As you may know OFRE rescues unwanted fruits from private property where homeowners have registered their trees/bushes with us. We have not rescued vegetables before, until now…We got an interesting phone call request from a farmer outside of Edmonton asking if we could come and rescue his vegetables. We excitedly said Yes! and turned this event into a reward for all our hardworking volunteer fruit captains who organized many fruit picks throughout the season. Now they can have full freezers and cellars for the winter ahead.
So, hoe hoe hoe, off we go to the farm! All the veggies were dug by hand and the farmer had a belgian horse team and sled that rode around and picked up the veggies. the kids had a great time riding on the sled with the veggies!
We had helpers big and small and found humour in the day. Check out these two carrot buddies and giant beet!
Most humour was found in calling ourselves city slickers once we realized how many root veggies CAN grow in a 1/4 acre area of land. oy!
The beet, carrot, and onion piles! SOOO many veggies!
Not only did we get to rescue veggies, but we got to eat some too. Ther farmer was so excited about us coming out to the farm, he and his wife planned a pig roast for the gleaners! They roasted the pig that morning while we were gleaning, then we brought up some fresh dug veggies for roasting. YUM!
OFRE brought cider to share with everyone. After all that digging, the delicious food was devoured!
The fun didn’t end there. In true OFRE fashion, the rescued veggies were split into 1/4 shares for the farmers, ofre gleaners, charities, and a portion for OFRE canning/pickling events. After dividing all the veggies up, OFRE gleaners spread the charity share with: Strathcona County Food Bank, Edmonton Food Bank, Youth Emergency Shelter, and the Ronald MacDonald House.
Here is Mike Johnson dropping off a portion at the Edmonton Food Bank. This cart weighed in at: 120 kg of veggies!
With such a nice orchard, we got to thinking of other ways we can work with this grower and suggested doing a group pruning event to give his trees a needed trim and enable other fruit growers to learn techniques for pruning their own fruit trees. They were quite excited about the idea, so we are going to work on this and try to plan an event in the off season. It’s best to prune fruit trees after the harvest and before spring. Stay tuned!
