in their distribution. This year, the breads were given out at the Delridge Farmer’s Market in White Center, which was a hit! Our connection with Shorewood High School is incredibly important, as it offers an opportunity to repurpose fruit that most would toss in the yard waste bin, and allows youth to get engaged in their local food system by turning the once buggy and damaged apples into something that people are excited to eat. City Fruit aims to repurpose any and all fruit to the best of our ability in order to ensure that less food is being wasted, and instead enjoyed and celebrated. Thank you Shorewood HS!
A major change that City Fruit incorporated into this year’s harvest season was our newly launched scheduling system! Every summer, our Harvest Coordinator gets flooded with hundreds of emails from tree owners eager to get their fruit harvested before it starts to rot. As you could imagine, this is a stressful task for one person while simultaneously managing numerous communications at once, compiling a weekly harvest schedule, managing interns and seasonal staff, and getting the harvested fruit distributed to our partners by the end of each week! Our scheduling system, which we used via Jotform and Calendly, certainly helped manage this influx of communication for our staff and partner tree owners. It also allowed us to incorporate a suggested donation section for our harvest work, as we do not require payments for our staff to come and harvest a tree. By adding this feature, we received over $5,000 in donations from tree owners looking to help fund our harvest efforts! These are funds that we otherwise wouldn’t have had to support our work, and it greatly impacts our capacity. However, there is definitely room for improvement, and we’ve received some great feedback from tree owners to incorporate next season! We expect to have an even more seamless and efficient system so we can ensure we’re making it to as many homes as possible. We thank every tree owner who participated this year for your patience, understanding, and support!
We can’t share our harvest recap without acknowledging the invaluable help that City Fruit receives from our seasonal interns and harvesters. This year, we hosted a TIPS (Teens in Public Service) intern, Aria Sanya, and two University of Washington Capstone students, Ella Gostisha and Zoe Warren, as well as two seasonal harvesters, Ozi Goldstein and Liv Michaels. Day after day, they entered the office, grabbed their harvest schedules and tools, and headed out to their assigned harvests, sometimes making fruit deliveries along the way. A majority of the thousands of pounds of fruit that City Fruit harvests is done so by our interns and seasonal harvesters, meaning that without their help there would be no fruit to distribute! We’re so appreciative of their work and dedication to City Fruit’s mission, and are so excited to continue partnering with TIPS and the UW for future seasons!
Lastly (but far from least!), we have to thank our incredible volunteers who are an enormous help in caring for our city’s public orchards and fruit trees. This year, City Fruit hosted 27 community volunteer events that brought in 450 volunteers to help steward 11 partner orchards, while hosting workshops on various tree care concepts such as pruning, netting and pest prevention, and of course… harvesting! Between these events, over 9,000 lbs of fruit were harvested from these public orchards! Without the hands of our dedicated volunteers, this fruit would simply be left to decompose and go to waste. Support from volunteers is truly the biggest way that we’re able to achieve so much of the work we do around Seattle, so it goes without saying that the participation from community members is the driving force behind the wellbeing of the public spaces we work in.
Thank you so much to Danny Woo Community Garden, Good Shepherd Center Orchard, High Point Commons Park, High Point Pond Park, Holy Cross Orchard, Kirke Park P-Patch, Linden Park, Longacres Orchard, McAuliffe Park, Piper’s Orchard, Pond Park Orchard, and Trolls Knoll Orchard for partnering with us this year, and providing a space for individuals to connect with our local fruit canopy!
We also want to thank the funders that supported our Harvest Program this year, including the P. Wayne & Jane B. Goode Foundation, Fales Foundation, Kroger Community Grant, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, Peck Foundation, Tulalip Tribes Charitable Fund, WA Federal Foundation, Whole Foods, Windermere Foundation, and the Washington State Department of Agriculture/Harvest Against Hunger equipment grant. Our work would not be possible without your support and belief in our mission.
Whether you’re a food bank or meal program, cidery, tree owner, volunteer, or general City Fruit supporter, your partnership and support allows us to continue stewarding, harvesting, and connection local fruit with Seattle residents. We hope to continue collaborating with you all for seasons to come! If you’re interested in partnering with City Fruit next season, feel free to email [email protected].
Thank you so much and stay tuned for more information on our 2025 season!
Written by Riley Wilmart, Program Coordinator