Fruit Tree Tour tour visits Sacramento this week
Veggie oil-powered tree-planting tour transforms urban California schoolyards
Published on Mar 27, 2008 - 9:28:43 AM

By: FruitTreeTour.org

SACRAMENTO, CA March 27, 2008 - Today, Fruit Tree Tour is rolling into Sacramento on its 5th annual tree-planting pilgrimage to California public schools. Participating schools from San Diego to Sacramento invite the popular program to engage students in making a positive on-the-ground change in their local and global communities through a full day of digging, drumming, dancing, eco-hip hop and green theater.

Each Spring, an all-volunteer crew of over 25 modern-day Johnny Appleseeds with Common Vision set out on this one-of-a-kind tour traveling the length of California aboard the world's largest veggie oil-powered caravan. In 2008, the Fruit Tree Tour fleet will travel a collective 20,500 miles on 100 percent recycled vegetable oil.

Decked out with rooftop solar arrays, Fruit Tree Tour's hand-painted, bio-powered busses carry over 1000 bareroot fruit tree trees destined to transform barren inner-city schoolyards into abundant urban orchards. This year, volunteers will plant varieties including apple, asian pear, avocado, cherimoya, fig, guava, grape, jujube, kiwi, lemon, loquat, mulberry, nectarine, orange, peach, pear, persimmon, plum, pomegranate, sapote and tangerine.

The tour features a full-on professional performance of green theater and eco-hip hop that helps urban students to see their schoolyards and neighborhoods as environments ripe for for renewal. Also onboard are 65 West African djembes that give students an opportunity to both plant trees and play drums. During the expression session, students write rhymes about making positive change in their communities and then put them to music on re-groovables, instruments made from recycled materials.

Since first setting out in 2003, Fruit Tree Tour has visited over 100 schools in over 40 California cities planting over 2000 trees with over 30,000 students. Past plantings have produced prolific orchards at schools including Vista del Valle Elementary, Monte Vista Elementary, Normandie Avenue Elementary, Stagg Street Elementary, Tyrrell Elementary, Watsonville Charter School and many more.

The volunteers, many multi-year veterans of the tour, come from throughout California and across the country. This year's crew includes recent graduates from Brown Univeristy, Humboldt State University, Penn State and Tulane University along with eco-artists and organic farmers and permaculture practitioners.

Each year indigenous elders are invited on tour to teach students about long ago forgotten lifeways of the past people of the Americas. ChoQosh Auh'Ho'Oh, a Native American story teller who taught cross cultural communications for nearly two decades at the University of California Berkeley, will be onboard this year's tour sharing a sacred message of hope from Hopi elders.

Traveling North through the Golden State, Fruit Tree Tour collaborates with urban communities through perennial partnerships with local grassroots groups and other organizations including Alameda Point Collaborative, California Rare Fruit Growers, City of Los Angeles, Daily Acts, Green Ambassadors ,Hayward Nutritional Learning Community Project, Koreatown Youth & Community Center, Lions Club, Los Angeles & San Gabriel Watershed Council, Los Angeles Unified School District, Mo' Better Foods, TreePeople, University of California Botanical Gardens, Urban Farming, and Watts Garden Club.

"A green rush is well underway in the Golden State!" shares Megan Watson, one of the visionaries behind Fruit Tree Tour. "By transforming schoolyards into living classrooms, we are waking up a new generation of urban youth to the wonders and wisdom of the natural world that nourishes our every need. Most inner-city California students never get to go into nature. Fruit Tree Tour's hands-on, day-long, outdoor program gives tens of thousands children a once-in-a-school year opportunity to reconnect with the natural rhythms of the Earth."

"Fruit Tree Tour's veggie oil-powered fleet has the technology to travel the entire state on recycled fry oil," said Leo Buc, the tour's organic mechanic and homegrown eco-hip hopper. "When our beautiful hand-painted, bio-powered buses roll up, students can see first hand that there are more sustainable ways of getting from A to B."

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