Toronto Still, Happily, Not Far From The Tree

By Hamutal Dotan

One of the brighter moments in this week’s epic city council meeting: the City renewed its commitment to a local food procurement policy—one which tries, where possible, to increase the percentage of Ontario produce that is used by City-run food services. (Examples include the meals provided in daycares and nursing homes.)
Most of that food comes from small- and medium-size farms in southern Ontario, but for the past few years we’ve also been doing a better job harvesting some of the produce that grows within Toronto’s own city limits. Now in its fourth season, local non-profit Not Far From The Tree has been recruiting volunteers to pick fruit from the trees and bushes that many Torontonians have but don’t quite know what to do with. At the end of each pick the harvest is split three ways: one-third to the home’s resident, one-third to the volunteer pickers, and one-third to a local non-profit, charity, or shelter that uses the harvest in the meals they provide to those in need. NFFTT is growing rapidly—they’ve doubled the number of neighbourhoods they are picking in this year, and are now in 14 of Toronto’s wards—and are hoping to double last year’s harvest of 19,695 pounds of fruit.
Pictured above: a sketch of one of this year’s first harvests—serviceberries—done by Sheridan illustration student Lindsay Campbell. She’ll be doing a series over the summer, as the pickers work their way through different crops; still on the list for this year: apricots, plums, pears, apples, crabapples, elderberries, sumac, gingko, and black walnut, and possibly a few persimmons as well. Learn more about how to become a picker or register your tree for picking.