Orange Picking

Orange Blossom Trail. Orange County. Town of Tangerine. Orange Groves. The Orange Peal. You get the idea, Central Florida is home to a ton of oranges and orange groves. What has happened is that with urban sprawl, many of these orange groves have been broken up into lots and private homes built which are surrounded by these trees with no laborers to collect the fruit. Well, a service oriented teacher at Cypress Creek, Nicolle Boujaber contacted the Society of St. Andrews to join us in getting these oranges in the hands of the needy. This is how it worked. She took her 9th Grade Global Studies class on a field trip to Mt. Dora to glean oranges from trees and she invited Ms. Berney, Ms. Dye, and my self to go with her. So we picked oranges for about 3 hours and collected the huge amount that was piled up in the last picture.
This fruit will go directly to a food bank or to churches to distribute to the needy. According to Becky from the Society of St. Andrews, for every pound of food collected, three people will be fed. If these oranges had not been collected, they would have gone to waste! To waste! She explained that a huge amount of food goes to waste everyday in the United States that could be used to feed people everywhere. I am so glad I got invited to go, but the more I think about it, the more I feel more could be done.