Community Fruit Rescue, a local fruit harvesting organization that aims to reduce fruit waste, is looking to expand its operations to Lyons in the midst of a bumper crop year.

When the group started 10 years ago in 2014, it also was a bumper crop year for fruit. Apples and other fruit, which were bountiful that summer are again bursting off trees because of favorable growing weather, said Melanie Hill, the executive director for Community Fruit Rescue. The wet spring and hot summer this year means fruit trees are stressed and harvesting season is starting early, Hill said.

“So, (the trees) are ripening and dropping fruit early,” Hill said. “We’ve had an overwhelming amount of people reaching out to us for harvest requests.”

The Boulder-based nonprofit organizes neighborhood harvests to prevent local fruit from going to waste while prioritizing fruit sites with notable bear activity. More than 100 people around the region already have contacted the group this year, Hill said.

“We started as a harvest program within Boulder limits because that’s where the highest concentration of fruit trees is and the highest need, and also the most bear activity, because there’s a lot of fruit to choose from,” said Hill. “Our founding members just really wanted to provide (fruit) to people and animals and need, keep it away from bears and just be more productive with it.”

In 2014, the organization was formed by a partnership between 350 Colorado, Boulder Bear Coalition, Boulder Food Rescue and FallingFruit.org, according to its website. The overlapping goal was to “harvest and distribute the surplus urban fruit growing throughout the Boulder region to reduce food waste, minimize greenhouse gas emissions, protect wildlife and direct fresh food to people who need it.”

Community Fruit Rescue and Boulder Bear Coalition were selected as recipients of the 2023 Human-Bear Conflict Reduction Community Grant, which was administered by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

The organization, which was co-founded by the Boulder Bear Coalition, received $35,000 in its second year being awarded the Human-Bear Conflict Reduction grant. It plans to use the funding to expand its reach into other parts of Boulder County.

“We were able to utilize the funds for this year from the last round of funding, and one of the projects we applied for was expanding to smaller mountain communities that have an abundance of fruit trees and notable bear activity, and Lyons was one of those communities,” said Hill. “We are trying to get the word out there to tree stewards who have fruit trees just to better support them and provide that fruit to the community, because it can be a little bit harder to access fresh produce in these smaller mountain towns.”

Tree stewards are community members who put in requests to have fruit picked on their property, according to Hill.

If Community Fruit Rescue continues expanding operations into areas like Longmont and Lyons, the group plans to donate the pickings to the Lyons Emergency and Assistance Fund, or LEAF.

“We try to donate at least 50% of the bounty to food pantries in the area to food insecure families and individuals,” said Hill.

The main food pantries that Community Fruit Rescue currently provides fruit to are Community Food Share in Louisville, Boulder Food Rescue and Longmont Food Rescue.

“I think last season we donated close to 60% to food pantries,” said Hill. “What I love about community fruit rescue is that we have so many different areas of impact for working to fight against food insecurity.”

As to the other fruit, volunteer pickers can take a quarter of the bounty. The rest is donated to local schools if they’re in need and to community events.