With our farming heritage, it’s not that unusual to find homes for sale in Lafayette that include a fruit tree or two. Do you have any in your yard? Pears, for example, are fairly common in Burton Valley since parts of it were once a large pear orchard. Some of these trees are over a hundred years old and still bear fruit.

One soon to be listed home in Lafayette, though, offers something unique — variety. Its small backyard “orchard” includes several different kinds of fruit trees, including one each of apricot, pear, cherry, peach, apple (2 varieties!), pomegranate, orange and lemon.

This is no farm house. Just a great house in a convenient Lafayette location that comes with an edible plus.

Can you guess which neighborhood the house is located? Stay tuned for the official listing announcement in the next few days.

Harvesting Lafayette’s backyard fruit

If you’re already looking ahead to harvest and wondering how one family could eat that much fruit salad, not to worry. There are plenty of people willing to enjoy some of it, too — family, friends, neighbors, swim team kids, maybe even your dentist. Imagine the line at the lemonade stand when your kids add “organic fruit” to the sign.

A more efficient way to share larger amounts of excess backyard fruit is to work with Urban Farmers, the award-winning Lafayette based nonprofit staffed by volunteers and designed to help organize free neighborhood gleaning efforts to harvest food to share with groups like Loaves and Fishes of Contra Costa County and the Contra Costa Food Bank.

Siamack Sioshansi, Executive Director of Urban Farmers

Even one tree can bear more fruit than a family will willingly consume. So know: You don’t need lots of fruit trees to qualify. Urban Farmers, though, tries to be efficient. You’ll see them gleaning neighbor trees at the same time where possible.

Have you registered your fruit trees yet?

We caught up with Urban Farmers’ Executive Director, Siamack Sioshansi, at the 2012 John Montgomery Garden Tour.

Sioshansi explained that the process starts when you let Urban Farmers know that you have fruit trees, an online registration process that doesn’t actually obligate you to share your fruit in any given year. When Urban Farmers contacts you later, you can decline the help.

The program is relatively new and growing, but Sioshansi’s goals for Urban Farmers are lofty.

“The very first thing is to get a million trees registered,” said Sioshansi, smiling but serious all at once. They already have infrastructure and volunteers, he explained. “Our biggest challenge is to get the word out.”

Here’s how Urban Farmers describes the process:

1. Go to www.theurbanfarmers.org and register your tree(s) with Urban Farmers.
2. When the picking season for your tree’s kind of fruit approaches, Urban Farmers will contact you.
3. Meanwhile, you keep an eye on the tree and let Urban Farmers know when the fruit is ripe.
4. Urban Farmers has the ladders, truck, know-how and insurance. They’ll coordinate a gleaning day with you.
5. Urban Farmers volunteers harvest your fruit, leave what you want and shares the rest with those in need.

Everyone wins, but you have to take the first step: Please consider registering your trees!