Citizens embrace community orchard

Amy Countryman’s dream as a single mom struggling to support herself and her son turned into a reality now known as the Bloomington Community Orchard.

“I helped out on an orchard in Daviess County and was amazed to see the amount of fruit that one fruit tree yields,” Countryman said.

Countryman said she found out that less than 2 percent of the publicly owned trees in Bloomington were food-bearing, and she decided that she wanted to change that.

“I wanted to help create a community-owned, free source of fruit for everyone to help folks needing access to fresh, healthy fruit and to help teach folks how to grow their own fruit,” Countryman said.

As a School of Public and Environmental Affairs student at IU, Countryman wrote her plan into her final thesis in December 2009.

In January 2010, Lee Huss, urban forester for the City of Bloomington, met with Countryman and told her that the city wanted to move forward with a community orchard.

The first public meeting to initiate the project was in February 2010, in which people began to form teams to make the dream of an orchard a reality. The first
planting was in October 2010, and the fourth planting will take place during the third annual spring planting day Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

“It was 11 months from the thesis to the first trees in the ground,” Countryman said. “A lot happened in between.”

Amy Roche, the board chair and outreach team chair of the orchard, said planting fruit is more than what meets the eye.

“The more you learn, the more you realize how complex it is and how much more there is to learn,” Roche said.

The Bloomington Community Orchard is an all-volunteer organization, and many of the plants are still very young. Roche said there hasn’t been a lot of harvest yet at the orchard.

“It’s really a mixture of local Bloomington residents and college students,” Roche said.

Several classes and service-learning programs have visited the orchards, as well.

“Food is so iconically appealing, so I think the orchard is really for everyone,” Roche said.

What originally started as a dream to Countryman now unites Bloomington citizens, she said.

“Without a doubt, the best part of the orchard is the way it brings folks together and creates community,” Countryman said.