not far from the tree

As we prepare for this weekend’s preserving workshop, I’m scrambling to schedule picks so that we have enough fruit to preserve. We’ve collected so much fruit that I didn’t anticipate we could ever get rid of it too fast, but we have high hopes for the workshop and need the fruit to accommodate our plans.

We’ll be experimenting with some less-conventional preserving ingredients to try to make the workshop as local as possible. Rather than purchasing highly-processed pectin, we will be using crabapples that provide a natural gelling agent. And rather than use lemons that are not easily grown in Ontario (although I have seen a few on Davenport Road balconies that owners have wheeled outside for the summer!), we are using sumac drupes.

I regularly bike up Christie Street where crabapples (and some feral cultivated varieties of apples) flourish. The fruits are so abundant this time of year that they roll all the way down the slope to Davenport Road (the shore of ancient Lake Iroquois) and litter the sidewalk and bike lane as they go. So I climbed up into the bush and started my first public forage the other day, gathering crabapples into my bag and taking them home to store for the workshop.

Some passersby gave me curious looks, other seemed amused at what I was doing, and one stopped to ask a few questions. Even though I felt a slight sense of trespassing, there was nothing illegal about what I was doing. Trees on public property are available to be harvested. I checked this with tree experts with the City last fall, and although they were initially confused they quickly confirmed my suspicions.

In his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan explains:

“I wasn’t quire sure if picking cherries from a neighbor’s tree was exactly kosher, either by my lights or the law. But isn’t there some old legal principle that confers the right to pick fruit from trees overhanging your property? I did a little research and discovered that indeed there is. The Romans called it ‘usufruct,’ which the dictionary defines as ‘the right to enjoy the use and advantages of another’s property short of the destruction or waste of its substance.’ Bingo! Here was a venerable legal principle that spoke to the very soul of foraging.”