BOULDER, Colorado — The fall harvest season is underway in Colorado, with apple trees full of ripe fruit. Trees can produce hundreds of pounds of fruit, which can be too much for some homeowners.
Catherine Corona owns a home in rural north Boulder and has two apple trees. She said managing the amount of fruit from her trees is too big of a job for just one person, so she called the Community Fruit Rescue to help her.
Community Fruit Rescue and its volunteers harvest fruit off trees that otherwise would cause problems for homeowners.
"A lot of [the apples] would just go to waste," Corona said. "It would just fall to the ground and rot if they weren't here."
Rotting apples aren't only wasteful but also attract unwanted wildlife like bears and mountain lions. While harvesting the apples, volunteer Abby Benson found bear scat within a few yards of one of the trees.
Benson said she has been harvesting with Community Fruit Rescue for three years and that she likes helping homeowners and sharing the abundance of fruit.
The group donates its harvests to local schools, food shares and wild animal sanctuaries. They've harvested more than 7,000 pounds of fruit this year alone. The organization also offers tree care in the off-season.
Anyone in the Boulder area with trees they need harvested, or anyone interested in harvesting can reach out to the organization on their website: www.fruitrescue.org.
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