The fruit will soon be ripening on neighborhood trees and Lettuce Link wants to make sure none of it goes to waste.

Lettuce Link is looking for trees to harvest and volunteers to pick the fruit.

From the Lettuce Link website:

There are lots of ways to help out! We need volunteers who can do one or more of the following:

“Scout” trees ahead of time to see if the fruit is ripe

Harvest at scheduled work parties

Be on-call to harvest fruit in their neighborhoods

Provide garage space for storing ladders, picking buckets, and/or fruit

Deliver fruit to food banks and meal programs

The volunteer application is available here (.doc) and 90-minute volunteer orientations are on Tuesday, July 19th at 6 p.m. at the Douglass-Truth Library (2300 E Yesler Way) and on Thursday, July 21st at 6 p.m. at Solid Ground Wallingford (1501 N 45th St.)

To RSVP, or if you’d like to volunteer but can’t make it to an orientation, please contact Molly at fruitharvest@solid-ground.org or 206-694-6751.

It’s time again for Solid Ground’s Annual Luncheon. This year it is at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center
(800 Convention Place, 6th Floor, Rooms A & B) from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. tomorrow (May 21). It is one of the organization’s most important outreach and fundraising tools, raising critical support for its 27 programs working to end poverty in Seattle/King County.

This is our 10th year of breaking bread, sharing passion for this work, and recommitting to making a more just and caring community. The Luncheon fertilizes our efforts to address the real needs of hard-working people. Guests at the Luncheon will be asked to make a gift of at least $150.

Keynote speaker Bryant Terry is an eco chef, food justice activist, author and currently a fellow of the Food and Society Policy Fellows Program, a national project of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. For the past nine years he has worked to build a more just and sustainable food system using cooking as a tool to illuminate the intersections between poverty, structural racism and food insecurity.

At the luncheon, examine hunger in the community and successful strategies to make healthy food more available, affordable and equitable. “Growing Community to End Poverty” - the theme of the event - will feature Solid Ground’s Marra Farm Giving Garden (which is how I first heard about Solid Ground - then the Fremont Public Association), Lettuce Link, Operation Frontline, Apple Corps and other aspects of its anti-hunger work. They will also unveil plans for a new Community Farm in the Rainier Valley.

If you can’t make it to the luncheon this year, you can also contribute via a match pool. So far, $27,400 has been raised to match gifts of $250 or more at the luncheon, which is very close to the goal of $30,000.

To reserve your spot at the 2010 Luncheon, please contact Anna Ramos at annar@solid-ground.org or 206.694.6857.