When she moved to south Berkeley four years ago from Ohio, Asiya Wadud was astounded by the abundance of fruit teeming, and then rotting on her neighbors trees.

 So she gathered up the courage to knock on their doors and ask them about all their unpicked fruit. 

Much to her surprise folks were extraordinarily generous, even relieved to see the excess fruit harvested and enjoyed.When she decided to organize her urban foraging efforts Asiya was also surprised that no one had started such an effort before.

 

“Lots of folks support the idea of community-building but few are passionate enough to take the time and responsibility necessary to make the connections” she explained. In the spring of '08 Asiya, who supports herself as a bartender at Alice Water's reknowned Chez Panisse, restaurant, created Forage Oakland, the blog on which she details her urban foraging adventures and through which she now fosters a growing network of urban gardeners anxious to barter their excess backyard bounty. 

 

So far, several hundred people have registered, and Asiya spends more time than she ever imagined bicycling around East Bay neighborhoods. “I see it as building a network of people who are trying to be more self-reliant” says Wadud. “There really is a sense of urban isolation when you discover that people dont even know what to do with their excess fruit. Meanwhile, someone two houses down might be so happy to have what is going to waste in their backyard. We just dont have the sort of community in place yet to allow that exchange to happen.”

 

While Asiya is busy with the community-building aspect of her service she also enjoys the fruits of her own collection efforts. Between May and October of last year, she didn't buy any fruit from grocery stores or farmers' markets at all. Instead, she found plenty of healthy sustenance by scouring a map of forageable food sources she had scoped out from her own neighborhood. 

 

By acting wih courage on behalf of her community, Asiya has managed to connect herself with the urban landscape and changed her own eating habits in a profound way. These days, when she’s making a roast chicken she knows just where to find wild rosemary. If she wants a cup of tea she just cycles down to the corner where the lemon verbena grows. “It's more exciting to eat when you have this immediate connection with your food.” she says.

 

Asiya’s Forgage Oakland also serves as a prototype for all sorts of similar projects now being initiated around the country. These projects, including one of the very earliest, a public fruit mapping project called Fallen Fruit started by three Los Angeles artists in 2004, now challenge us to revision the nature of the Urban Landscape. Their goal is not just to show people how to find healthy surplus fruit in their own neighborhood but also how to build a sustainable community around that shared resource.