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The trees are loaded…
The pickers are waiting…

…And they’re off!

Nearly three weeks ahead of schedule, Toronto’s cherries ripened hastily and set us off on an early start to the season. We’re still in the midst of hiring seasonal staff, so our amazing team of specially-trained and super-dedicated volunteers, who we call Supreme Gleaners, set to work leading picks in the meantime.

Supreme Gleaner Dena Warman returned from a pick today:

“It was a great pick – beautiful tree.  A lot of fruit was very high and could not be reached, but by the end we found a good way – one person gently pulling down on a branch, one person on the ladder picking and one person on the ground picking – that way we got to much more of the ripe fruit near. There was still a lot of fruit very high… for the birds and squirrels.”

During this one pick, Dena and two volunteers picked a whopping 35 lbs of cherries, 21 of which were donated to the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre (PARC).

At another site, 107 lbs of cherries were harvested. We are off to a great start, team!

The fruit picks that Not Far From The Tree organizes have many magical qualities, but there’s nothing quite like the happenstance of gleaning from trees and shrubs on public land. The picking is determined by the watchful eye of the passerby, lending a spontaneity to the act.

And you never know who else might also be keeping a watchful eye for the perfect moment of picking. The fun is in convening at the same time as your mysterious colleagues – or at least arriving before the bounty has already been harvested.

Suzanne Long, a friend who I’ve met through her volunteer work with Not Far From The Tree’s program at Spadina Museum, has been one of those careful watchers over a City-planted serviceberry patch along the Dupont railway. Earlier this evening, she wrote to tell me that the time was ripe. She descended upon the site at the same magical moment as many others:

“was one of the those nights with heavy winds then pockets of sunny warm. weird but nice. mostly sunny by the end too.

“anyhow. magda and andrea showed up because they’d seen my last minute twitter invite. the neighbours and locals were out in full force. it was incredible. impromptu. laid back. two sets of parents w/ kids. a couple out for a stroll stopped to ask, and picked a few.

“one woman was there before we showed up, a local. she actually picked the lion’s share. but there was enough to go around, just not the big cupfulls we had last year.

“and, this master gleaner dude showed up at the tail end. he had tupperware containers of sweet cherries and mulberries from elsewhere in the annex. and he was totally cool with sharing, sort of proud of his haul, almost forced them on us in a gentle way. magda, andrea and this father/daughter combo were enchanted. so was i.”

We know that you’re all eager to start picking — and so are we!

But before we can load up the bike trailers, and get our hands stained and sticky-sweet, we need to find those special folks who can make it all happen! Not Far From The Tree is hiring three youth interns and two hub coordinators for the upcoming season. Please visit our jobs page to learn more about who we’re looking for, including how to apply.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you — and good luck!

Early bird online tickets are over — but still lots of tickets at the door! Come on out TONIGHT (Thursday May 20th); or join us for the party afterwards!

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The blossoms are out (or even finished), wee little fruiting buds are appearing on trees, and folks are anxious to get out and pick some fruit. This means one thing: Not Far From The Tree is gearing up to pick some urban fruit!!!

But we need your support!

In order to run our amazing programs this year, we still need funds to help us for this season. That’s why we’re happy to be hosting a film screening of “The Gleaners and I”, a French documentary about — you guessed it — gleaners like you! You can buy tickets online, or by calling 416-908-3022.

We really hope that you can join us — we’ll have music, amazing food, and prizes. This will be a great chance to meet other cool people who, like you, are interested in supporting Not Far From The Tree. It’s also a chance to lend your financial support to ensure that we can continue to run our programs this year.

If you’re not able to join us — don’t despair! You can still make a donation to our organization online – and we’d be happy to offer you a charitable tax receipt, too!

See you on Thursday!

Not Far From The Tree is delighted to announce that we’ve been selected as one of thirty-three community groups across Ontario as recipients of the Community Go Green Fund! Awarded through the Ministry of the Environment, this provincial funding will help us expand our residential fruit-picking program this year, as we continue with our important work in educating about, and taking action on, climate change issues.

Expanding is wonderful — but so is ensuring that our existing hubs are able to operate at full capacity! This is why we hope you can join us at our Gleaning Screening event on Thursday May 20th — to help support our programming for the upcoming season. Even if you can’t attend, you can still donate to help support our programs!

Our residential fruit-picking program is a proven way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (43 tonnes last year alone!), and achieves this through providing outreach and education, promoting long-term behavioural change, and advocating actions that create measurable results.

Through our innovative and hands-on programming, we’re not only ensuring that the fruit growing in Toronto is picked, eaten, shared, and enjoyed, we’re also encouraging others to take action through their own lifestyle choices. We’re delighted to know that our programming will continue to impact even more Torontonians this harvest season!

Next stop: cherry picking!

Not Far From The Tree is delighted to be selected as the 2010 Recipient of the Canadian Urban Institute’s City Soul Award!

The City Soul Award “is given in recognition of pursuits which inspire, inform, enrich and engage our collective spirit, and which celebrate nature and/or the authenticity of place. This can be achieved through culture, nature, the arts, entertainment, heritage, sports, recreation or politics by reigniting the soul and passion of a city.”

This award is shared by all who are involved with Not Far From The Tree – our dedicated volunteers, partner agencies, supporting chefs and restaurants, staff, supporters, fruit tree owners, and generous funders from our 2009 season. Congratulations to all!

An awards ceremony will take place on June 3rd 2010 as a fundraiser for the Canadian Urban Institute’s internship program. See http://canurb.org/content/urban-leadership-awards for more information.

To make a donation to support our upcoming season, please visit http://www.notfarfromthetree.org/make-a-donation or send an email to laurel@notfarfromthetree.org.

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For media inquiries about Not Far From The Tree receiving the City Soul Award, please contact info@notfarfromthetree.org or (416) 908-3022.

Fruit trees have started blossoming around the city, much earlier than usual. The above photo of an apricot tree blossoming at Ben Nobleman Community Orchard was taken on April 4, 2010, whereas last year’s first apricot blossoms in the same neighbourhood were only on April 29th (and still they were nipped in the bud, so to speak, by a late frost, resulting in a significantly reduced apricot crop). The unseasonably warm weather that we’ve been enjoying lately is just that – unseasonable.

To find out more, we went to Not Far From The Tree volunteer Leanne Moss, who helped research what this could mean:

“In certain circumstances, warmer-than-average early spring temperatures can cause flowering buds to begin blooming early. This can spell trouble for subsequent fruit production, as the buds become much more susceptible to frost once they begin to bloom. According to the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the buds of fruit trees may be damaged if they begin to bloom but are then exposed to -2 C temperatures for more than 24 hours, whereas they may survive if exposed to -6 C for less than 2 hours. The blossoms of apples, pears, cherries, and plums are susceptible to damage if exposed to -1 to -2 C temperatures. Damage to either flower buds or blossoms can lead to a significant decrease in fruit production. Apple growers in New Hampton are currently experiencing the earliest bloom seen in 50 years, which is causing distress as frost temperatures are likely up until mid May. Similar concerns are being raised in New York. Covering, heating and sprinkling with water are techniques employed to help prevent frost damage on early bloomed buds.”

Keep your fingers crossed that Toronto’s already-blossoming fruit trees will survive any upcoming frosts. And in the meantime, let’s try to enjoy the beauty of their flowers, one of the most delightful displays around. Have you spotted any fruit blossoms around town?

Kathleen Macintosh has always frozen fresh, sustainable, Ontario fruit. Recently, she’s been freezing enough to provide the masses with local fruit in the dead of winter.

Kathleen is the founder of Culinarium,“Toronto’s Locavore Store!”. Culinarium “showcases exceptional Ontario products and the passionate people behind them.” If you haven’t ventured in, you should. It’s a beautiful boutique shop on Mount Pleasant featuring all that Ontario sustainable food suppliers have to offer.

One of the ways the store highlights Ontario food is by offering an Ontario Artisan Share box. The box program incorporates everything from veggies and fruit to cheese, meat, and fish. Our box is where I first came across local frozen berries.

Kathleen freezes fruit as a way of prolonging access to local fruit after the harvest, and making use of fruit that may not sell. Last year it occurred to her that in addition to freezing for home consumption she could offer the service to her customers.

In order to make it work she bought 30 flats of strawberries– enough to fill 360 one-pint bags. Kathleen assumed this would be enough to last until February and maybe even March. To her surprise she was sold out by the end of November.

Wondering why they had sold so quickly, she started to investigate options for consumers to purchase local Ontario frozen fruits. She stumbled upon a huge gap in our ‘local, sustainable’ food industry – there are no suppliers of frozen local fruit.

Kathleen explained to me there is no infrastructure in Ontario to process fruit. In fact there aren’t many facilities for processing most of our food.  So excess, for the most part (there are a couple of exceptions) gets shipped to the U.S., processed, and then sent back to Canada. Our winter food is local via the U.S. border.

Kathleen’s dream for rectifying the issue is to one day collaborate with like-minded folk and build a sustainable processing industry; an industry that gives each community access to a processing station. Farmers can take their excess to a local station and have it affordably frozen and preserved.

In the meantime, Kathleen will continue to do her part to provide this service. This year she plans to hire two summer interns – up from one last year – and continue to freeze.

Note about Freezing:

Freezing down berries is much easier than tree bearing fruit. Fruit grown on trees needs to be pealed, soaked/sprayed in a preserving solution (i.e. sugar, lemon juice). The work involved is much more costly and timely than berries.

**NB: Not Far From the Tree is excited to continue our own preserving and canning workshops this summer in order to do our part to reconnect people with the lost art of preserving the local harvest for the winter to come! We hope to tackle skills such as freezing, dehydrating, canning, pickling, and preserving.

The culmination of our pilot program, We’d Tap That!, was an amazing day of fun, music, sap, and syrup! Held at Dufferin Grove Park Sunday March 14th, hundreds of folks came out for a taste of Toronto’s own Norway Maple syrup. Participants were invited to taste the original sap, and compare it to the final syrup. Here are some comments overheard from such syrup sommeliers:

“Tastes kind of woody
“It’s sweeeeeeeeet!”
” It reminds me of that hazelnut liqueur, Frangelico.  Frangelico mixed with white vanilla!”

We also had some fantastic library books on-hand, and one tidbit of information stuck out for me. Apparently, students in maple-syrup country would be excused from school for a time in March so that they could help out those families involved in syrup production. Makes me wonder if we actually have maple syrup to thank for March Break…..


The We’d Tap That! organizing crew was a tireless, fearsome bunch who researched, tapped, collected, and worked long hours to ensure that this pilot program, and the event, were a success. Not Far From the Tree can’t thank the following team enough: Heather, Val, Joanne, Todd, and Sarah. We’d also love to thank those folks who were available for consultation, as well as moral support: John and Fran, Don, Torrie, Laurie, and Lynn.

Of course, the syrup never could have happened without the donation of the evaporator pan, so thanks, Kevin! The taps were also graciously donated by Philip of Maple Kits.  And what event would’ve been complete without the sweet serenading of a bluegrass band? Special thanks to Makita Hack and the Log Rollers for sharing their fine tunes.  Our good friends at Chocosol provided us with the mini tasting cups for our syrup.

We also had some amazing volunteers serving up pancakes and maple beans in the Zamboni cafe. Special thanks also goes to city staff , especially Anna, and the Friends of Dufferin Grove Park. Thanks also to Beth McEwen and Andrew Pickett at Parks, Forestry, and Recreation for taking the time to learn about this exciting program.

Heather has written her own blog post, which talks about the program. You can read about it here.

What a wonderful kick-off to the 2010 growing season! After all — maple syrup is the first crop of the year.




This year, we at Not Far From The Tree began our harvesting season much earlier than usual. We started with a winter season crop – maple syrup! It was a first for us and therefore most of our effort this year was put into working through the logistics. The pilot program has gone from start to finish with much success, but there has been some confusion along the way.

Early media reports implied that what we were doing had not received approval from the City and that it was perceived as  causing injury to trees – something that the City’s tree protection by-law has been created to prevent. Further articles (often researched without speaking to – or even requesting an interview from – Not Far From The Tree) perpetuated this misinterpretation. Now, according to these reports, the story goes that the City “backed down” to our grassroots effort to harvest maple syrup or that “the City is not impressed” with what we have done.

I’d like to clarify that our relationship with the City has been very positive while launching this pilot program. Our intention was always to harvest from backyard trees on private property, for which we received a go-ahead from the City when we let them know of our well-researched plans. (If a homeowner is interested in doing something similar, they can also check this over with the City to make sure that all is being done in the best interest of trees. Urban maples, after all, are under many more stresses than their rural counterparts, so the advice of City staff is a great resource.) We also inquired about tapping trees on City property; the decision was not to tap trees on public land, a decision which we respect.

It’s great that this program has received media attention and helped spread the word about the bounty from our urban forest. However, the controversy it seemed to stir up just wasn’t there.

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