Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton

I recently volunteered to organize some fruit picks for OFRE. I was amazed (but maybe not surprised) by the number of people around town who are looking for help making sure the fruit growing in their yard doesn’t go to waste.
OFRE basically helps people pick fruit growing in their yards, and then splits the fruit between itself, the pickers, local charities/​shelters, and the homeowner. They also occasionally offer sessions on ways of preserving and using the fruit, and have recently started selling products at the Alberta Ave market.
We went to three homes around the city, and picked easily 200 lbs of apples. We could have picked more, but we reached our capacity to actually transport them…
It turns out fruit picking is an amazing full body workout (I could hardly move the next day), and a fun way to do something good and get some free fruit out of it. At the end of the day, we dropped off a ridiculous number of apples at the organizer’s house, and tasted some of her delicious fresh cider.
I just hope they don’t become victims of their own success… there’s a lot of fruit out there, and this is a pretty small organization so far.