Fruit Tree Project

What’s the Fruit Tree Project?

We connect the community through fruit! Every year, so much of the amazing variety that grows here on the Sunshine Coast goes unpicked. Good food falls, rots, and goes to waste. Bears, rats, and other wildlife are attracted in the process.

When animals learn to rely on back yard trees, they become habituated, lose their caution around people, and keep coming back.

We link tree hosts and people wanting to harvest, with a coordinated crew, and ensuring that gatherings are safe and have what’s needed: equipment, vehicles, storage, processing space, and insurance.

We connect back yard fruit trees with volunteer harvesters – decreasing hunger, bear encounters, and waste all at once.

Fruit for all

Would-be food waste becomes education, new skills, connections, mentorships, and food for those in need.

Get involved in the way that works for you.

• Tree hosts register fruit trees & allow volunteers to pick them
• Harvest Leaders coordinate logistics & volunteers
• Pickers harvest fruit, & load it up
• Sorters & Processors sort, chop, package, preserve, & distribute food
• Donors help cover the costs of program coordination, equipment, insurance, and vehicles

We’ve spent a long time slowly building up resources, spaces, mentors, and programs that help us connect, learn, teach, preserve, and share food. The Fruit Tree Project brings in would-be food waste and turns it into something more: education, skill-building, community connections, mentorships, and food access.

Tools and equipment are available in the Tool Library to grow, harvest, and process fruit: pole pickers, orchard ladders, apple presses, etc.

Fruit is shared with families and seniors in need through Foodbox subsidies throughout the harvest season, either whole and fresh, or preserved.

We bring people together to sort and process fruit into jams, syrups, and baked goods in the Tiny Farm Kitchen, teaching traditional skills & food safety.

The Tiny Farm provides a home base for fruit gatherings, workshops, tools, equipment, cold storage, kitchen, and events.

Membership supports our work and keeps you connected with a few perks!

We’re all in this together. Everything we do is community building community. Join us.

We would love to hear from you.