Free Fruit in Falkirk

While walking my dog along a line of trees on our daily route I noticed some fruit on the ground which looked a bit like cherries. Initially I thought the colour just didn't look right and the size might also be wrong. After a week of checking, the red fruit was getting darker and the fruit in the tree was reaching cherry size. While discussing this with my brother at this year’s Big Tent festival he suggested that if it looks like a cherry, and it grows on a tree, it is more likely than not to be a cherry. I don't know why my brother's advice was any reassurance as he has as much knowledge of the health and safety of dubious fruit as I have - and he didn't even see it. However, on my next walk I decided to take the risk. I soon discovered that I had unlimited access to very tasty cherries at no expense. I walk the dog three times a day and could have a handful of cherries straight off the tree every time I passed. I even brought a sample for my wife and she had a taste without thinking I was trying to poison her. For about three weeks I would have an impromptu taste and kept on trying to remember to take a box to collect more than a handful. Then one day the tree went from heaving with cherries to none. Overnight every cherry was cleared from the tree. There must be a stage where the cherry reaches a particular colour to signals to birds that it is time to gorge on the fruit.

This is not the only free fruit I have gathered on my daily walks. On the railway line near my house there is an established rhubarb clump which I can take the odd stock from as I pass. I have also noticed two trees which looks like small plums, although I didn't try them this year.

You will be happy to know that this article is not just to let you know what I get up to while I walk my dog. In Sheffield there is a group of urban harvesters who have recorded the locations of all the fruit trees in their community and harvest them to provide free fruit to schools, community groups and individuals. There is no reason why something similar could not happen in Falkirk. As my story demonstrates there is an abundance of free fruit in Falkirk if you know where to look.

Abundance is a project to harvest the seasonal glut of local fruit like apples, pear and plums. Each year hundreds of fruit trees go unpicked either because people don’t notice them, may not be physically able to harvest them or there are just too many fruits at one time. Abundance is a team of volunteers who have been helping harvest city fruit and redistributing the surplus to the community on a non-profit basis. Between August and the end of October volunteers have the pleasure of eating fresh, ripe fruit from the tree, finding out more about urban food growing and working alongside enthusiastic people of all ages. www.growsheffield.com/pages/groShefAbund.html