Community Fruit Tree Harvesting

In 2014 Transition Woodbridge was approached about picking fruit from a local smallholding which would otherwise have rotted and gone to waste.

Concerned about food waste, a group of volunteers went and picked the fruit and sought outlets for it. We found very willing recipients in the local lunch clubs that run on weekdays for older residents.

And every year since, this project has grown so that every year we pick over 100 boxes of soft fruit, plums, pears and apples and distribute them to New Horizons and Salvation Army, Woodbridge and Melton St Andrews lunch clubs. Excess produce has been taken to FIND (Families in Need), Helping Hands and YMCA in Ipswich. Stennetts Community Cafe in Felixstowe received some surplus which they converted into free meals for the community during the school holidays. The fruit has also been processed into jam and chutneys or bottled for donation to FIND.

This project starts in June with soft fruit and continues into October. We always need volunteers to pick and help distribute donated fruit. We also need trees to pick so if you have a tree/s that you would like to offer to us, we will gladly make sure the fruit doesn’t go to waste.