Rotary First Harvest : How We Work

Donation Stories - Apple Harvest
A young Americorp volunteer walked alongside a Yakima area orchard where fruit was literally dropping, un-harvested, from the trees. Her initial reaction to the sight was simply “That’s not right.” Within days, the orchard became the center of one of the largest food recovery projects undertaken by Rotary First Harvest.

The volunteer was on her way to Northwest Harvest’s Yakima distribution center to help sort food. She mentioned the orchard when she arrived and soon the staff was able to locate the grower’s telephone number. NWH-Yakima immediately called RFH with the information and asked if we could help.

The grower had sold the land to an educational non-profit that was not in a position to commercially harvest the orchard. The orchard, declared a Washington “Centennial Farm”, had eight acres of old-fashioned Red and Golden Delicious trees groaning under the weight of this year’s crop. The trees were planted more than 30 years ago, and in recent years the fruit from the trees has become unmarketable – not due to lack of flavor or texture (both of which are superior to more recent varieties) – but because the apples are not red enough. The grower was delighted with the prospect of having his apples picked for food banks, rather than rotting in the orchard.

It was obvious that the potential donation was much larger than could be gleaned by volunteers. This was a job for professionals. RFH contacted several past donors in the apple industry in search of a picking crew that could harvest the entire orchard. After a few days, Tim Trammel of Inland Joseph Fruit Company in Wapato, WA helped us find a picking crew that was ready and willing to help. With the crew in place and scheduled to start in a few days, we needed to find 400 wooden bins to use for the field harvest.

After several calls and office visits, Roger Strand of Strand Fruit offered to loan us the wooden bins. The bins were located in another orchard several miles away from ours, and would need to be brought in to the orchard. With only a day to go before the picking crew would start working, we needed to find companies who could help. Larson Fruit, Strand Fruit and Inland Joseph all pitched in to loan us the use of “straddle carriers” that are used in the industry to haul bins from place to place. Soon, hundreds of bins were being brought to the orchard – the first set arriving just one half hour before the picking crew arrived for their first day of work.

The crew quickly filled hundreds of bins (each holding roughly 950 pounds of apples) within the first three days. The full bins were staged and prepared for pickup as empty bins continued to be brought in to the site.

Soon, more than 230 bins were ready and waiting to be picked up, which brought us to the next piece of the puzzle. The orchard road was too narrow for straddle carriers to negotiate fully laden, so we had to find smaller trucks to do the job. More visits and phone calls led us to Roche Fruit and Oak Harbor Freight Lines. Between them, Roche and Oak Harbor made 15 trips to the orchard in one long day to move the bins to a temporary storage facility provided by Inland Joseph.

Once the apples were in storage, we worked with Oak Harbor, Peninsula Trucking and Skagit Valley College’s Driver Training Program to distribute the apples to our partner organizations throughout Washington State. Ultimately, more than a half million pounds of apples made their way from from the orchard in Yakima, WA to men, women and especially children across Washington State who are living in poverty, rather than wasting away at the bottom of an orchard.

This donation was a community effort. If any one of the donors had not been able to help, the entire process would have ended. For example, if the bins weren’t delivered to the orchard in time to be filled, the picking crew would have had no option but to look for work elsewhere. Without trucks to haul the full bins to the warehouse, there would have been no room for additional empty bins to be brought in. And certainly without a trained crew, very little of the fruit could have been picked.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the story is how willing everyone was to help during their busiest and most frantic time of the year; it was as though people just found a way to get involved – not because it was easy, but because it was something they really believed in and wanted to do. Rotary First Harvest is proud to have been a small part of this donation.

MORE DONATION STORIES
Frozen Carrots	Apple Harvest	Fresh Carrots