As my few remaining apples drop from my apple tree in the back garden, I came to wonder what everyone is doing with their spare apples/plums/pears this time of year. One of my colleagues at work discovered an abandoned apple orchard in North County Dublin in the back of an old, abandoned institution. She has harvested a good few apples and has made some beautiful desserts from them.

There must be loads of abandoned orchards and trees which go un-harvested throughout Ireland. This is a true waste while we continue to buy the same old varieties at the shops: golden delicious, cox and pink lady. Some of these orchards must contain some of the traditional Irish apples, most of which never go to mar

ket.

A friend of mine has an abundant-fruiting plum tree and last week she gave me five pounds of juicy, soft plums. They weren’t great for eating but I made 10 pots of delicious plum jam which is great tasting on toast and in chicken dishes. She also gave me six pounds of cooking apples which I turned into apple chutney. My payment to her for these ingredients was a pot of jam and a pot of chutney. A modest price for such great, pesticide-free produce!

Last year, I drove by a house with a cardboard box out front saying, ‘Please take’. It was full of unwanted cooking apples. Needless to say, it didn’t stay full for long. I applaud this individual’s sense of community and desire to reduce waste. I encourage others to take similar action.

This got me to wonder how we can link people through social media…if I can produce great tasting desserts and jams from free ingredients, what can we create if we harvest these unwanted fruits? I believe that we should start a movement where individuals who have surplus fruits share with those who would like to eat them or use them as ingredients. I have tried to tweet about this, but we need more people who are willing to get involved. I propose that people who wish to share their fruit post on Twitter what they have and where they are and use the hashtag, #fruitshare. This simple mechanism might work to match surplus with people who would put this wonderful Irish fruit to good use.

Why leave fruit rot when you can #fruitshare?!

Please share your ideas about other ways to share surplus fruit!