A Fruitful Harvest

5 Goodgymers helped their local community in Sheffield
Rachel
Cat
Celine
Yoseph
1 / 11
Sheffield

Wednesday 1st October

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Rachel
Rachel

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Celine
Celine

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PHOTOGRAPHER

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Report written by Rachel (she/her)

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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.


This task supported
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!

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