APPLE DAYS

Good Food Collective

The 2023 harvest events and Apple Days festival connected over 550 participants to the story of our local food system -- how it has historically shaped our community, as well as its current role in our identity, economy, and cultural expression.

The Community Fruit Program (CFP) featured weekly Community Fruit Harvest events hosted on local properties voluntarily (listed on our Community Fruit Glean Database). Participants harvested fruit as GFC staff highlighted the region’s fruit history and contemporary local food system, and ways participants can support our local food economy. Participants were allowed as much fruit as they liked, and the GFC donated the remaining Grade A fruit throughout their 29-member Food Pantry Network, Grade B fruit to their Fruit for Good Social Enterprise or local cideries, and any culls to local ranchers.

The CFP reaches a crescendo the first weekend of October at the annual Apple Days festival hosted in conjunction with the Durango Farmers’ Market. The family-friendly festival draws an average of 400+ people and features food-related educational booths, artisanal food vendors, dance troupes, and music. The festival’s top attraction is the live apple pressing, where participants can press that week’s Community Fruit Harvest into hand-pressed cider.

The final component of CFP is their Fruit for Good social enterprise, which produces healthy, shelf-stable fruit products so that consumers can access local fruit throughout the year. Since 2021, FFG has produced dehydrated Apple Chips, which retail at local venues and are sold at cost to local food pantries. In 2023, the DFC developed dehydrated fruit ribbons as a means of upcycling the community’s otherwise unused apricots and plums.

Harvest pressing in action

Good Food Collective works with partners from across our foodshed to collectively build a just and thriving food system. They work to change food systems by addressing root causes through community members. They are facilitators and connectors, filling critical gaps as they emerge and stepping out when our support is no longer needed.