Supervise the harvest#

Your main concern during the pick is your volunteers; make sure they are comfortable and safe!

We encourage cooperation among volunteers. Rotate roles for everyone involved (holding the ladder, picking the fruit, weighing the fruit, clean-up, etc.)

Do not forget the most important step: make the most of picking and enjoy the experience! Some other things to keep in mind when supervising a pick:

  • Each harvest is different. Sometimes the trees are full of fruit, but it can also happen that a gust of wind made everything fall overnight. One can never know. Keep your head up and focus on how to remediate the situation. Help the volunteers keep their spirits up and stay optimistic.

  • Each group of volunteer pickers is different. The dynamics vary greatly from one group to another. If volunteers are reluctant to take initiative, you can suggest that they climb or hold the ladder, pick up fallen fruit during harvesting, sort fruit, etc.

  • If you have a camera, we encourage you to take photos of the harvest and send them to us (info@lesfruitsdéfendus.org), or to post them and tag us on Facebook (Les Fruits Défendus Montréal) or tag us on Instagram (FruitsDefendus) #fruitsdefendus. However, please make sure that all volunteers give their approval before you start photographing.

  • See Annex 3 for more information on health and safety when picking.

Picks generally lasts two hours. Sometimes it takes less time to harvest the fruit, and sometimes two hours is not enough time to collect all the fruit. We do our best to harvest as much as we can in the timeframe we allow, but we can’t always save all the fruit! For this reason, after two hours of harvesting, the material must be packed up and volunteers must be ready to part ways.

When two hours is not enough to collect all the fruit, it is sometimes possible to continue the harvest if the following conditions are met:

  • You must be absolutely certain that there are no other harvests scheduled in the same area after your pick, and that the equipment you are using isn’t scheduled to be used by another pick-leader after your harvest.

  • You must be certain that the beneficiary organization will still be open at the time you arrive with the fruit.

  • You must be certain that the equipment point will still be open at the time you will be returning the equipment.

  • You must be certain that the volunteers want to continue beyond the two hours scheduled. They should not feel obligated to stay!

  • You must be certain that you are welcome to stay longer than agreed time on the tree property – i.e., you must have permission from the tree owner to stay longer.

It’s a good idea to announce the end of the pick in an encouraging manner, once you see that the rhythm is beginning to slow down (ex.: “Just so you know, we can pick for 10 more minutes and then we need to start packing up.”).

Once the fruit has been picked, ask a few volunteers to help weigh the fruit. Include the weight of freshly dropped fruit, but keep this fruit in a separate bag to avoid mixing it with the fruit picked from the branches. Once weighed, ask volunteers to help divide the fruit into three equal parts (excluding the freshly dropped fruit): one third for the beneficiary organization, one third for the tree owner, and one third for all of the volunteer pickers. Further divide the volunteer pickers’ share among all volunteers (including you, the pick-leader). Portions don’t have to be precisely equal, but please do try to be fair to everyone.

Record the total weight and the weights of the divided portions of fruit on the post-harvest form found in the pick binder. You will use this to update the information in our Saskatoon database.

Deliver the fruit reserved for the owner, or leave it for them at the agreed upon place.

Offer to divide the freshly dropped fruit between volunteers emphasizing the precautions. Ensure that everyone is aware of the contamination risks which they can incur.

Ask for help putting ladders and other equipment into the trailer and make one last overview to make sure everything is clean and tidy. The site should be as clean, if not cleaner, than when you first arrived!

Thank the volunteers, and let them depart happily with their fruit.