Welcome to Day Five of Leftovers’ journey into food rescue from the food’s perspective! (Missed Day Four? Check it out here!) Last week we met the Happy Apples as part of Russell’s holiday meal. But where did they come from? Read on, friends, and let’s get to know this phenomenal fruit!
The start of our Happy Apples’ journey into Rescue Food looks a bit different from our beloved Russell’s…
In spring and summer, life was a breeze. Going from being a beautiful flower to being a tiny little apple, getting bigger in the warm sun. Just hanging with my whole apple family, watching the good folks who owned our tree playing with their kiddos in the yard below us.
In spring and summer, life was a breeze. Going from being a beautiful flower to being a tiny little apple, getting bigger in the warm sun. Just hanging with my whole apple family, watching the good folks who owned our tree playing with their kiddos in the yard below us.Then… some of us started to fall… The ones on the ground got brown and bruised and stepped on, crushed to mush. Uh oh! Every time the wind waggled my branch, I got more and more scared. Being applesauce was one thing, but being smashed on the grass? Not how I wanted to go!
The good folks in the yard didn’t have time to pick us all. What were we going to do?
How did these appealing apples avoid being stomped into smoosh? Find out in the next and final installment of our story!
Harvest season on the prairies might be short, but every summer and fall, backyard gardens and fruit trees produce a bounty of delicious, healthy food. A single apple tree alone can produce 100 to 500 lbs of fresh apples–or more!! And those apples, when picked from the tree, can keep for up to six months in the fridge (1). That’s a big fruit commitment! So what happens when the growers don’t have the time to pick or space to store all of that good food?
That’s where Leftovers comes in! In 2022, our growers and volunteers harvested more than 4000 lbs of fresh produce from backyard gardens and fruit trees in Calgary and Edmonton. Since the Home Harvest program began in 2020, we’ve redirected rhubarb, lettuce, tomatoes, cherries, grapes, and apples galore!
Harvesting backyard produce is a big job, even with ladders and fruit pickers, and we couldn’t do it without our amazing Home Harvest volunteers! Every harvest keeps amazing produce grown right in our own communities from rotting on the ground, and gets fresh, healthy food to neighbours who need it.
Donate now to support Leftovers’ programs and get good food–including backyard produce–to the people who need it most.
(1) Ma, K. (2019). Alberta is for apples. St. Albert Gazette. Retrieved from https://www.stalbertgazette.com/local-news/alberta-is-for-apples-1679877
