A little while back, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a dense, fabulous article on foraging for food. In it, tree gleaning takes center stage, with olives, walnuts and oranges literally up for grabs. It’s nice to see some people making use of the edibles available around them. Talk about eating local!
The central character of the piece was Asiya Wadud, who writes about her (literal) East Bay findings on her blog, Forage Oakland. It’s no surprise that Wadud really values food–she works at Berkeley’s famed Chez Panisse (it’s a small foodie 
world, after all).
Just down the road, People United for a Better Life Oakland (PUEBLO) runs an Urban Youth Harvest. As part of the Mayor’s Summer Jobs Program, they pay teens to glean fruit from trees and bring it to low income seniors.
Meanwhile, NPR tells us that gleaning is still going strong in France. I first heard of this rich foraging history in the documentary The Gleaners and I
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There was a huge orange gleaning in LA last week; I read about it at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dailydish/2009/03/tons-of-free-or.html
And I just helped pick over 1,000 lobs of oranges yesterday morning! That’s why I live in California. 🙂
I love this because I hate seeing so much fruit rotting on trees here in California. I recently asked a man who lives on my regular walking route if I could pick grapefruit from his tree when I walk by. He said he’d be glad if I did because they don’t even eat them.
So far I haven’t even had to pick them- there are so many on the ground. And they’re delicious- a small variety of Oro Blanco, I think.
Thanks for this post. It made me volunteer with one of the organizations and I wrote about my experience at almostima.wordpress.com