Dear Planting Justice community,
We are deeply grateful to every single person who has been sharing donations, well wishes, and volunteer offerings in the wake of the tragic fire PJ experienced at the El Sobrante Mother Orchard this past year. Like many of the trees on the land that bounced back with resilient new growth, PJ is excited to replant the farm with low-chill, climate resilient, rare/heirloom, medicinal and edible tree crops, with you!
This site is so much more than a typical farm.
As a "mother farm" for PJ's nursery collection, the site is home to two trees each of over 1,000 varieties of critically important nutrient-dense tree crops, many of which are not available at any nursery in the country and are at risk of being lost forever. This farm honors the thousands of years of human effort to collect, grow, select, and share these living and breathing medicines, and exists to ensure that gardeners around the country can access these culturally important trees. The food grown at the farm supports food insecure communities across the CA Bay Area, and the propagation material from the farm ensures that the Sobrante Park nursery in deep East Oakland has the source material it needs to continue sustaining nursery operations and the living-wage jobs we are creating in the community for formerly incarcerated people and others with systemic barriers to employment, long into the future!
So we ask you to join us by making your donation to fire recover efforts, and to join us for volunteer tree planting days this Winter
Your support will enable PJ to:
- plant over 300 fruit trees this Winter
- cultivate one of the largest living collections of paw paws, elderberries, currants, gooseberries, filberts, loquats, low-chill peaches, persimmons, jujubes, white sapotes, pomegranates, cold hardy avocados, mulberries, and kiwis in the country!
- ensure this land can provide organic, local, medicinal foods to low-access communities for the next 100+ years
- ensure that the PJ nursery team in Sobrante Park has the propagation material they need to sustain the living-wage jobs PJ creates in the community, which would not be possible if PJ did not have access to the living source material to propagate these rare and heirloom trees
- sustain a farm that demonstrates how to grow organically, eliminate pesticide use, catch all the rain that falls on the land through water harvesting swales, build soil, and eliminate tilling and soil disturbance, in an urban setting.