From Backyard Fruit Trees to a Community Gleaning Network
By Syrus Tator, Girl Scout Gold Award Recipient
Syrus is a college freshman from Vallejo who recently completed her Girl Scout Gold Award to revitalize, strengthen and make sustainable gleaning efforts to get food that would otherwise go to waste to people who can use it. The Gold Award is the highest award a Girl Scout can achieve. Here, she shares about her project.
Syrus (left), and Jesse collect produce at the Vallejo Farmers Market
Last fall, I began working to rebuild the Solano Gleaning Initiative as my Girl Scout Gold Award project. Gleaning is the process of collecting food that would otherwise go unused and getting it to people who can use it. In our case, that means harvesting excess fruit from backyard trees and recovering produce from local farmers markets that might otherwise go to waste.
When I started the project, I knew there were fruit trees throughout Solano County producing more than their owners could possibly use. I also knew there were people in our community who could use that food. My goal was to help connect those two things.
I started by organizing volunteer teams to harvest backyard fruit trees. Homeowners contact us when they have fruit ready to pick, and volunteers come out to harvest it. Homeowners can keep whatever they would like, volunteers are welcome to take produce they can use, and the remaining harvest is donated to Food is Free Bay Area for distribution in the community.
The project grew beyond what I originally expected.
In November, we added weekly produce recovery at the Vallejo Farmers Market. Each Saturday, we bring bins to farmers who expect to have produce left at the end of the market that won’t last until their next market day. We return at the end of the market, collect and weigh the produce, and bring it back for distribution through Food is Free.
Through both backyard harvests and farmers market recovery, the Solano Gleaning Initiative has rescued more than 12,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables in about 10 months.
But the number of pounds rescued isn’t the part of the project I am most proud of.
The most important thing has been building a community around the work. Homeowners have called us back when another tree is ready. Farmers have gotten to know our volunteers and save produce for us. Volunteers who started by coming to one harvest have returned again and again. Our harvests have also given high school students a way to earn community service hours, and Girl Scout troops and other groups have come out to harvest together.
We’ve also developed a partnership with Forstr, another local gleaning organization. Because they primarily harvest in Dixon, Vacaville and surrounding areas, we refer homeowners and harvest opportunities to each other depending on location and volunteer availability. Rather than duplicating efforts, we’re able to help more fruit get harvested throughout the county.
My Gold Award project was never intended to end when I finished my award. We are building the structure that will allow the Solano Gleaning Initiative to continue, including volunteer harvest leads, a farmers market recovery team, and community members who can help guide and support the program.
And we need more people to join us.
There are lots of ways to help. Volunteers can come to an occasional backyard harvest, help collect produce at the Vallejo Farmers Market on Saturdays, lead harvest teams, help with volunteer coordination and outreach, or support the program in other ways. You don’t have to make a huge commitment to make a difference.
One of the things I’ve learned through this project is how much food already exists in our community. Sometimes the challenge isn’t producing more — it’s making sure that the food we already have doesn’t go to waste.
The Solano Gleaning Initiative is one small way our community can make that connection.
Get Involved
Students and groups are welcome! Harvests are a great opportunity for high school students to earn community service hours, and youth groups, Girl Scout troops, service clubs and other community groups can arrange to participate together.
If you have a fruit tree producing more than you can use, please use the link below. Depending on where you live and volunteer availability, Solano Gleaning Initiative or a gleaning partner may be able to help get that fruit harvested and into the community.
Volunteer with the Solano Gleaning Initiative
Fill out this form if you have a fruit tree that needs harvesting
Questions or interested in helping lead the program? Contact gleaning@fifbayarea.org
The spring garden tour will begin at 9 am at Avant Community Garden in Benicia with a talk on healthy soil from “CompostGal” Lori Caldwell. Itinerary pick up will be from 9-11 am.
An evolving food forest garden and greywater system installed as part of Sustainable Solano’s 2022-23 Permaculture Design Certificate course. Students transformed the front yard with a rain-capturing swale and planted berms with native and pollinator-supporting plants. The west side yard’s passionfruit vines and fruit tree guilds are watered by a laundry-to-landscape greywater system. The monarch butterfly-hosting back gardens were designed by Soilogical, nurtured with specially prepared compost, and supported by a Water Service Irrigation design created as part of a Sustainable Solano irrigation class. The site’s current steward, Heath Griffith of Grow with the Flow, cultivates edible landscapes with flowers and medicinal herbs, with an eye towards community engagement and ecological justice. An herb spiral was created with bricks repurposed from the chimney of the circa 1850s historic home, retaining walls were built from pieces of historic on-site stables, and patios were made from slate and brick on-site. The east side yard (in development) is watered with both a rain-capturing swale and a laundry-to-landscape system. Displays feature the historic aspects of the home; its background and ongoing tradition of art, design, and healing; information about the Ohlone Sogorea Te Indigenous Land Trust and rematriation of Carquin land; and various permaculture systems and landscape elements.
Visit this native plant garden and see what 30+ years of gardening dedication to native plants can create. Welcoming shade plants and green grasses abound under thriving and tall buckeye and big leaf maple trees that gain water from harvested roof rain flowing to a dry creek bed. A mature manzanita row lines the side yard walkway. Feel the intimate wildlife habitat backyard space as you find small birds flying between the branches of tall native shrubs such as the fragrant mock orange, red-blooming spice bush and the heart-shaped leaves of the western redbud. Sun-loving native perennials border a native grass lawn, and alum root hugs the shade of the understory. The owners are grateful for the relaxed and comfortable habitat that native plants provide for them.
The view of this welcoming tiered front garden begins right at street level with sidewalk appeal of a chaparral-inspired garden including evergreen manzanita, easy-to-grow buckwheat, and native grasses. Step down to the next tier to find a cozy deck space to sit within the garden and share the space with emerging caterpillars, hummingbirds and native pollinators as the seasons unfold. Tiered terraces and integrated drainage allow for meadow and sage, milkweed, and strawberry groundcover plantings to absorb stormwater while supporting plant health. View coffeeberry, monkeyflower, penstemon, and salvia which attract and support additional wildlife in this habitat-rich garden. Mature fruit trees, perennial edibles and vegetable beds combine with the abundance of native plantings for a harmonious full habitat that supports biodiversity and spills into the back yard as well. This garden family truly feels a calm connection with nature when they are in their garden space.
Come and visit this wild-like garden to gaze upon the beautiful annual flowering natives such as the yellow and white tidy tips and the purples of lupine in the front garden patch. Travel through the side yard of orange California poppies, stepping rounds and a dry creek bed that collects rainwater, to the large backyard garden that flourishes with a thriving tapestry of wildlife-supporting native plants. Verdant grasses and spring ephemerals surround a bird bath that California Towhees are happy to visit. Tall shrubs such as rosa californica or the keystone tree coast live oak have become safe places for nests of breeding small birds. Flowering colorful annuals are servicing the many pollinators such as hover flies and bumblebees that visit the flowers for pollen. This habitat refuge is where the family connects with the wonders of nature. The owner collects seeds of many native plant species to continue the annual flowering habitat year after year.
Loma Vista Farm is a program of the Vallejo City Unified School District in partnership with the Friends of Loma Vista Farm, a community-based nonprofit organization.
Food forest garden and greywater system installed as part of Sustainable Solano’s 2021 
An evolving food forest garden and greywater system installed as part of Sustainable Solano’s 2022-23 
Morningside Botanical Bounty food forest was created as part of the 
We are incredibly grateful for the generous support of our funders. Magic Cabinet is supporting this year’s tour through its sponsorship.
The Process: From Ideas to Sketches
This mural project and Sustainable Solano’s Fairfield air quality work is part of California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment — particularly in disadvantaged communities.
