Finders Keepers: The Urban Found Food Movement
I’ve talked to some friends who think the story on “finding” food in Portland (below) raises some serious ethical issues. What’s your take? Have you never grabbed a ripe fig from a stranger’s yard as you walked down the sidewalk? Would you mind if someone ‘borrowed’ some of your figs?
-Deborah Kane
On the other hand, there is plenty of food to be found that grows on empty lots. For example, everyone in the neighborhood (as well as half the birds in Portland) has harvested delicious figs from the trees at NE Alberta & 20th. Although an empty lot, it's still private property - I think.
My husband was at the Multnomah County building, marriage license in hand, when the person in front of him asked the clerk about the ownership of that exact lot. In return, the man received a printout and walked away. My fiance was supposedly "too focused on our approaching marriage" to ask the man what the heck he found out. In any case, what are the ethical implications of taking food from this empty lot? I can't ask the owner for permission, which is the practice encouraged by urbanedibles.org. All I know is that I'm headed there with a ladder this weekend.
-Laura Ford
FINDERS KEEPERS: REAPING THE HARVEST OF PORTLAND'S "FOUND FOOD" MOVEMENT
Written by Lisa Weiner
For Fall 2007
You just finished a lovely meal and a piece of fruit would make for the perfect ending. Alas, your fruit bowl is empty. More and more Portlanders are solving this problem by reaching over the neighbor’s fence.
Indeed, a new trend growing here in Portland makes picking food right from the tree (or bush, or vine) much more commonplace and closer to home than a once-yearly u-pick outing. The trend is called “found food,” and it encourages us to open our eyes—and minds—to the simple, obvious fact that food is growing all around us, ripe for the picking.
Michael Bunsen’s web site, urbanedibles.org, a self-described “community database of wild food sources in Portland,” is at the center of Portland’s found food movement. The central feature of Bunsen’s site is an interactive map of Portland with flags showing where one can find figs, rosemary, apples, pears, plums and eucalyptus, to name just a few of the 100 food sources listed. Bunsen, a recent PSU graduate with degrees in German and Linguistics, began finding food in earnest five years ago when he was part of the Anarchist Gardening and Gleaning Collective.
He created urbanedibles.org a year ago with the intention that it would be a place for people to share their found food finding outings. The listings range from no-frills—“Walnut tree @ 3803 NE 7th”—to more informative listings, such as “Grapevine @ 4207 N. Albina Ave.—Late fruiting, often you can still pick in December! Incredible unidentified variety. Seedless and green. Rich champagne-like taste.”
Found food challenges our assumptions about food. First of all, it’s free. Moreover, found food is completely democratic (anyone can find or post a source on urbanedibles.org), and it breaks down the divide between supplier and consumer since it’s quite possible to be both—post the raspberry bush on your parking strip, while at the same time searching for a persimmon tree. Finally, found food opens our eyes to the reality that on our way to the grocery store, we are most likely passing all sorts of food sources: pear tree branches hanging over fences, blackberry bushes in the abandoned lot, and walnut trees on the parking strip—lots of food, just waiting to be found.
Of course, even when you are quite aware of the food sources that exist around you, you might not have the capacity, time, or interest to harvest it. This is where Katy Kolker, Sarah Cogan, and their Portland Fruit Tree Project (PFTP) come in. Kolker, who works at Growing Gardens, and Cogan, who works at Zenger Farms, became aware of how many fruit tree owners regarded their trees as a nuisance rather than a benefit and let the fruit drop to the ground to rot. Seeing as how fruit trees are so plentiful in Portland, they decided to create the PFTP in order to help reap the harvests of Portland’s many fruit trees.
Owners of trees can contact the PFTP, which then organizes “harvesting parties” of volunteers to come and harvest the fruit. The harvesters make use of the food either by eating it fresh, canning it, or (this part is in the works) donating it to the Oregon Food Bank. At one gathering, Kolker estimates that the volunteers gathered more than 100 pounds of plums and, one year later, she herself is still eating plum jam from the harvest. Recently, the Portland Fruit Tree Project has been making an effort to recruit low-income volunteers, to whom organic fruit may otherwise be prohibitively expensive.
The trend of “found food” is as old as agricultural society. In describing the practice, Bunsen and Kolker both mention the idea of “gleaning”—a term used to describe the act of gathering food after the bulk of it has been harvested for market. Its time has come—again—and we here in Portland are lucky to have a committed core of people to lead the way. So, the next time you have a hankering for fresh apple crisp or pumpkin pie, log onto urbanedibles.org and then head on over to your local u-pick—it’s sure to be the least crowded and least expensive one in town.
Read some ethical guidelines for food finding here.
Lisa Weiner is a Portland-based nurse practitioner and freelance writer.
Comments
This article was so inspiring! It got me to finally try the fruit off my arbutus unedo (Strawberry Tree). I'd read they're edible and even made into preserves and wines, but had never eaten one. The taste was meally, but interesting. I gathered what ripe fruit I had and knocked on the door of a neighbor to ask if I could gather some off her tree as well.
Not having a recipe, but having made lots of preserves before, I added some sugar and a few other things, cooked the fruit for a bit and ended up with delicious tasting results. Having my co-workers and friends try and guess what the fruit is has been so much fun. I can't wait until next year to experiment more with this unique fruit!
Anyone else out there cooking with arbutus care to share some recipes with me?
Posted by: Julia | October 29, 2007 8:25 PM
The conscientious gleaners who ask and share are doing a wonderful service all around. Others fall a good deal short of that.
I live in a modest area of SE Portland, south of Foster, not especially lovely and fairly neglected by the city. But one thing I enjoy is walking down the overgrown, unpaved lanes (aka alleys) between the backyards nearby, chatting with a neighbor in their garden, seeing what is blooming in the alley, what’s growing where, who’s doing what in their yards, and occasionally picking a ripe fig or pear or apple or berry, or even a fragrant lilac, off a long-neglected untended tree.
Many of our neighbors enjoy this quiet morning or evening ritual. The fruits that stay high on the trees provide welcome food for countless birds even into winter. But a few times each spring and summer, some unseen hand strikes at night, and the next morning, we stroll out to find trees and bushes in the lanes and even parking strips in the nabe stripped of flowers and fruits.
The entrepreneurial scavenger who helped him/herself is probably pleased with their “gleaning” score. But to those who live here it just looks like the great American tradition of helping ourselves to the abundance in other people's fields and lands, neither neighborly nor honorable.
Taking just enough for the moment, gratefully and thoughtfully, is one thing. Coming in and clearing a whole tree – or an entire lane -- in one fell swoop is quite another.
Some say “finders keepers” in the Edible Portland issue this spring. I was taught “finders keepers” was a sleazy excuse for stealing but maybe that's a dated concept. Still, it's hard to see how coming into someone else’s neighborhood and helping oneself differs from a localized version of helping ourselves to other people’s land, or forests, or oil. It’s there, we want it, it's ours.
Whatever virtuous cloak we try to wrap around this odd sense of self-serving entitlement, from another view, it looks a whole lot like Manifest Destiny--American entitlement writ small and large: “I take what I want because it's there and I’m entitled, because, hey, that must mean it's mine.”
"Finder's keepers?" Ouch. That was probably Christopher Columbus's mantra, and not exactly a motto to feel virtuous about.
Posted by: Betsy Toll | June 28, 2008 7:16 PM
I have an Arbutus unedo as well and am looking forward to making jam with its fruit this summer/fall. I haven't located a recipe for these yet so I will probably just pick 2 quarts of berries, mash them and mix in a few tablespoons of lemon juice, a box of pectin and 4-6 cups of sugar. I mash my berries and then cook to a gentle boil and stir to gell point. I will water bath can these for 15 minutes or so and keep my fingers crossed.
As an aside I find it really odd that there are no recipes on the net for preserves/jams for Arbutus unedo as it is my understanding that it has a long history as an edible fruit which has been used for this purpose.
Posted by: Deborah Daily | July 4, 2008 11:22 PM