la.foodblogging

Our orange tree is plopping mushy citrus bombs all over the backyard, and it’s gross. So I borrowed a ladder, picked what I could, and spent an hour making juice for our pregnant friends craving citrus. No really, I’m serious. As I was working, I kept thinking about a little piece I saw in last month’s Ready Made Magazine, about an outfit called Fallen Fruit. They can explain it better than I can, so here’s this cut and paste from their manifesto:

FALLEN FRUIT is a mapping and manifesto for all the free fruit we can find. Every day there is food somewhere going to waste. We encourage you to find it, tend and harvest it. If you own property, plant food on your perimeter. Share with the world and the world will share with you. Barter, don’t buy! Give things away! You have nothing to lose but your hunger!

This story isn’t exactly a scoop, last month, there was a story about them on NPR’s Day-to-Day, but then again, I’m not a journalist. As I was working up a sweat making OJ though, I kept thinking, “heck, I should just get that group over here and let someone else clean the tree.” Unfortunately for my anti-perspirant, I love orange juice, and my wife would literally murder me if I invited strangers with a manifesto to come the yard.

Does fruit that hangs over a property line become public property? That’s their position, but I can’t decide if it’s my position or not. There’s a real, “eating off other people’s plates” quality to the practice of finding and mapping “public fruit,” but their point is a good one: this is Southern California, fruit grows like crazy here, don’t waste food. That I can swallow.

By Why We Type (see more of his posts).