Crowdsourcing urban foraging

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While walking home from the store last week, I noticed fruit on a couple of big, red-leafed trees. It looked like cherries, hundreds of them, just hanging from these trees outside a dry cleaner’s. Since this sidewalk gets very little foot traffic (and since most of the locals consume more crystal meth than fresh fruit), I figured these would go to waste if I didn’t pick them myself.

So I picked one, took it home and did the research. It turned out to be a cherry plum, not poisonous and (in the paved desert that is Reno) quite a rare treasure.

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You’ve probably noticed a fruit tree, berry bush or some other food source in your own area, and you probably weren’t able to harvest all the food yourself. That’s where Neighborhood Fruit comes in. Log in and “register” your fruit source, and it’ll be shared with other foragers and fruit lovers in your area. They’ve even got an iPhone app for the freegan-on-the-go.

But it ain’t perfect. In fact, once I registered my cherry plum find, I noticed that it is the only source listed in the entire state of Nevada. True, not much grows out here in the desert–but here’s hoping that as things start to bloom and grow, more people will share their bounty.

Got something to share? Want more information? Please, support this excellent project:

Neighborhood Fruit