Image credit: Kagan McLeod
Forget Niagara cherries. How about Niagara Street cherries? Toronto’s comically fertile fruit trees have long been servicing the city’s bees and stickying summer sidewalks. Last year, Laura Reinsborough, an environmental studies grad, had an ingenious idea while plucking heritage apples from the Spadina House orchard: why not harvest the untapped residential crop, too? With 30 nimble friends, she launched Not Far From the Tree, a non-profit that dispatches volunteers to help homeowners unburden their trees. One-third of the picked fruit goes to the homeowner, one-third to the volunteers, and one-third to local community groups who help feed the city’s homeless and disadvantaged. Last year, 3,000 pounds of fruit were picked from 40 trees in the St. Clair and Bathurst area alone. The group is expanding to three more neighbourhoods in 2009. And, in the spirit of zero-impact enviro-goodery, the bounty is delivered by foot, cart and bicycle. Once you’ve tasted straight from the tree, ReinsÂborough says, you start to spy fruit-bearing trees everywhere, growing in the unlikeliest places.
—Heidi Sopinka
Toronto Life
http://www.torontolife.com/features/50-reasons-love-toronto-right-now/?pageno=40
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