Stuck for a terrific gift idea? Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton has a fruitful solution: a 2018 OFRE membership!

Purchase a Gift Membership for your loved one today and they will receive the gift via email on Christmas Day.

First picking event of the year. Come join us! 10 spaces offered. Free & Family friendly!

Ride will be led by Bonnie Patterson-Payne, OFRE member

Saturday June 10, 2017

1 pm until 4 pm(ish)

Event starting location:
King Edward Park Community
7708-85 St NW
Edmonton, AB T6C 4K9

Meet at the parking lot next to the park!

Ride to 5 houses picking rhubarb in Avonmore, Hazel Dean and Argyll and King Edward Park districts. Rhubarb will be divided between pickers, home owners and charity. Donations will go to YESS on Whyte Avenue.

Bike and helmet required and a backpack/bike bags or trailer to carry rhubarb.

Dress for the weather.

Weather permitting (heavy rain and thunderstorms may cause a postponement of meet to Sunday June 11 at same location and time). Volunteers will be notified Saturday morning!

Register NOW! (2 spaces are available):

Eventbrite

We encourage you to sign up as on OFRE member which allows you to come to all our other fruit picks of the summer.

OFRE values the importance of togetherness; a vibrant community strengthens all of us. For OFRE, community is defined as “a group of people living in the same place or having a characteristic in common,” or “a feeling of fellowship with others established by shared beliefs, interests and goals.” We connect with the community through events, and we interact with people who share the same interests as we do.

The micro-orchard we designed and installed at McCauley School is home to OFRE and its community. It will always be a guiding light to our mission, vision, and values. We take great pride in our space for it is a place to gather, congregate, and share. We are grateful for those talented artists who have generously donated their time and expertise in the effort to better this organization. As our connections are solidified, OFRE becomes more resilient to unexpected crisis and challenging alteration.

Excellence in Illustration and Design

We especially would like to thank, Jill Stanton, one of Edmonton’s leading illustrators who created our logo, and the high standard of excellence rendered in her work exhorted us to thrive as a new organization. We also would like to show gratitude to Justine Ma who contributed her talent for graphic design to the table we have in the orchard. The table required several days to optimum temperature without rain so the graphics could be painted, and a clear resin could be applied over the artwork.

We were honored to have Stephen Yettaw, an international stone sculptor, enthusiastically take on the project of carving our feature entry sign. The stone weighed over 3,000 pounds, and had been carved into a solid red granite. It took Stephen over a week of solid carving and cutting to carve our logo out into red granite and carve the text. Like how he had made all his sculptures, our stone was also carved at his mother’s fruit orchard — Flying Rabbit Fruit Farm in St. Paul.

Helpful Hauling

We also appreciate the help from Lee Grant, the owner of Fat Fred Hauling Co who not only picked up the rock but also drove our volunteers and our orchard manager Mike Johnson to meet with Stephen. Moments like that makes us realize that many people are great, caring, and loving; the community flourishes because of them.

Our orchard still needs improvement, and we look forward to collaborating with bicycle commuters to design and build new bike racks for the orchard. We expect something amazing to take place in January for the man behind the pedal powered apple crusher has agreed to work with us again! We also have benches to fabricate out of offcut glulam beams donated by Western Archrib, an Edmonton-based company.

Thank-you to All Our Volunteers

As we wind down for the season, we want to thank all our volunteers for their efforts in growing fruit, picking fruit, sharing fruit, and working as active members of the board. We are so grateful for your energy and enthusiasm. We will keep you posted on events for next season.

Step by step, we continue to build our community and share our stories to inspire you to find the fruit hidden in our city.

Greeting All,

OFRE want to remind everyone about the amazing potluck that we are having in partnership with The Edmonton Permaculture Guild at the OFRE micro Orchard This Thursday!!!.  We will have our feature 10′ diameter table installed just in time to house all the food.

We will also be setting up our fruit press.  So if you are a home owner and your pick was cancelled, we OFRE you a solution to all those apples!  Pick them and bring them to the Potluck and enjoy fresh pressed cider from your apples!  IF your tree is not ripe yet, please check our fruit pressing schedule to know when you can drop off fruit to be pressed so we can minimize food waste.

We invite you to come join the fun, share stories about your fruit, and meet fellow growers, pickers and learn more about The Edmonton Permaculture Guild and Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton.

This is a Free Event and All Are Welcome! Family, Friends, Food and Community