Giving "ornamental" Citrus Fruit a Second Life

­In Coachella Valley over 130 golf courses and many more residential communities use citrus trees as ornamental landscaping, creating an “accidental” crop of at least 2 million pounds of tangerines, oranges, lemons and grapefruit each and every year – without a good plan to harvest it.  These clubs and communities have had to pay large dumping fees, in addition to the cost of labor just to throw away most of this precious source of Vitamin C.

What is Citrus Rescue? The goal of the Citrus Rescue Program is to “rescue” this ornamental fruit and distribute it, free of charge to the more than 60 local agencies that provide food and services to those in need throughout the valley. Some of the people that benefit from this source of fruit are young children in after school programs and  low-income seniors valley wide.

All rescued citrus is brought back to the Hidden Harvest warehouse in Coachella where our hard working volunteers sort and pack it for distribution to over 60 local agencies that provide food and services to those in need throughout the valley. In 2010 we collected and delivered, free of charge, over 378,000 pounds of fresh, local citrus fruit to our client agencies.

Hidden Harvest has two primary missions: One is to provide a healthy source of food to communities of people who are hungry and statistically have extremely high rates of diabetes and obesity, due to poor diet. The other is to employ low income farm workers to harvest produce, providing $10 an hour payment for their hard work. The Citrus Rescue Program is one initiative to help achieve both missions.

From January through April each year, individual homeowners can donate their extra, unwanted citrus fruit to six (6) convenient valley city drop-off locations.

Citrus Drop-Off Locations: Palm Springs City Maintenance Yard  425 N. Civic Dr.  760-323-8214 Cathedral City  City Hall 68-700 Lalo Guerrero  760-770-0340 Rancho Mirage  City Hall  69-825 Hwy 111  760-324-2374 Palm Desert  City Hall  73-510 Fred Waring  760-346-0611 ext 425 Indian Wells  Next to IW community gardens  44-950 El Dorado Dr.  760-346-2489 La Quinta  LQ Library parking lot  78-275 Calle Tampico  760-777-7120

Thank you for your support!