Organization shares bounty

As cars whizzed by on a crisp, early Sunday morning on Buena Vista Street, Marie Boswell shuffled a ladder and boxes to the backyard of Burbank resident Allison Bluestein before sticking a sign on the front lawn that read “Fruit being picked by Food Forward.

This all-volunteer grass-roots organization gleans fruit off trees on properties and donates 100% of the bounty to food pantries in an effort to fight urban hunger, said Boswell, one of the fruit picking coordinators.

Sunday’s fruit pick involved a tall grapefruit tree that yielded about a half-dozen produce boxes of fruit.

Boswell showed three volunteers how to attach and work a fruit picker, a garden tool with a basket-like rake attached on a wooden pole, to pull down the fruit easily.

“It’s great that they’re willing to take a couple hours out of their Sunday and do something this helpful,” Boswell said about the volunteers.

This isn’t Food Forward’s first time in Burbank. In August, a mini pick yielded close to 1,000 pounds of citrus, tomatoes, herbs and apples, said Food Forward founder Rick Nahmias, who started the organization nine months ago in his Valley Glen neighborhood with a neighbor’s yard and the aid of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

They have teamed up with SOVA (Sustenance, Opportunity, Volunteerism and Advocacy) Community Food and Resource Program, a program of Jewish Family Services in Van Nuys, and MEND or Meet Each Need with Dignity in Pacoima and supplied 60,000 pounds of produce to 30,000 people in Los Angeles since their inception.

Although this grapefruit pick has been smaller than others, the enthusiasm of the volunteers radiated throughout the time spent in Burbank.

“I am determined to get this one,” volunteer Leilani Gushiken said as she was doing her best to grab a stubborn grapefruit near the top of the tree.

Gushiken, a Silver Lake resident who works in post-production at DreamWorks, has been volunteering with a few organizations to see which one sticks.

Food Forward is definitely one she will participate in again, she said.

“This is a really cool organization, because you get to go out and be active; it’s not like you’re going door-to-door asking for donations,” she said.

Cynthia Vrbancic, a coordinator who works at Warner Bros. Studios, volunteered because she wanted to give back to the community.