Day 296: Harvest Sacramento Community Event

The CPCA office was closed today for the MLK, Jr. holiday, and I decided to put my day off to good use by participating in a Harvest Sacramento community event. This is a program run by Soil Born Farms that aims to pick ("glean") fruit from trees around the city in order to provide fresh produce to community members and neighborhoods. We're so lucky in Sacramento to have fresh food that grows all year long, and yet much of what is produced by the local fruit trees ends up on the ground or in the garbage.

I worked with a team of 7, including a team leader, to harvest from 3 homeowners in the Curtis Park area. We picked grapefruit, oranges, and more grapefruit from rather tall trees that looked similar to these:

We used long-handled citrus picker tools to harvest the fruit:

The best of these tools were those on the poles donated by a paint company, which were really easy to extend and retract. The most challenging part of the activity was having to tilt my head up to find the higher-up fruit, which got to be rather uncomfortable on my neck after awhile.

Overall, this was a great experience, and I'd be very interested in getting more involved if there are groups in Downtown or Midtown. I think Mr. E would really enjoy this as well, so I hope we have the opportunity to participate together.

At the very least, I'll definitely volunteer again if Harvest Sacramento does the same event next year, and I'll see if I can organize a group from CPCA to join in.