Suzanne's Mom's Blog

How great an idea is this? Somerville’s League of Urban Canners gleans neglected fruits from city lots and neighbors’ trees and turns them into jellies, jams, and preserves.

Writes Kathleen Weldon in the Boston Globe, “The group is the brainchild of Sam Katz-Christy of Somerville, who was struck by inspiration last fall after receiving 10 pounds of plums from a neighbor who happened to have an unusually productive backyard tree. Armed with little more than a cookbook and a bit of courage, he and his family preserved their windfall in glistening Mason jars. The committed locavore, who commutes by bike to his job in Cambridge’s Central Square, began to notice just how much unused fruit was hiding in plain sight among the squares and one-way streets he traveled. His daily rides became a treasure hunt.

“After recruiting a posse of workers from his network of food-loving friends, he began knocking on doors, offering an unusual deal to the owners of neglected one-tree orchards: the League would pick their crop, can the harvest, and give residents back 10 percent of the results. The volunteers keep the rest.

“The initiative has proven remarkably successful. More than 220 sites are currently listed in the League’s database, representing more than 3,500 pounds of collected fruit. …

“Though at first the League expected to reap mostly apples and grapes, soon it became clear that Somerville, Cambridge, and Jamaica Plain were rich with ripe possibilities from mulberries to pears, raspberries to quince. A single tree in Harvard Square yielded 245 pounds of apricots, which turned into countless jars of jam.” Read more.

Suzanne loved the mulberries growing in our neighborhood when she was about five. I wonder how we might get our hands on mulberry preserves.

Mulberry season is long past, but there’s still plenty of produce out there, as evidenced by the hardy farmstands at the farmers market today.