{"id":50862,"date":"2020-10-21T20:40:06","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T02:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/good-food-collective-extends-to-montezuma-county-and-collects-tons-of-fruit\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:53:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:53:23","slug":"good-food-collective-extends-to-montezuma-county-and-collects-tons-of-fruit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/good-food-collective-extends-to-montezuma-county-and-collects-tons-of-fruit\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Food Collective extends to Montezuma County, and collects tons of fruit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Good Food Collective extended into Durango this year, accumulating more than 5,100 pounds of fruits and vegetables for families and residents in need.<\/span>Courtesy of Amy Huckins<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Good Food Collective, a nonprofit based in Durango, extended its reach into Montezuma County this year, and volunteers have gathered more than 2 tons of fruit and vegetables that have been distributed across the region.<\/p>\n

The organization gathers apples from neglected trees, along with other excess food from local gardens and orchards, and distributes it to places like the Pi\u00f1on Project in Cortez, The Dolores Family Project and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt goes to mouths that need it,\u201d Amy Huckins, Montelores coordinator for The Good Food Collective, said.<\/p>\n

Many of these apples would otherwise be left on the ground to rot, Huckins said.<\/p>\n

Nine volunteers from the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, a program that engages 18- to 24-year-olds in community service, helped Huckins gather more than 5,100 pounds of fruit and vegetables.<\/p>\n

Cortez residents and friends have also joined Huckins in collecting fruit and vegetables to distribute locally. But Huckins did about half the harvesting on her own.<\/p>\n

\"Amy
Amy Huckins, left, Montelores gleaning coordinator for The Good Food Collective, picks apples with friends Lydia and Ryan to distribute to places such as the Pi&#xf1;on Project in Cortez, The Dolores Family Project and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.<\/span>Courtesy of Amy Huckins<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Good Food Collective is working with EsoTerra, a new cidery in Dolores, to press and pasteurize the apples to distribute juice over the coming months. Last week, the group made 66 gallons of pasteurized juice at EsoTerra through Summit Mobile Juicing\u2019s juice press, Huckins said.<\/p>\n

Summit Mobile Juicing travels around Colorado, pressing fresh juice.<\/p>\n

Huckins said this work is more important than ever with the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on residents in Colorado. Before the pandemic, 1 in 11 Colorado residents were food insecure, and 13% of Montezuma County residents were food-insecure, according to<\/a> a Montezuma County Food System Assessment. Now, 1 in 3 Colorado residents are food-insecure, according to<\/a> the advocacy group Hunger Free Colorado.<\/p>\n

Montezuma County residents interested in helping The Good Food Collective should list their fruit trees and other excess garden produce on the organization\u2019s website. The information submitted is private, but Huckins will use it for future collections.<\/p>\n

The Good Food Collective is stockpiling fruit and vegetable donations through the end of October, but residents can list their trees and gardens year-round on the website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The website also lists resources<\/a> for when and where people struggling to purchase food in Montezuma County can pick up free fruit and vegetables.<\/p>\n

\"Some
Some of the apples harvested by The Good Food Collective in Cortez were processed and pasteurized at the cidery EsoTerra in Dolores, so that volunteers can distribute juice to kids and residents in need over the coming months.<\/span>Courtesy of Amy Huckins<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

ehayes@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

food-insecure Coloradans grows<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,28,167,1269],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-local-news-lead","tag-nonprofits"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87844,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50862\/revisions\/87844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50862"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}