{"id":1491,"date":"2014-02-07T17:08:12","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T17:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cucsj.org\/?p=1491"},"modified":"2014-02-07T17:08:12","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T17:08:12","slug":"the-magic-of-neighborhood-fruit-picking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cucsj.org\/es\/2014\/02\/07\/the-magic-of-neighborhood-fruit-picking\/","title":{"rendered":"La magia de la recogida de fruta en el barrio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Post By: Lan Ngo, Community Outreach Coordinator, Garden to Table & CommUniverCity<\/em><\/p>\n

I peered upwards at the 25 foot orange tree and jabbed my seven-foot-long picker through the prickly branches to pry out a juicy half-pounder I had just spotted.\u00a0 This is a typical Saturday for me, and as an outreach coordinator with CommUniverCity<\/a> and Garden to Table<\/a>, I lead weekly fruit pickings where local volunteers harvest their neighbors fruit trees (with their consent, of course) and distribute them to other families through local food programs. My favorite part of this \u201cjob\u201d is not how this program increases access to local, organic fruit or even how we can pick so much fruit so simply. It’s about the magic that happens\u00a0during<\/i>\u00a0the fruit picking.<\/p>\n

As I\u00a0stood there, jabbing determinedly at the orange tree, I began to notice a beautiful interaction unfold. Two volunteers, Jos\u00e9 and\u00a0M\u00f4ng Ho\u00e0i\u00a0began\u00a0teaching each other Spanish and Vietnamese! Jos\u00e9 is a Mexican-American 11th grader at San Jos\u00e9 Academy, and M\u00f4ng Ho\u00e0i is a 40-something-year-old mother who immigrated to the States from Vietnam ten years ago. They began to count one through five: “m\u1ed9t, hai, ba, b\u1ed1n, n\u0103m..<\/i>.uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco…”<\/i>\u00a0Jos\u00e9 practiced saying her name correctly, hitting the deep and melodic tones of the Vietnamese language. In return, she learned the Spanish word for friend,\u00a0amigo.\u00a0<\/i>We gleefully ended the picking session with over 200 pounds of oranges and our fingers, hands, and arms covered in sticky juice.<\/p>\n

\"Jose<\/a>
Jose and M\u00f4ng Ho\u00e0i joking around as they pick fruit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jos\u00e9 and M\u00f4ng Ho\u00e0i may live in the same part of downtown San Jos\u00e9, but I don’t think on a regular day either of them would have said hello if they walked past each other on the sidewalk. In fact, on the surface, there are so many things that should separate them: language, age, gender, and ethnicity.\u00a0But this is the magic of fruit picking, the ability to bridge those differences. At the end of every glean, each volunteer takes home a small bag of what they picked. That day, I’m sure they took home a little more than that. A little more pride in their cultural heritage. A few more words in a new language. A little bit of demystification of another ethnic group’s history and experience.<\/p>\n

These fruit gleans are just one part of CommUniverCity\u2019s Crecer de forma sostenible<\/a> program. With funding for Growing Sustainably generously provided by United Way of Silicon Valley, we are also able to provide cooking and gardening education programs, so that young kids can learn the benefits of growing and cooking with fresh produce and even pass this knowledge to their families.<\/p>\n

As complicated and overwhelming as improving the food system in San Jose may seem, there is something profoundly simple about fruit picking. It’s one of my favorite activities at this job. Please sign up at garden2table.org\/calendar<\/a> if you are interested in joining one of our weekly fruit gleanings and experiencing your own magic!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Post By: Lan Ngo, Community Outreach Coordinator, Garden to Table & CommUniverCity I peered upwards at the 25 foot orange tree and jabbed my seven-foot-long picker through the prickly branches 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