Village Harvest

This is a fun day of physical labor out doors that is creating community, doing something for home owners who can’t or don’t want to pick their fruit, and give to people who can use the extra fruit.
As a volunteer, I have recently become involved in an expansion planning group, and we are going to be doing harvests soon in San Mateo County, and Berkeley.
One thing I like about the mission. There is no lofty, «We’re saving the world» type of idealism. The founder said that he knew some people who wanted to find free fruit for preserves, and he started noticing all of these full trees in his community. He just asked if he could pick them. «Pretty quickly we went from a few bags of fruit in the trunk of our car, to being the largest single donor of our kind to the food bank system.»
My favorite part of the pick? What we call «Quallity Control». To make sure we aren’t picking bad fruit.
So, if you’re a homeowner with a fruit tree that produces too much for you & your family, Give us a call!

Good use of those unused fruit.

I really like volunteer at village harvest! I volunteered with them with a separate group and just pull together my friends to join them.
Rather it’s picking fruits from orchard or going house-​to-​house, it’s for great cause!
I never seem a persimmon tree until I volunteer with them a couple years back. Picking citrus, persimmon, and cherries are one of those experience you won’t forget.

This was a lot of fun. Best volunteer work I’ve ever done. We went to 4 homes in the Moutain View and Los Altos area. Some places had big trees, some had small ones, some had multiple fruit trees. The staff were very well organized and prepared with all the equipment. The fruit smelled delicious. It was a fun way to start the morning and help the community.

Great fun and an efficient use of community resources!
Numerous opportunities throughout the bay area on different days and times, and you don’t need to be a muscle man to help. (Though they do need some to lug around the boxes of fruit.)
Pick extra fruit from backyards, give to food banks. What a simple and amazingly effective idea. Every day spent picking produces thousands of pounds of fruit — do the math, hundreds of people are being fed. The peninsula used to be apricot orchards — and the remnants of that are left in backyards and estates throughout.
Village harvest provides all the equipment — orchard ladders, buckets, boxes, fruit pickers, so all you need to do is show up and have fun helping the community.

A non profit volunteer organization that benefits the Santa Clara County, providing food for the poor and harvesting/​picking services for the elderly. When the elderly cannot pick their own fruit from their trees on their property and it is too much to harvest, they can contact VH. VH will come out and harvest the fruit and donate it to local charities to distribute to the poor.
Everyone benefits, the poor receives, the fruit, the elderly will have a clean yard, the volunteers get free fruit that they picked and a feeling of helping the community.
I volunteer with the Mountain View group, they harvest the 1^st and 3^rd Sunday of the month. 9−12pm. (times vary). Met at 8:45am at 204 Stierlin Rd., MV, parallel to Moffett Blvd. at the Mountain View, Community Services Agency Building.
Around 7 of us visited 3 homes and harvested around 500lbs. of apples and asian pears. We carpool to the homes. Pick the fruits, with tarping, pole pickers, ladders and by hand. We sort and separate the perfect fruit from the marred then take all back to the CSA. VH offers their volunteers gloves, water and snacks. Wear long sleeves, hats, sunscreen, and wear clothes that can get dirty.
Harvest schedule and contact info.