Program Overview

The East Kootenays are home to many fruit trees. When the fruit is left to fall off the tree and rot, it attracts local wildlife—including deer and bears. Wildsight’s Apple Capture program is here to help you keep up with your fruit harvest or to share it with someone who can use it. Together, we can turn a wildlife attractant into locally sourced, nutritious food.

Program Opportunities

Tool Share 
Sharing is caring! We lend out our maintenance and processing equipment to help you with pruning and picking your trees, as well as pressing and preserving the fruit.

Visit the Tool Share Equipment page to learn more.

Tree Share Board
Do you have a fruit tree that you don’t have the time to harvest and would rather have someone else pick? Are you looking for fruit trees to harvest? 

Visit the Tree Share Board to get started or register a tree here.

Community Pick and Press Events
PICK loads of apples. Last year our volunteers managed to pick almost 2400 lbs of apples! Join us again this fall to harvest even more. Bring your gloves, hats snacks, and water bottles, and something warm if it’s a cool day. And if you can bring along a truck and a ladder, even better!

PRESS our apples into juice. Bring your family and friends – apples too, if you’ve got them – and don’t forget to bring some containers to take some of that sweet nectar home with you when we’re done. We’ll be outside, so be sure to dress for the weather.

Check out the event dates – check back for 2023 dates.

Volunteering
We’re always happy to receive helping hands! While our community pick and press are great ways to get involved, there are other tasks that need to be done too like equipment maintenance, poster distribution, and tree owner recruitment. If you can’t attend an event, but still want to help out, sign up through the below form.

For more information, please contact Christel Hagn: kimcranapples@wildsight.ca. 

Photo credit: Yana Kehrlein, Trixie Pacis, Ali Hadikin

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Thanks to Columbia Basin Trust and the Province of British Columbia
for funding support in 2023!