Abundance
Abundance is in it’s 10th year of sharing skills in harvesting, sharing, cooking, preserving, juicing and storing fruit.
Abundance
Founded in 2007 by Stephen Watts and Anne-Marie Culhane, Abundance is a volunteer based organisation that rescues, shares, cooks, and processes fruit which may otherwise go to waste from right across Sheffield.
Most of the trees we pick are in private gardens, where we leave 10% of fruit for wildlife. Abundance If we pick a public fruit tree we leave at least a third of the fruit unpicked so it is available to the community.
Tree owners have the first share, then they donate the fruit they don’t want, volunteers have some and we share the best fruit with the community (e.g. food banks, lunch clubs, support centres)
The rest we cook, preserve or juice together in the community.
We love exploring sweet and savoury ways to cook and preserve fruit and sharing recipes.
Everyone who joins a preservation workshop gets the recipe and a jar of chutney to take home.
All events are an opportunity to meet new people and strengthen social networks, as we are a friendly bunch!
72 GoodGymers have supported Abundance with 15 tasks.
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Previous sessions
A Fruitful Harvest
Wednesday 1st October
Written by Rachel (she/her)
There was an Abundance of volunteers this Wednesday lunchtime to harvest apples with Friends of Whirlowbrook Park, and thank goodness, because what a crop!
We met Nicola and other "friends of" at the entrance to the park and were led to the recently unearthed orchard, where there were 5 or so apple trees that had been hidden and not harvested for an estimated 30 years, plus lots of newly planted baby fruit trees.
Celine kicked things off with a wassail, blessing the trees with a verse, some apple cider vinegar and toast(!)
We then set to the usual work of clearing windfalls, getting in with telescopic pickers and then the fun of shaking the trees and catching fruit with a big tarpaulin. Yoseph was our intrepid tree-climber today, taking on the branch shaking from the top.
The bumper crop was quality control sorted into firsts, seconds and thirds. Most of the thirds were left for nature and, after we took as many as we wanted, the firsts and seconds will be distributed to good causes.
Resistance is fruitile!
Wednesday 3rd September
Written by Celine (she/her or they/them)
It is the fruity season! after picking 200 kilos of Worcester Pearmain apples with the lovely folks at Abundance on Sunday, we joined forces with Abundance again and moved on to a pear tree which was cropping one month earlier than usual!
We first picked the windfalls before grabbing the pickers to collect the fruit higher up the tree, a "fruitstrating" task as the pears were eluding our efforts.
But resistance is "fruitile" and we managed to save a total of 12kg, with a crate of the best being donated to Broomhall community centre who host a community meal every Wednesday.
A "pearfect" way to use the produce!
Millenium harvest
Sunday 31st August
Written by Celine (she/her or they/them)
Rachel, Annie and I joined 11 members of the Abundance project to help harvest 4 apple trees from a public orchard near the Millennium gallery so that they can be distributed to good causes and saved from waste.
We picked apples and separated the best (“first”) which are given to local community group from the virtually good (“second”) which are virtually perfect and third which are not donated but saved by some volunteers for cooking. Volunteers also get to take seconds home!
It was a superb turnout of volunteers on a gorgeous day. Many hands make light work and together we picked 151kg of first, 43kg of seconds and 13kg of 3rd - over 200kg in under 2 hours is an incredible harvest!
Picking 🍎 under the Mistletoe
Sunday 8th September 2024
Written by Rachel (she/her)
Celine and I joined members of the Abundance project to help harvest 4 apple trees from a public orchard near the Millennium gallery so that they can be distributed to good causes and saved from waste.
Great turnout of volunteers despite the earlier downpour. There were lots of ripe, tasty and unblemished fruit still in the trees, so we could afford to be a bit picky about leaving the more damaged ones and we still had a bountiful harvest!
The abundance of mistletoe in every tree confounded me as I've never seen it so prolific and up close. I've since been told that it will have been put there deliberately so it can be harvested for Christmas events and is known to thrive particularly well in Apple trees. Couldn't resist the photo op 😘
Applet harvest with Abundance
Sunday 5th November 2023
Written by Celine (she/her or they/them)
One goodgymer volunteered with our good friends in Abundance to pick apples that would otherwise go to waste.
We picked apples and separated the best (“first”) which are given to local community group from the virtually good (“second”) which are used for processing (chutneys etc) from the “third” which are given to local pigs. We saved 20kg of first and 20kg of seconds!
Howdya like them apples? 🍎🍏
Sunday 8th October 2023
Written by Rachel (she/her)
Rachel and Yvette both got on their bikes to join the Abundance project on an unseasonal sunny afternoon in Sheffield. 🌞
We were admitted to the largest, most beautifully manicured private garden I've ever seen to help harvest an apple tree. Unfortunately virtually all had fallen since it was initially visited last week, so they were mostly a little bruised or damaged on the ground. The insects were loving it, some beautiful butterflies in particular! 🦋
We sorted the still edible from the past it. The inedible were taken to the compost heap and the usable will be distributed to food waste charities to be cooked up into pies and crumbles. Before we left, we weighed our haul with the snazzy new scale and chatted about hopefully setting up a Monday night group run. In total we got about 32kg of seconds to go to good causes! 🍏⚖️🍎
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