Corn Fed, Apple Fed

With the Fruit Grower Report I'm Susan Allen, on this program we have covered groups that redistribute food like Second Harvest and some that glean, pick remaining produce for food banks so when I heard about City Fruit, a Seattle non-profit that picks backyard fruit and then donates it to food banks, I thought it was a cool concept as well. What got me thinking about this application in our tree fruit regions was a snippet from a online video that reporter Rachel Bell made with Luke Jepperson, Harvest manager for City Fruit :

Jepperson "Some of this can't be donated to the food banks. You know, there's pest damage. Anything that can't be donated for people to eat, we try to find people to press it into cider or get that food to animals. A lot of tree owners, especially apple owners, will call us and be like, 'Oh, we have a lot of fruit but you won't want to pick it because it looks terrible.' But we try to get out the message that there's some sort of productive use for any fruit, whether it be for human consumption or animal consumption or turning it into a tasty cider."

No question it makes great hard cider, because Seattle Cider C made a hard cider using 100 percent City Fruit and donated half the proceeds back to the non-profit. An 1800's Almanac recommended letting pigs glean apple orchards for great tasting pork and a way to stop worm infestation. Dr. Steven Rusk from MSU Department of Animal Science reported that Apples have an energy value similar to corn silage, but with less crude protein and Apples and a pomace can be fed to beef cattle.

Corn Fed, Apple Fed, maybe we are onto something.