One of the main reasons we started City Fruit was to develop ways  to become more financially sustainable, rather than depend on an ever-shrinking pool of grant money for funding

As part of that, we’re experimenting with selling a small portion of the fruit we harvest – with a goal of selling no more than 20% of the usable fruit we harvest. So far this year, we’ve harvested 5,775 lbs. of fruit and have sold 448 lbs., so about 8%.

We always talk to home owners before selling fruit from their trees, explaining that the sale of this fruit goes directly to funding the neighborhood fruit harvests next year. We aim to be as transparent as possible and so will again release an annual report early  next year detailing how much we earned from fruit sales and how much it costs to organize our harvests.

Restaurants

We’re specifically targeting restaurants that have a reputation for caring about and seeing the value of using local foods as much as possible.  A couple of the places we’ve been selling to are A Caprice Kitchen and Kathy Casey. A Caprice Kitchen is even Tweeting about how they’re using our fruit:

“Be sure not to miss asian pear caramel pancakes at brunch this weekend, made with ballard pears from @cityfruit !”

And Kathy Casey featured us in her late summer newsletter, writing:

“Right now it’s Jam Time! It’s that time of year again when summer fruits are in abundance (despite this crazy weather!). We’ve been hooking up with City Fruit, a cool non-profit organization that gathers excess fruits from neighborhood yards then delivers them to food banks and restaurants. We love supporting them and are donning our sexy hairnets to cook up lots of great tasty treasures, which we will feature at Kathy Casey Food Studios annual open house this December … yes, we are thinking ahead!”

A few other ways in which the restaurants we’re selling to are putting our local fruit to good use:

• Crab apple butter
• Apple pies
• Escarole with Asian pears
• Red plum tarts

So far it’s been very exciting to see how the restaurants are using the fruit. They seem to really like the quality and variety of our local fruit and the customers seem to enjoy the food as well.

Farmer’s Markets

In addition to helping fund our harvests, one of the goals of selling fruit was to serve people who are low-income but don’t go to food banks or soup kitchens. In many places throughout the city, this population doesn’t have access to low-cost, healthy, local fruit.

To help address this, a portion of our fruit is sold to the New Holly Farm Stand and to the Clean Green Market. We sell fruit to each at a much reduced price so that they can then offer this local fruit to their customers at an affordable price.

New Holly Farm Stand is part of the Seattle Market Gardens program and most of the farmers are immigrants from South East Asia and East Africa. It’s a relatively new farmers market and operates every Wednesday from 4-7 p.m. It’s at the corner of South Holly Park Drive and 40^th Avenue South.

Clean Green Market was founded by Rev. Robert Jeffery (who along with City Fruit Executive Director, Gail Savina, was listed as one of Seattle Weekly’s Best of 2010), in an attempt to “supply fresh, wholesome produce to families in need in Seattle’s Central District.” The market is open from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. on Fridays & Saturdays at the corner of 21^st and Fir Street.

We hope that these efforts to sell a small portion of fruit, as well as our membership program, classes, and donations, will help us reduce our dependence on grants and increase our financial independence.

We’ll keep you posted on how this experiment goes.

We try not to toot our own horn too much here on the blog, but I had to share that our fearless leader, Gail Savina, was identified as one of Seattle Weekly’s Best of Seattle 2010 — Best Fruit Savior. For all the work Gail’s done, including her work with City Fruit. From the article:

“After talking to Savina, your own view of Seattle may change. Adjust your gaze, even slightly, and you begin to see the “urban orchard” Savina describes, fruit trees rising from the landscape: plums, apples, pears, cherries, figs, quince. City Fruit’s work strengthens communities now, but in a town that was once home to many farms and orchards, it also paints a lovely, almost ghostly, portrait of Seattle’s past. “

The Seattle Weekly had a special section of their Best of… series with a section they called The City of Angels — highlighting people and organizations that are giving back tot he city, trying to make it a better place. So we’re very honored to have Gail among that list.

There were also two other food-related Angels that are worth checking out — Bunly Yun and Reverend Robert Jeffery. Each of them are doing great work to help provide more healthy food to people.

The local strawberries are in at the Farmer’s Markets! And are they sweet. Last night we ate pannacotta & strawberries out on the patio with out of town guests..what a treat. We made the pannacotta in the morning, so that it would have all day to ’set’. We had put the strawberries up the night before so that they could ‘macerate’ in some white wine.

Pannacotta
1 1/2 teaspoons (scant) unflavored gelatin
1 cup heavy whipping cream, divided
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups low-fat buttermilk (or any milk-cream combination you like)
1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract or the beans from a vanilla pod

Pour 1 1/2 tablespoons water into small bowl; sprinkle gelatin over. Let stand until gelatin softens, about 10 minutes.

Combine 3/4 cup cream and 1/3 cup sugar in heavy small saucepan. Stir over medium-high heat until sugar dissolves and mixture just begins to simmer. Remove from heat. Add gelatin; stir until gelatin dissolves. Cool until warm, stirring occasionally. Stir in buttermilk and 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla. Divide among six 1/2-cup ramekins. Cover and refrigerate until set, at least 4 hours.

Slice strawberries in half, place in bowl, pour Riesling or any other favourite white wine over. Cover, let sit overnight.

To serve: turn the pannacotta out of the ramekin into a bowl, spoon desired amount of drunken strawberries over the pannacotta, eat.

Don’t know which variety will work best in your yard? Unsure what that thing is eating the leaves on your pear tree? Or maybe you are wondering what a grafted tree is?

I’ve got just the guys to answer those questions. And any other ones you can think of.  Meet Don & John.

Don Ricks has been leading the charge on applying foot socks to apples & pears throughout the city. While Don shies away from the term “expert”, he’s very knowledgeable about fruit trees and pest prevention. He’s very involved with the Friends of Piper’s Orchard and sits on the City Fruit Advisory Committee.

John Reardon is a long-time member of the Seattle Tree Fruit Society and has spent many years helping educate and inform people on the proper methods for caring for fruit trees. He also sits on the City Fruit Advisory Committee.

These two guys know a lot about fruit, fruit trees, pest prevention, etc. And they’ve graciously agreed to (try to) answer any question you have.

So if you’ve got a couple burning questions, please send them to fruitqa@cityfruit.org. We’ll pick a couple and share the answers here each month or so.

My wife, Nancy, who is also on the City Fruit board, was at a Friends of Piper Orchard meeting the other night and learned about this amazing trellis. Andy Zaborski is a Viticulture/Winemaking Certificate graduate from South Seattle Community College (SSCC) who planted  several varieties of grapes at Piper’s Orchard, all of which were in the Pacific Northwest during the time of the orchard’s original planting.

Now Andy’s hoping to build this cool trellis at Piper’s Orchard that he’s already installed down at SSCC. From his own words:

“The grape trellis at South Seattle Community College was conceived in order to support the vines and shoots, without requiring regular adjustment of the wires’ tension due to loading by the plants’ branches and fruit, or due to thermal expansion/contraction.  A basket of rocks at one end-post is supported by one end of the cable array which serpentines across the span of 4 posts over a series of brass roller pulleys.  The cable is fixed via a turnbuckle at its other end.  The cable’s lowest span supports a drip-irrigation line, the 42-inch high span supports the vines’ branches, and the remaining 2 spans serve as catch-wires for supporting the vines’ shoots.”

I’ve included a couple of photos Andy sent along to better show what he describes above. You can see the trellis to the right with the basket holding rocks to keep the line tight.

His plans for the Piper Orchard are similar and has the same historical link to when the orchard was first planted. I, for one, can’t wait to see it in person. I might just head down to SSCC this weekend.

Nicely done Andy (picture to the right with his kids)!

I’m happy to announce that we’ve officially launched an online store where you can buy all kinds of t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, & stickers to show your support for City Fruit. 

All proceeds go towards helping fund our work to help residential tree owners grow healthy fruit, to harvest and use what they can, and to share what they don’t need.

 Thanks much to Cafe Press for providing the platform by which we can do such a thing. It’s a great website & store.

Be the first on your block to strut around in a City Fruit t-shirt!

A lot of great stuff going on over on Twitter for City Fruit. We’ve just reached 301 visitors! Big milestone for us.

Our Twitter feed also got a great plug from Amy Pennington (gogogreengarden.com, food writer, edible gardener, etc.) in Seattle Met Magazine. When asked about her 3 favorite local tweeters, we were mentioned:

“@cityfruit: awesome and timely advice on adding fruit and fruit trees to your landscaping;”

Congrats out to Nancy, City Fruit’s tweeter, for all her hard work here.

Follow us today!

Join City Fruit.

While we’ve been building up a membership of supporters for the past few months, we’re officially rolling out our membership plan.

In 2010, we will develop a year-long series of fruit tree classes, harvest and distribute 10,000 pounds of fruit, and better coordinate information about fruit tree care and harvesting. Your financial support will help us do this work.

Membership benefits include:

• One free City Fruit class of your choice.
• $5 off additional City Fruit classes
• Coordination of fruit donations to local organizations and families
• Semi-annual members-only events with speakers, information, Q&A and fruit/jam tasting
• Monthly newsletter with tree care reminders, news, member stories, and recipes
• “Urban Orchard” yard sign

Learn more about it here.

Jessica Johnson of Mission: Sustainable did a great interview with Gail Savina on the ins and outs of City Fruit…where we came from, where we’re at, and where we hope to go. Even if you know all about us, it’s great to read such a good interview and renew your enthusiasm!

We created a couple of very short promotional videos to help communicate City Fruit’s mission. They’re short & simple.

As part of it, we created a Youtube channel to host our videos.

We hope to create more in the coming year. You can watch both of them below.

A big thanks to the volunteers who worked hard to create both of these videos.