Mark your Calendar’s folks – pick a date and sign up today!
Call 707-853-2267 to schedule. All abilities and ages welcome!
Saturdays, 9:30 – noon
February 23
March 9 & 23
April 13 & 27
May 11 & 25
June 8 & 22
July 6 & 20
August 3, 17 & 31
September 14 & 28
October 12 & 26 (dates subject to change)
And don’t forget our big end-of-year party!
Food Rescue’s Harvest Festival: Saturday November 16th
Food Rescue is in full swing!
Join us for another fun-filled Saturday this February 2nd, 9:30- 12:30
All abilities and ages are welcome
Volunteers can take whatever amount of produce they need for their family
Call 707-853-2267 for more info!
http://www.2013pic.org/service/serve
Join Food Rescue this Saturday, January 19th, The National Day of Service.
9:30-12:30 – Vallejo, CA
For more information 707.853.2267
All ages and abilities welcome!
Here in Northern California the citrus trees are becoming laden with gorgeous fruit. Join us in harvesting the abundance of our own backyards and help feed thousands with food that would otherwise go to waste!
Saturday, January 19th 2013
9:30 – 12:30
Vallejo, California
To honor the privacy of our property owners we share the locations on the day of the harvest. If you’d like to get involved please call Adrienne at 707-704-3334 or email us at food.rescue@yahoo.com.
All abilities are welcome! We hope to see you at a Food Rescue event soon!
Food Rescue is a young non-profit. Our first harvest was in late August, 2011, when we were swept up into the Fall fruit season and barely had a minute to breathe! It was a heady first few months.
That Winter we dreamed elaborate dreams and made elaborate plans…. 2012 was to be a year of expansion! Canning workshops, Farmers’ Market collection, CROP Share gardens sprouting up all over town – we saw these things come to pass, some programs more successful than others. We eventually learned to pace ourselves! In a blur a year & a half has passed, and we find ourselves in our second Winter.
One of the things I love most about Winter is the season’s insistence on reflection. As I write this I have a fire in the wood burning stove, the last of today’s Farmers’ Market produce has been distributed, it is raining outside and the house is quiet. We are 5 days into the New Year and I can finally turn my attention to Food Rescue’s 2013 future.
Here are some of the questions I am turning over in my head: Should we prioritize the types of fruit we harvest (some are certainly more labor-intensive than others)? Should we have fewer harvests per month with multiple crews? Should we expand our Farmers’ Market collection to other markets and grocers, or should we stick to our neighborhood trees? And how do we start funding this work?
In the last 18 months Food Rescue has fed a lot of people and made life-long friends. We’ve helped home owners share food, volunteers serve their community and food agencies distribute fresh perishable produce that would otherwise go to waste. We’ve worked hard and learned from our mistakes… all with the goal of making Food Rescue an even stronger advocate for food security and generosity in the future!
If you have thoughts on our efforts and want to help Food Rescue grow please drop us a line! With your help, we look forward to serving the Vallejo/Benicia community even more in 2013.
There are many fringe benefits to what we do. We are well fed. We spend time in the sun. Our work attracts the most wonderful people! And we are constantly learning in Nature’s classroom.
This season marks the first full year of Food Rescue’s fruit tree harvesting. Our organization is growing slowly and steadily, not unlike the many trees we’ve come across.
The trees have taught me a million new things, now that I’m in them all the time! Here are a few:
I am grateful for the lessons I’ve learned this first year. What tidbits await us this next year I wonder?
Not your average scout troop! We are looking for a few good neighbors to spread the word about Food Rescue’s Fruit Tree Harvest program and spot fruit bearing trees around town!
Too shy to knock on doors? No worries – if you write down their address we’re happy to do the outreach.
Simply by mentioning Food Rescue’s work at church gatherings or neighborhood meetings helps.
Contact us about joining our Tree Scouts and help us gather the fruits of Vallejo before they go to waste!
Through October we will be hosting Thursday harvests from 9:30-noon. Bring your not-quite-school-aged little ones along and teach them the joys of picking fruit and helping people! In fact, tell your friends and plan a Food Rescue harvest with your whole playgroup! Call Adrienne at 707-704-3334 or email food.rescue@yahoo.com to schedule.
If you live in the SF Bay Area and have a basic understanding of canning we invite you to join our Canning Consortium!
Food Rescue’s Canning Consortium is a loose confederation of folks willing to take and can produce in the comfort of their own homes for redistribution later. We invite home owners to keep as much as half of what they preserve. The rest is donated to food agencies so that fresh produce today can be enjoyed year round!
Unlike our monthly canning workshops (which you are welcome to join!), this project is done in convenience of your own kitchen. If you need materials such as jars, sugar, vinegar, etc we tend to have excess that you can use. Of course the produce is always free!
The Fall harvest is upon us and thousands of pounds of Autumn fruits are waiting to be canned – email us at food.rescue@yahoo.com and join Food Rescue’s Canning Consortium today!
Once a month we gather at Food Rescue Central (our home) for a Canning Workshop. Many folks who have never canned come and learn by doing. Others with canning experience share pearls of wisdom. Everyone leaves with closer friends, a greater sense of self-suffiency and pints of freshly canned produce! Our canning workshops have been such a success that we’ve become inspired to offer more kitchen and garden workshops in the near future, so keep an eye on our “Workshops” page!
September’s workshop is right at the peak of apple and pear season, so we’ll be focusing on putting up quarts of applesauce and canned pears. We’ll also start on such condiments as chutney and fruit butters.
Come spend an afternoon with us! No experience necessary. Entry to the workshop requires nothing but a donation of a flat of quart jars with new lids and bands – the fruit is all provided by Food Rescue!
Much of our excess canned goods will be donated to the Solano AIDS Coalition’s November food drive.
