In this episode of Fruit Tree TV, Common Vision volunteers take to the streets to assist Jefferson High students in meeting their neighbors and planting trees in their neighborhood. Common Vision works with Jefferson High's Green Design Academy in South Los Angeles in a unique community outreach tree planting project.

2008 was the first year Common Vision had a live band backing the Eco-Hip-Hop finale for our Green Theater performance. Here is a studio cut of "Can we plant it?"





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In this episode, Common Vision works with the Environmental Charter High School Students Council. In the morning the Fruit Tree Tour crew trains the high schoolers in tree planting and the art of leading a 'tree group.' In the afternoon, Common Vision and the High school leaders walked together to neighboring elementary school where the high school youth took engaged 100 4th graders in planting an orchard on their campus.

This was one of the most inspiring days in Fruit Tree Tour History.

The first week of Fruit Tree Tour in Santa Cruz, Watsonville, and Fresno was packed with planting and inspiration. Plantings included 3 elementary schools and 4 head start programs.

The second week in Los Angeles has so far been as powerful and impactful as any in Fruit Tree Tour history. On Monday, we work with the Green Ambassadors and Environmental Charter High School where Common Vision served as mentors for 40 high school leaders. After 2 hours of tree planting training, the high schools and the Fruit Tree Tour crew walked to a local elementary school. The high school students then led the tree planting with a group of 100 4th graders. Fruit Tree TV episode on this planting is coming soon.

The last three days have included 3 elementary schools, 1,100 students, and 55 fruit trees planted in Compton and Pacific Palisades.

Here is a slide show with highlights from the from the tour so far.

After a planting at a San Francisco Boys and Girls Club in Hunters point, a girl with hands dirty from planting a Pink Lady apple shares her feelings. Wow!




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At 3000' in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains there once were gold mining towns of 2,000-4,000 people scattered throughout the hills. These towns had orchards to feed the people apples, pears, plums, cherries, and figs.

100 years later, the people are gone, few structures remain... But scattered throughout the area, hundreds of these trees remain. Today, Michael Flynn had the good fortune to tour the area with Amigo Bob, a long time leader in the organic movement and a dedicated fruit historian.

What does this have to do with Fruit Tree Tour?

We cut scion from these old trees and Common Vision will be propogating hundreds of trees to plant at schools across northern California. From the oldest trees in the United States of these varieties to the youngest fruit tree planters in the state, Common Vision is honored to be a bridge for this history and sweet fruit.

The 100+ year cherry tree with a rainbow behind is one of these grandma trees we climbed today.

Fall Fruit Tree Tour was an epic 8-day journey through Mendocino county. 105 fruit trees in the ground. It began with 2-days of collaboration in Covelo working with the local elementary school, the local high school, and the tribal health center. The journey continued to through Philo, Fort Bragg, Ukiah, and Willits!

HAMSA LILA
w/ Special Guests: AIRTO MOREIRA
Sitting in as special guest with Hamsa Lila and performing

>>Planetary Pulse - Prayer of the Drum ~ an opening drum ceremony/jam with The Master's of Rhythm featuring Airto & Rasaki

>> Rasaki (King Sunny Ade's talking drum master)

>> LYNX & Janover

>> DJ Jef Stott (6 Degrees Records)

>>DJ Dragonfly

EARLYBIRD TICKETS ON SALE NOW!!!! > Get Tickets
Tickets: $16 earlybird / $22 in advance / $28 day of show / $50 VIP

CO-SPONSORED*** BY: Earthdance Network / 6 Degrees Records / Global Exchange / Harborside Clinic

6pm: 4-Course Organic Dinner -menu below- RSVP (includes music) - $60
8pm: Music Youssoupha and Mystic Rhythms - $20

Please join us in celebrating and supporting Fruit Tree Tour 2010. It is only due to the support of the Nevada City community that each year over 10,000 students from low-income schools across California transform their schoolyards into abundant orchards. Let us come together once again to make it possible to send veggie bus loads of inspiration to communities in need.

ORGANIC 4-COURSE DINNER:
Our dear friends Leo and Holly have put together an epic organic 4 course meal featuring some seasonal fruits. Hope to see you there.

• Grilled Fig w/ Chevre and a Balsamic Reduction
• Butternut, Celery Root, and Pink Lady Bisque w/ Ginger and Carmelized Onion Cream Swirl
• Polenta Stack w/ Herbed Canellini Beans, Roasted Chanterelles, and White Wine Braised Greens, topped with a Saffron Cream Sauce, Syrah Reduction, and Pomegranate Arils
• Pear Upside Down Cake w/ Caramel and lavender Whipped Cream



YOUSSOUPHA & MYSTIC RHYTHMS:
Youssoupha’s musical career began in his home of Senegal, West Africa, where he trained as a Kora player at the National Music Conservatory of Senegal. Since his arrival on the international music circuit, Youssoupha has recorded and performed, with artists such as India Arie, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Midnite, and Matisyahu. He will be performing with his trio, Mystic Rhythms a unique and powerful combination of drum, bass and Kora, jazz, rock, and world music.



THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:

Vital Landscaping is a family owned and operated landscape company in Northern California. The owners have lived in Nevada County with their 2 sons for almost 15 years and wholeheartedly believe in organic living. Now their goal is to bring their knowledge of organics and sustainable farming to not only the local community but worldwide.


Biodiversity is a company built on the knowledge that the population of soil micro-organisms in your soil are what defines your crops health and yield. Biodiversity carries products that create an abundant and diverse soil food web.

Common Vision’s veggie powered fleet hit the road again this year as an example of one creative alternative to burning fossil fuels. Each vehicle on Fruit Tree Tour covered over 3,800 miles and together, they displaced 1870 gallons of diesel with cleaner, greener recycled Vegetable oil. Here is a music video celebrating the veggie experience, and the team of folks that keep the busses running. We hope you enjoy the music of The Human Revolution.

98.1 KISS FM in the Bay Area featured Megan and Leo on "Childhood Matters" talking about how Fruit Tree Tour was making a difference in the lives of children.



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Each day on Fruit Tree Tour Common Vision brings a Green theatre performance that gets students stoked on planting trees in their communities. Here is a snippet from one of our performances at a benefit party in Chico. Over 11,000 students experienced this at their schools this year!

Common Vision was featured nationally on the "America in the Morning" radio show. We hope that the millions of listeners were in some way moved into service for the planet in their own neighborhoods. Thank you Jan Sluizer for coming out to the planting to share the vision with the country.

A new phenomenon has come to Fruit Tree Tour: Mural Art... Cubed. Kevin Buckland has been working with fellow collaborators to create fabric cubes, each side six square feet, that become the blank canvas for children and adults to express their vision for a sustainable future. The size of the cube represents the volume of Carbon Dioxide released from burning one gallon of gasoline. This premise challenges artists to envision a different world, one where less carbon dioxide is produced and where trees are more abundant. Kevin joined forces with Fruit Tree Tour during our stay in Sacramento and the cube became the main focus of our Expression Session workshop which also encourages the youth to be solution focused, envision the world they want to see, and express it through various forms including art, hip hop, and poetry.

The results were phenomenal, the kids enjoyed it and expressed themselves through some beautiful art while learning about environmental issues and searching for solutions. There was also an opportunity to paint a mural on a wall of Joyce Elementary School during an after-school program. With all this art making the Fruit Tree Tour crew was still excited to work on painting our own cube after long school days and had fun coming together to express our visions. Then Kevin left tour in order to bring the cubes that had been completed to a Sustainability Conference in Portland, Oregon where they were well received. Kevin returned to tour for the last week during our stay in the Bay Area. We expect to see the mural cube on future tours!

While in Fresno we had an awesome community planting at the Boys and Girls Club of Fresno in collaboration with three other local organizations - West Fresno Health Care Coalition, Tree Fresno, and Volunteers for Change, a nonpartisan group of Barack Obama supporters who came together for a Day of Service. In three hours the kids from the Boys and Girls Club, Common Vision Crew, Tree Fresno friends, and Obama supporters were able to transform a weedy overgrown garden into a neat and clean space and plant 14 fruit trees inspired by a soul music soundtrack by dj Jahson and then live West African drumming with master drummer from Guinea, Aly Diabate.

During our time in LA we spent a Saturday engaged in a day of orchard care continuing the 5-year annual collaboration between Common Vision's traveling caravan and Community Services Unlimited's local nonprofit in South Central LA. Started 30 years ago as a branch of the Black Panthers focused on bringing healthy food to the neighborhood, CSU has been active in South Central building gardens, educating youth and creating community. In 2004 CSU completed a Community Food Assessment that analyzed the socioeconomic factors that led to insufficient accessibility to nutritious food in their neighborhood. Common Vision’s collaboration with CSU began in 2005 when the veggie oil caravan came through and helped to install two schoolyard orchards. The rest is history. . . Find out more in this short film . . . .

This Valentine's Day also marked the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the MA Center and the first planting event of Fruit Tree Tour 2009. Common Vision has been working with international environmental organization, GreenFriends, to design the MA Center landscape as a model of sustainability. After focusing the fall and winter on rainwater harvesting strategies and reforestation plantings, the MA Center was ready to expand their orchards.

With a goal of 500 trees this year, the Common Vision team helped plant 185 apple trees in the first planting event of the tour. It is likely that the tour will return in April for another community planting.



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Trouble viewing? Click Here. We are just now finishing up our time here at Isis Oasis, the second stop on Fruit Tree Tour Orientation. On this property there are a number of fruit trees, some of which were originally planted by Luther Burbank, an American botanist, horticulturist and a pioneer in agricultural science who developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55 year career beginning in 1872. Richard Channing, a resident at Isis Oasis offered to help us harvest cuttings from an old white fig tree that Luther Burbank planted on the property nearly 100 years ago. We climbed up in the fig to simultaneously prune the tree and take what was cut for further propagation of white fig trees across California at schools and communities. We will take these cuttings with us to plant at our Roots to Fruits Nursery at the Alpha Center in Santa Barbara where they will be cared for as they root and grow ready to be transplanted next year. We are super grateful for the opportunity to share these amazing strains of Figs with other fruit lovers. Thank you Isis Oasis!

Trouble viewing slides? Click here. After two months of extensive preparations, Fruit Tree Tour crew veterans and newcomers gathered in Hopland, CA to kick off the 2009 tour with a busy orientation schedule. Along with getting to know each other, learning about what to expect on a typical school day, trying out for various roles in the performance, and enjoying sumptuous vegan meals, there were also some projects with buses and support vehicles to finish up. Colton, a tour alumnus finished a magical transformation of the interior of the Jah Lioness Bus. Also two new support vehicles were converted to run on vegetable oil and joined tour, a pickup truck for hauling soil and a new utility truck for gathering vegetable oil with a triple filtration system, 35 gpm gathering pump and a 200 gallon crude veggie oil storage tank.
A big thank you to Brock and Sarah long time supporters who opened their home to us as the first gracious host home of 2009 along with their daughters Daya and Jah Lila. Some long awaited winter rains finally arrived which was fantastic for the Hopland area ecosystems but not so great when it was time to leave and we found that the buses had sunk into the patch of dirt where they were parked making taking off a muddy and slippery ordeal. Luckily we had the awesome power of the Dodge Cummins Turbo Diesel motor plus the driving skills of Leo Buc our alternative fuels expert and Hopland firefighter and Blair Philips the tour founder and bus driver extroidinaire. The support of the crew was also crucial, as an unofficial team building exercise unfolded with crew members gathering to push on the back of Jah Lioness while the Dodge pulled from the front. With all the buses miraculously unstuck we headed out to Isis Oasis, our next orientation location.
The Isis Oasis is a retreat center in Gyserville that also hosts a number of rare wild cats and exotic birds. After a tour of the white peacocks, ocelots, cervils, emus, and macaws, we got down to business hammering out the details of our performance and finishing the props with our beloved director Bridget Barsotti. We also delved deep into building curriculum for the expression session and drum group workshops. We are looking forward to going deeper into the tree-planting curriculum in preparation for our first community planting on Feb. 14th at the MA Center in San Ramon and our first school Feb 17th in Santa Cruz.

Good thing I was at a party when I found out the Fruit Tree Tour
episode of the show Natural Heroes, had won an emmy, because it was time to celebrate! The award-winning show was based on our DVD Planting the Vision. The special episode aired on PBS across the nation. This award is a huge tribute to programs like Natural Heroes and the featured groups that are working for positive change. We hope many more people will see the show and be inspired to plant a tree in their community!

Watch a 6-minute trailer for the DVD "Planting the Vision" below.
> Order the DVD today




> Watch the Natural Heroes Fruit Tree Tour Promo on the Natural Heroes site

In the eastern hills of Oakland, Common Vision joined forces with three classes at Merritt to transform a steep hillside into a permaculture food forest with 108 fruit trees! Before trees were planted a team of pickaxers and shovelers built swales, long on-contour ditches, designed to harvest 1000’s of gallons of rainwater and store it deep in the hillside. Over 75 Common Vision crew and Merritt College students worked all day, accompanied by the drums, to plant the widest spread of tree varieties in Fruit Tree Tour history. Jujubes, almonds, chestnuts, pluots, figs, apples, pears, plums, peaches, apricots, nectarines, and persimmons will soon watch the sunset over Oakland. Video created by Annapurna.

With the most packed schedule in Fruit Tree Tour history including more schools and community collaborations then ever before, the Common Vision crew successfully planted over 1000 fruit trees on the 2008 tour. In this short video, Professor Dingledorf, (a character in this year’s performance) leads the celebration of the 1000th tree going in to the ground at Hillside Elementary in the East bay. Students from Hillside support the celebration by writing and performing an eco-beats rhyme for the occasion. Video by Annapurna.

Get out your cameras!

Common Vision will be on the red carpet at the Northern California Emmy Awards, May 10th 2008 at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, CA. The Fruit Tree Tour segment on Natural Heroes, a national television series of independent films on the environment, is nominated for an Emmy in the category of children/youth-program special. The episode “Fruit Tree Tour” was based on Common Vision’s DVD, “Planting the Vision”. Order the DVD here to see what the academy is talking about!

2008 is the year for variety in Fruit Tree Tour's veggie oil powered refrigerator truck! Because of local nurseries like Rolling River in Orleans, wholesale nurseries such as Dave Wilson Nurseries and Sierra Gold who support planting fruit trees in school yards and community centers, our tree stewards have worked with over 65 different varieties of fruit trees. It's a tight squeeze getting all those bare-roots to fit in their winterized box-truck home! Luckily they move out quickly as we plant on average 20 trees per school. Trees of Antiquity surprised us with heirlooms like Tydeman's Late Orange Apple while SolMan Nursery in Encinitas donated our first 6 bananas in Fruit Tree Tour history! Through a large donation of fruiting vines, chain link fences surrounding many city schools will soon be dripping with Ruby Red and Monukka Grapes and Heyward kiwis. Having such a wide variety of trees allows for each school yard to experience fruit harvests throughout the school year. A school might have Loquats in April, Earlitreat Peach in May, Dapple Dandy Pluots in August; Emerald Beaut and Elephant Heart Plums in September, Fuji, Pink Lady and Granny Smith Apples in October, Fuyu Persimmons in November, Satsuma Tangerines in December, White Sapotes in January, Cherimoyas in February.. well, you get the picture.

In a historic planting day, Common Vision teamed up with members of Serna Village to plant a record-breaking 105 fruit trees! Serna Village is a thriving community that serves as long-term housing for families that have struggled with homelessness. With master gardeners, Village community members, and organizations like First Five of Sacramento, the day of planting and celebration yielded an amazing nutritional resource for the over 200 kids living at the village. After a powerful day of working, learning and laughing together, fruit trees now surround the co-housing units.

In a few years this place of growth and new beginnings for the 83 families who live there, will have the beauty, health, and abundance of a wide variety of fruit trees. Leo Buc, veggie mechanic and mathematician estimates in six years, the trees will produce 2 and ½ tons of fruit, roughly equivalent to the weight of 875 gallons of vegetable oil or 1 unloaded veggie-powered soil-hauling dump truck. In this video Annapurna shows the planting, planning, and celebration that went into this momentous collaboration.

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The 2008 Fruit Tree Tour “Green Theatre” performance has inspired over 8,000 students this year. The story follows two urban students on there journey to find out how the food they eat is interrelated to the health of the environment. Their adventure includes a magic book that come to life, an old grandmother who shares how the birds, animals, and cycles of nature taught her about how to grow her food, and a crew of rhyming street kids who transform trash in a littered lot into instruments and music. With colorful veggie busses as backdrops, intricate puppets, drumming, and dancing, the performance engages whole school assemblies with messages of cooperation, earth stewardship, and community action for positive local and global change.

The Fruit Tree Tour crew is dedicated to helping urban students and community members renew a relationship with the Earth. Acknowledging the challenges of connecting to Nature in city environments, the crew sometimes needs a little inspiration to remember the interconnectedness of the plants, animals, and human kind. Thanks to the 10-year-old nephew of veteran tree-planter and eco-hip-hopper Koral Delatierra, Fruit Tree Tour received two fuzzy-golden bears suits for this year’s Green Theater. The inherited costumes quickly became a favorite accessory for the earth-loving, adventurous crew of Fruit Tree Tour 2008.


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What does it take to transform a schoolyard? This video created by tour veteran Annapurna takes us on the journey of planting an urban orchard at Jonas Salk Tech High from the perspective of the Fruit Tree Tour behind the scenes team--from the soil donation yard to planting site. Common Vision had the honor to work with a dynamic urban agriculture educational project, Soil Born Farms, on this planting. Catch a glimpse of how Common Vision joins forces with local organizations to meaningfully connect with students, schools, and communities.

When Fruit Tree Tour comes to a school, tree planting is only part of the picture. There are three workshops that make up the day of tree planting and community building, aiming to give students a whole new set of experiences about their environment, and their place in it. This movie is part 1 of a close look into Eco- Beats, a self expression workshop that teaches kids, they can use creativity to express themselves, clean up their neighborhood, and have impact on the greater environment. Thank you Fruit Tree Tour veteran and bus driver, Doug Fuller for sharing the vision of Regrooveables and to returning crew member Anna Purna, tree-planter, eco hip hopper, artist, and photographer for editing this great video piece.



Check out another video about Regroovables.

Compton Unified School District brought Fruit Tree Tour to 4 schools in Compton this year to work with 1850 students and plant 75 trees. In this video made by return crew member and MC, Jah Sun Williams, school board member Marjorie Shipp explains why the program is important to her and to the City of Compton. George Washington Carver Elementary Principal Dr Jacqueline Sanderlin shares how Common Vision has inspired a whole new direction the landscape and integrated learning of the school. The video highlights the one of the most celebratory after-school drumming-dancing-tree planting school-yard transformations in tour history! Special Thanks to UrbanFarming.Org for sponsoring scholarships for Compton area schools for the second year in a row.

We’ve always seen the Sugar Shack as a miracle oasis in the heart of the asphalt desert of Los Angeles, and this year their status as urban miracle makers grew even more. This intentional community of artists opened an invitation to share their home with the entire crew of 27 during a full week of tree planting events in the city. Imagine 27 people getting their morning cup of coffee in your kitchen! Then, after graciously hosting the tour for a week, they didn’t flinch at our phone call that we needed an emergency landing site after a series of small scale catastrophes at our next campsite. Our heroes hosted the caravan for two more days making it possible to fulfill another two planting events. Fruit Tree Tour in Los Angeles would not be possible without the Sugar Shack. Thank you for being the sweetest oasis. We love you Sugar!!

It is so important to remember at every tree planting on tour, what a special and unique experience that tree is for each child. If we ever forget for a moment the kind of impact a day of Fruit Tree Tour has for its participants, we are quickly reminded by the heartwarming letters and pictures we receive from the students themselves! 4th grader Robert lets us know, he is proud to tell his mom, dad and 20 month baby brother, “I know how to plant a tree”.

This Thursday, March 20, Common Vision is excited to celebrate in Santa Cruz with a Fruit Tree tour benefit that is going to rock!
at the Vets Hall- 846 front street, Santa Cruz, CA
Doors open at 7:30
Music starts at 8:00
$15 donation at the door
Join us for music with Youssoupha Sidibe and members of Sila and the AfroFunk Experience, and Love Eternal. Story telling with ChoQosh Auh-Ho-Oh, and a special theatre production and slideshow with Common Vision.

20 out of 20 common vision crew members could be found dancing to music by Kora virtuouso Youssoupha Sidibe at Common Vision’s benefit in San Francisco, last fall. After that most amazing event, Common Vision asked Youssou to bring the band and his unique musical style
and help us lift our spirits and our feet to benefit Fruit Tree Tour 2008!

At each school program the 27 Fruit Tree Tour educators put on a 35-minute theater performance that includes colorful puppets, drumming, dancing, earth-conscious hip-hop, and a message about community, earth stewardship, and positivity. In this video, veteran tree planter Brian Flynn shows a behind the scenes look at the crew in performance practice. Special thanks to Blair Phillips for developing the storyline, to Xylem Larla Dey for pulling together and directing the script, and to George Martinet our costume designer and on-tour director.

Last Week, Fruit Tree Tour joined forces with the Green Ambassadors, a group comprised of 60 Los Angeles high school students dedicated to environmental leadership, to plant 70 fruit trees in a school and neighborhood in Lawndale (in LA). On Monday the Green Ambassadors learned how to plant fruit trees by planting over 30 banana, fig, peach, nectarine, apple, citrus, guava, and avocado trees on the new Environmental Charter High School campus. Over the course of the week, the ambassadors canvassed their new neighborhood to find ways to expand the shade, fruit, and oxygen of their new orchard into the surrounding residents’ lives. On Saturday, to the beat of the drums, the students and the Common Vision tree planters saw another 40 trees into the ground.

I think I should start my first Common Vision blog by being completely honest: I've had my doubts about grafting at the schools. And it's not because I don't think grafting is cool. Grafting is way cool. I mean, we take a little stick from one tree, slice into another tree, insert our little stick into the slice, wrap it with tape, slap some goop on it, and BAM! if it heals properly we got ourselves a brand new yummy fruit tree. But I've still had my doubts as I've wondered whether or not a group of 4th or 5th graders would really find this little miracle as interesting as me, the over-enthusiastic somewhat quirky long-haired tree-planting stranger.

Well, we've including grafting in the tree planting groups at two schools so far on FTT '08: Vista del Valle Elementary in Claremont and Birney Elementary in San Diego. At both schools I had the opportunity to facilitate three grafting workshops during which we would plant a rootstock tree and then graft the scion of a desired variety onto the rootstock. And I gotta admit I was a bit surprised when the students were really into it! I told them that the green layer inside the bark contains the new cell factory (cambium) and has the tubes (xylem and phloem) that work like the veins in our bodies, moving around all the stuff the tree needs to live. And our goal is to get the thin green layer of the rootstock to link up with the thin green layer of the yummy fruit branch. Even though we don't give the students knifes to slice the scion, they were intent on watching me closely making sure I was doing a good job preparing the graft. Since the students still have a tree planting experience when we plant the rootstock, the grafting is like a fun magic trick that we add on.

So, there's a video at the top of this blog if you haven't noticed it yet. It was taken by crew member Annapurna this past week at Birney Elementary in San Diego. I think it gives a good snapshot of a grafting group, in case any of you out there were wanting a small taste of what a day of Fruit Tree Tour might look like. I'm hoping to get more video uploaded soon with more tree planting, scenes from our green theater performance, drum workshops, creative expression session footage, and, hopefully, some behind the scenes footage of "Life on Tour." So make sure you keep checking back here, ok?

Tomorrow we begin the LA chapter of Fruit Tree Tour '08!

Lots of love from the road,

Collaboration with local organizations is a hallmark of the Fruit Tree Tour project. This year’s tour is rich and abundant with opportunities where Common Vision will support local non-profits in their mission and spreads the message of Fruit Tree Tour meaningfully into the communities whom the organizations serve. Throughout the tour we will be sharing these stories. Here is a glimpse at two highlights coming up in Southern California:

Edendale Farm: On March 8th, Fruit Tree Tour will be planting up to 80 fruit trees at Edendale Farm and the surrounding Silver Lake (LA) neighborhood. Edendale Farm is an urban homesteading developing a replicable urban center that raises healthy wholesome food for the local community, teaches sustainable food cultivation skills, reduces waste and fosters community economics and relationships. This planting is open for the public to plant trees to the rhythm of the drums with Common Vision and Edendale Farms.

Alpha Resource Center of Santa Barbara, a non-profit organization established in 1953 that provides services and supports for people with developmental disabilities and their families in the County of Santa Barbara, California. On March 10th, Common Vision will working with the community of the Alpha Center and the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network to transform the landscape.
“Common Vision’s visit as a catalyzing moment of drawing the local community together. The clients at the Alpha Center have a great joy to share with the world and the Common Vision program is a wonderful opportunity for them to share with their local community while entering into a collaboration with the local permaculture network to create a sustainable food producing living environment.”
-Marisa Bourke, Alpha Center Outreach Coordinator

Common Vision's Newest Kitchen Bus received hundreds of hours of painting love this January before it joined the Fruit Tree Tour fleet. The bus is adorned with scenes of indigenous cultures farming their staple crops and urban communities transforming their cityscapes to food forests in celebration. The following video was produced by Jah Sun, a returning crew member whose positivity is a driving force for the project.



Although Leo's interview may suggest something to the contrary, the artists involved in the painting project were Anna Purna, Jah Sun, April, Lilly, Squirrel, "E", Lindy, Katrina, and ChoQosh. While Leo did not paint the bus, he did lead the project of outfitting the interior in sustainable materials, installing the 1000 Watt solar system, and converting the engine to run on Waste Vegetable oil.

At this moment the 3 buses are rolling to the first San Diego school of the year. Having so far planted 75 trees in Joshua Tree, Claremont, and Orange County, the crew is ready to transform another schoolyard. Due to the generosity of our southern California nursery supporters, today's school will receive Banana, Sapote, Loquat, Lemon, Tangerine, Cherimoya, Guava, Nectarine, and Pear trees. The Cherimoya and citrus trees are riding in "Bu," the office bus, to school.

In the course of an afternoon, the Fruit Tree Tour crew learned how to graft loads of varieties onto one tree from Common Vision's newest super friend Joe Sabol. This video is a load of fun, don't miss it!



This video was created by Brian Flynn, a 3rd year returning volunteer and a crucial part of the project.

The Common Vision crew braved the high desert of Joshua Tree to train in the art of fruit tree planting, green theater, and inspiring the youth of California to care for the Earth. As part of a work trade with the Joshua Tree Retreat Center the crew planted 65 fig, olive, nectarine, pistachio, and pomegranate trees to the beat of ancient planting rhythms.

For years teachers, students, and the press have hailed the Fruit Tree Tour crew as “modern day Johnny Appleseed’s” We decided to take a closer look at ways that Common Vision is similar and perhaps a little different than old John Chapman. Here’s what we found:

1. Johnny Appleseed was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced the apple to large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Common Vision are pioneer earth-lovers who are introducing fresh fruit to salad bars in the public schools of LA, Oakland, and Santa Barbara.

2. In 1792, 18-year-old Chapman went west. In 1998, 18 year-old Michael Flynn our director of education came west.

3. In the early 1800’s Appleseed carried a load of seeds by canoe and pack horse into Ohio. In the early 2000’s Common Vision carried several loads of bareroot fruit trees, rootstock, and planting volunteers into the cities of California.

4. The popular image of Johnny Appleseed had him spreading apple seeds randomly, everywhere he went. In fact, he planted nurseries rather than orchards, built fences around them to protect them from livestock, left the nurseries in the care of a neighbor. He returned every year or two to tend the nursery. Common Vision has started hundreds of baby apple, pear, and fig trees with the help of the students and left them in the care of ‘Roots to Fruits’ nurseries at the public schools.

5. Appleseed's managers were asked to sell trees on credit, if at all possible, but he would accept corn meal, cash, or used clothing in barter. Common Vision only accepts payment in corn meal or used clothing in extraneous circumstances on a case-by-case basis.

6. Appleseed remained an itinerant his entire life. Common Vision would like to develop a land-based education center.

7. Appleseed obtained the apple seed for free; cider mills wanted more apple trees planted since it would eventually bring them more business. Common Vision receives scion (the wood needed for propagating fruit tree varieties) for free from the California Rare Fruit Growers. The cider mills in particular and alcohol industry in general have yet to show any interest in supporting the Fruit Tree Tour.

8. All sources seem to agree that Johnny Appleseed was slim, and some accounts have described him as "small and wiry." Common Vision’s vegetable-oil powered caravan has never been called “small” or “wiry,” but the crew of volunteers has been described as inspiring, engaging, and empowering.

10. Appleseed was well known throughout the region by his eccentricity, and the strange garb he usually wore. This is also true of Common Vision.

11. Johnny Appleseed dressed in the worst of the used clothing he received, giving away the better clothing he received in barter. He wore no shoes, even in the snowy winter. Common Vision is required to wear shoes in the public schools under California State Law.

For the last 20+ years members of the California Rare Fruit Growers take great care to keep the DNA of many fruit trees alive and growing through their annual Scion Exchanges. Scions are pieces of trees cut to begrafted onto a rootstock, creating a new tree and passing on the DNA.
The Heritage Orchard in Santa Clara contains over 350 varieties of fruit trees used for scion wood. Michael, Blair, Koral and I all attended our first scion cutting party to learn all we could from the devoted fruit tree lovers.

Something new is being created in the Common Vision shop space this year. Puppets! Fruit Tree Tour's Green Theatre will never be the same! The puppet characters will be seen by over 15,000 students at Fruit Tree Tour participating schools as part of Green Theatre, a performance that uses art, music, dance, and storytelling to teach students lessons about the earth. Guiding the puppet creation is the talented Rosamond, the in house puppeteer who has over 20 years of experience crafting art that tells a story. Because our luck is as good as it gets, George Martinat, the Green Theatre intern from University of North Carolina, Asheville, arrived the night before the puppet workshop began and jumped full force into his area of specialty! Rosamond, George and six inspired volunteers participated in the weekend workshop. More pictures to come as the projects progress!Thank you Rosamond for sharing your art and skills with Fruit Tree Tour!

In late December I had the pleasure of meeting with master gardeners John Berchielli and Caroline, caretaker of the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center near Sacramento. Here, master gardeners have been experimenting with strategies for growing fruit in small urban plots. These are the true scientists of what Common Vision refers to as Schoolyard Orchard Culture—the art of planting many trees close together to maximize number of fruit varieties and number of months that fruit is available in the limited space of the schoolyard. Schoolyard Orchard Culture uses maintenance strategies that keep the trees low to the ground for ladder-free student harvesting and easier caretaking.

The good folks at Dave Wilson Nurseries (donors to the Fruit Tree Tour) have pioneered these techniques and here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center they have been testing them for the past decade. I came to talk to the experts on what will work best at schools across California. Here are some of the strategies that Fruit Tree Tour will be employing on this year’s tour:

Multiple Plantings (3-in-a-Hole): By planting three or four trees only feet from each other, we can, in the space of one full-sized tree, can have a peace, a nectarine, a plum, and an apricot. Or we can have three varieties of peach that ripen in May, August, and September, which means more months of students eating peaches for snacks instead of Doritos.

Espalier: Many schools have narrow patches of earth next to fence lines. In fact, for many schools this is the only pieces of dirt on the campus. Espalier is a technique that encourages lengthwise growth with little width. The effect is a fence or wall of fruit.

Cocktail Trees: Another strategy to maximize the schoolyard fruit varieties is the creation of cocktail trees. By grafting (> what is grafting) several varieties on one tree students can feast on apples from July until December on the same tree! One of the trees at Fair Oaks had over 50 varieties on one tree!

Caroline and the other caretakers of the center were excited to see their years of science going out to serve the public school children of California. They graciously invited me to cut scion wood from the trees in their orchard in order to graft cocktail trees at the each of the schools! Some May Apricots and September Pluots will certainly help to inspire the youth to choose nature’s sweetest candy, available every recess, free of charge!

When Fruit Tree Tour plants up a school, let's be honest, it looks like we stuck a bunch of leafless sticks in the ground. This October, I had an opportunity to see what happens just 2-1/2 years later, as I journeyed to eight Los Angeles school orchards. The growth and production was more than I thought possible in such a short time! Meeting with the principals and teachers, I offered pruning support and lessons and got to hear the stories of what the trees have been doing since we left. This video highlights "Orchard Updates" from two LA schools.

With Common Vision’s new bus on the way, Pre-tour Prep has officially begun! This time of year is special for the CV crew because we start witnessing miracle after miracle roll in! The time, energy and resources needed for Fruit Tree Tour to be the educational extravoganza that it turns into each year come in many different forms. One of the most exciting is …..Fruit Trees! This week CV received the first two tree donations for FTT 08.

Rolling River Nursery is as family farm as they come in Northern California. You can even read about their farm adventures on their website (RollingRiverNursery.com) as well as check out their amazing varieties of fruit trees, fruiting vines and bushes, natives, groundcovers…. the list goes on. Rolling River has generously offered at least 50 fig trees for this years tour! I look forward to visiting the homestead for the fruit tree pick up!

Our second tree donation comes from Solman Fruit Trees (Solman.com). Marcus Bakula will hook Fruit Tree Tour up again in 08 with the ever popular cherimoya tree! He lovingly propagates delicious fruit trees in Encinitas, CA and in 05 CV planted his cherimoyas in the center of our first Fruit Orchard Mandala at Normandie Elementary. This year our friends from CSU reported 4 cherimoyas from that tree! Cherimoyas also happens to be a long-standing FTT crew favorite- we play drums and dance for baskets full of them at the Santa Barbara Farmers Market each year! Marcus and friends are at it again this year bringing more ‘moyas to the youth and throwing in some Brazillian dwarf bananas and Venus grapes.

Big thanks to the first tree donors of 08. The CV crew is honored to bring the generousity of our supporters into the hands of California’s youth. We are on our way to 1,000 more fruit trees for 2008!

My name is Pranav, and I am one of the Common Vision Fruit Tree Tour Drum Circle facilitators. As a lover of drums and drumming, it is a honor for me to serve the youth as a teacher of drumming concepts and techniques this year on Fruit Tree Tour. I thank all of the West African drum masters who have touched my life as a drummer, and also Common Vision's legendary drumming crew of this year and of yesteryear.

The Drum Group involves up to 50 students learning to play music together with Common Vision's 50 donated djembe drums. The drum group focuses on community building, respect, interconnectedness, positivity, and, of course, rhythm. Common Vision's West African style djembe drums have been on-board for almost five years and live within an amazing “drum tetris” in the under-storage compartments of BamBoomBox bus. Every day that we have the Drum Circle rotations, these drums are brought out from under the bus and into the schoolyard or community center where we are working and used as teaching tools.

With games and rhythm lessons, students learn to play together while creating a unified song on the drums. In addition to the drumming patterns involved in West African traditional music there are also dances and singing parts. Dancing to the rhythms is also taught at many of the groups. When it's at its best, the drumming and dancing comes together at the end of the session to create a group celebration that is unifying, fun and exciting.

Our facilitators teach, but are also students of west African drum and dance. The drumming techniques that are taught and the process of playing the drums with one another help to demonstrate many of Common Vision's key concepts. Respect is the first key concept that students are introduced to, this is done before they can touch the drums. We emphasize the importance of caring for the drums and of actively listening and paying attention to the facilitators while we are speaking or drumming. Listening is a crucial aspect of playing music and is also a crucial form of respect that we ask of the students so that they will be able to get the most out of the drum circle.

Community, interconnectedness, and cooperation are all involved when djembe drums and rhythms are played in unison by a large group of people, often accompanied by dancing and singing. Positivity is emphasized by the joy of the students as they get to play these instruments, and the encouragement that we offer as facilitators to come together as one “band”. This form of unification creates sweet sounding music and an atmosphere of group celebration.

We usually start off with a drum & dance demonstration and introductions. We introduce ourselves and the drums that we are bringing to the group. These are djembe drums, which are a west African style of hand drums, made with goat skin and wood. There are also a set of 3 dunun drums, which are traditionally played to accompany the djembes. The dununs are played with sticks by our facilitators and are made from thicker cow skins.

Many games and exercises can be used during the session depending on time, space and the age of the students. Typically, we start by teaching the proper postures and positions of the body and hands. Then the “break” is explained and used as a way to communicate to the group with a particular drum phrase when to all stop drumming at the same moment. This break can then be used as a signal to stop together after students “let loose” on the drums.

The heartbeat rhythm is utilized as another drum exercise. It is a rhythm that all people share within our bodies showing that we all have something in common. We use the heartbeat in order to practice the techniques of bass, tone and slaps, which are how we describe the three basic djembe drum sounds.

After the more simple introductory sections, we move towards more advanced drumming and oftentimes dancing too. Call & response on the drum is the most fun drum game for me. I am always amazed at how good children can be at repeating the complex rhythms that I play for them. In the game, students copy drum patterns and gestures from the lead djembe drummer while the dundun drums are used to play an accompanying rhythm and keep the beat.

After this we will generally start teaching traditional west African style djembe rhythms and dances. The rhythms of the songs “Fanga”, “Yankadi”, and/or “Kuku” are usually taught, which have fun and simple traditional djembe parts originating in West Africa. The students sometimes have the option to learn the dance moves for the songs being played, and then can come back to the drum circle for an amazing dance party.

Overall, the Fruit Tree Tour drum circle offers a great opportunity for youth to get an introduction to West African style drumming and dancing, while also teaching the key concepts of health, respect, interconnectedness, community, cooperation, and positivity. Its a lot of fun to be a part of the drum circle at schools, partially because I love drumming, but mainly because of the joy and knowledge that it brings to the children who get to participate.

Fruit Tree Tour 2008 is coming soon! Common Vision would love your help in designing a new 2008 crew T-shirt for our volunteers and supporting friends. Details are below this brief look at the history of the Common Vision logo.

When Zak Human of Woven Media completed the direction and production of the Common Vision documentary “Planting the Vision,” he surprised the whole staff with his amazing graphic design talent. He designed the art work on the DVD sleeve including the “Every Leaf is Our Flag” emblem and the cartoon image of the beloved Lioness, Common Vision’s eldest bus.

Thanks Pranav and Zak and all those who support the Vision and the artwork that represents it.

So who’s next? 2008 will be the fifth annual Fruit Tree Tour bringing at least another 1000 fruit trees, rhythm after rhythm, and high vibes eco-hip-hop to California’s youth. Your ideas and (especially) your artwork would be greatly appreciated! CV will feature the selected design and artist on Benefit tour as well as in the first on tour issue of Harvest Rhythm. Fruit Tree Tour crew will plant a tree in honor of you or the friend of your choice. And of course, a 100% organic cotton/hemp shirt for the artist!

Illustrate the Vision! Submit all entries to info@commonvision.org by October 28th. For those artist friends that do not have computer access, please send drawings to P.O. Box 2012 Willits, CA 95490. For the computer artists in the house, please use high resolution! If you are interested and can feel the creativity flowing already, email info@commonvision.org for the tech specs. Any design submitted will be accepted by Common Vision for free use and alterations to suit printing and world wide distribution!

How does Common Vision’s veggie-oil powered caravan carry 1,000 fruit trees for 3 months? Bare-rooted, dormant, cold, and moist in a 20’ long vegetable-oil powered refrigerator on wheels, of course… Taking proper care of all these trees while on the road is no small task. Fruit Tree Tour volunteer Brenda Whitney has taken on the responsibility with ceaseless dedication for the past two years. Our beloved Tree Steward now reveals to the world what caring for all these trees entails.

Each tree planted on Fruit Tree Tour passes through the hands of the crew's Tree Stewards numerous times before being planted at a school in a workshop with students. This year the Tree Steward role is being filled by a dynamic trio of women: April, Koral, and myself, Brenda. As the sole Steward last tour, I am grateful for the shared responsibilities this year, as well as the opportunity to return again and learn even more about the trees we plant.

The job is a quiet, behind the scenes, daily commitment that requires watering the trees morning and night, as well as pulling out a school's "order" for trees to be planted during the next day's program. Thankfully it can be done alone, or together, any time of day or night, and can be a peaceful meditation. Sometimes it requires driving with Maggie, one of the crew's original Tree Stewards, in the refrigerator truck to pick up trees being donated by a nursery. It is always exciting to see where our trees come from, and meet the people who are giving them to Common Vision for the Fruit Tree Tour schools. It's a joy to see the inside of the truck filled with another 50-300 trees waiting to be planted at schools.
We store all our bare-root fruit trees in a large refrigerator truck in order to keep them at a temperature below 45 F, which keeps them in dormancy (or asleep) as they are in winter time. The inside of the truck has been built up with wood to create a trough for the trees to live in, and lined with waterproof material for watering. We pull the trees out 24 hours in advance of planting them at school, to allow them time to acclimate to the climate outside. Its fun to tell the students during planting that they are not only giving the trees a permanent home, but also helping to ‘wake up' the trees, making them think its spring, and time to start growing.

Sometimes the caravan will carry up to an additional 50 potted trees of varieties that don’t go dormant or that don’t store well bare rooted. Citrus, Loquats, Cherimoya, Tropical Cherries, Pineapple Guavas, Sapote, and the Ice Cream Bean all need to be carried in pots. On days when the caravan rolls to a new location, we load all of the potted tree into one of our truck beds, and unload them at the next campsite.

I've been learning a lot more this year about the trees. As a Midwest and East-coast transplant to California, I've been learning a lot of new interesting varieties, such as the Cherimoya and Loquat. I’ve been reveling in the abundance of fruit that grows well in this region, but only comes as rare treats back home, such as citrus, figs, and avocados. I've also been learning a lot more about tree care, including pruning, grafting, irrigating, and planting regionally-specific varieties. We also keep an inventory of all the trees planted at each school, to keep a record of the orchards we leave behind each year, and to be better able to check up on their progress throughout the year as the schools continue to care for them.

Each time I plant a tree with the kids, or in the program's closing circle, I think of all the love and care that went into bringing that tree to that school, and the number of times I visited and held that tree before leaving it in its new home with the kids. We usually circle around the tree at the end of each planting, and make a parting wish; I often think of how grateful I am for such an abundance of fruit, of my role in helping to spread that abundance, and of my desire for these students to find as much joy in bringing the abundance of nature to their communities as I do.

On February 28th, Common Vision brought Fruit Tree Tour to an LA Koreatown school, Charles H Kim Elementary, under very special circumstances. Charles H Kim, after whom the school was named, was a nectarine farmer and fruit packer in Los Angeles in the early 1900’s. Common Vision sourced some of the nectarine varieties that Charles Kim grew and planted them with the students on the campus.

Common Vision takes great honor in sharing the Fruit Tree Tour experience with students and communities of all backgrounds. On February 28th, Common Vision brought Fruit Tree Tour to an LA Koreatown school, Charles H Kim Elementary, under very special circumstances. Charles H Kim, after whom the school was named, was a nectarine farmer and fruit packer in Los Angeles in the early 1900’s. He is credited with being a major force behind the creation of L.A.'s Koreatown. (Today, Koreatown is home to the largest number of Koreans in the world outside of Korea).

The principal of the school excitedly connected Common Vision with Daisy Kim, Charles H Kim’s granddaughter. Maggie White, Common Vision’s donation coordinator, worked with Daisy to source not just nectarines for the school, but some of the varieties that her grandfather grew and sold. Daisy said, “I was so impressed when you asked me exactly which varieties of nectarines my grandfather farmed and packed… Your presentation was a huge hit with the children! Thanks so much to all of you for everything you gave us that day.” Common Vision planted 8 Late LeGrand Nectarines at Charles H Kim Elementary.

Principal Sandra Kim announced that the school was launching a Green Students organization that would continue carrying the environmental charge by caring for the trees and helping to find ways to make the school more environmentally friendly. She thanked Common Vision for inspiring this new direction for her school.

Planting the Vision is a 45 minute documentary about Fruit Tree Tour. Zak Human and Kyla Sheffield of WovenMedia devoted half of a year to professionally produce this amazing video that truly brings to life the experience that Common Vision shares with schools and community centers. The Common Vision is humbled in gratitude by their dedication and honored to share this 9-minute preview with each of you. We hope you enjoy “Planting the Vision” and are inspired to care for Mother Earth in your community. Preview DVD

One of the most potent effects of Common Vision’s work on Fruit Tree Tour is the collaborations with local and national organizations with varied foci from urban nutrition to global warming to sustainable farming to arts and ceremony. This collaboration highlight is UrbanFarming.org. Urban Farming’s mission is to eradicate hunger while increasing diversity, motivating youth and seniors, and optimizing the production of food on unused urban land.

Urban Farming founder and Executive Director, Taja Sevelle and Common Vision Education Director Michael Flynn have been in contact for the past 2 years, developing a strategy for working together to make real change towards their shared vision. In 2007, Urban Farming provided a scholarship for a Compton school, Washington Elementary, to participate in the Fruit Tree Tour Program free of charge. As part of the Coalition to Eradicate Hunger, Washington Elementary has agreed to give 10% of their harvest to a local food bank.

While 99% of the students at Washington are on free or reduced lunch, Principal Ontrece Ellerbe agreed that the opportunity for the students to experience giving to their larger community would be indispensable. Urban Farming and Common Vision both view this as the humble beginnings to a long relationship of planting orchards together in Los Angeles.

The city of Los Angeles invited Common Vision as the opening act of city's Keep Los Angeles Beautiful Campaign, thanks to Common Vision's work with the mayor's Million Trees LA project. The performance included drumming, dancing, and eco- hip hop. Senator Hillary Clinton, who was among the speakers at the event, expressed her enthusiasm for Common Vision’s tree planting projects.

Common Vision is piloting “Roots to Fruits - School Nurseries to Feed Communities” at 3-4 schools on this year’s Fruit Tree Tour. Common Vision works with the students and teachers to propagate a nursery of 50 – 200 saplings of varieties of fruits that are especially requested and adapted for school plantings in their area. Common Vision educators demonstrate the process of grafting fruit trees (see Grafting 101 below). Students witness and participate in one of the most amazing miracles in nature, the combining of two trees to give both strong roots and delicious fruits. Common Vision gives students the charge to care for the young trees for two years. These trees can then be planted at community centers, neighborhoods in their area and shared with more schools during Fruit Tree Tours to come.

Common Vision’s first “Roots to Fruits” nurseries:

Vista Del Valle Elementary
3 years and 33 fruit trees deep in Fruit Tree Tour participation Vista was honored to be the first Roots to Fruits Nursery. They are caring for 50 grafted apples and 20 rooting fig cuttings.

North Hollywood High School
Under the guidance of soil science teacher Randy Vail, the students in the Naturalist Academy – an environmental track at North Hollywood High, will be hosting the largest Roots to Fruits Nursery. There nursery is holding 50 apples, 100 grape, and 100 fig trees for Fruit Tree Tour. Additionally they gifted Common Vision with 20 4 year old Cherimoya trees. Big thanks for this budding collaboration.

From the indigenous communities of Mexico, Fruit Tree Tour has been honored to travel with a seed carrier, bringing ancient Mayan corn seed to schools to plant with children. The schools agree to take care of the corn and provide a sanctuary for the preservation of the native seed, a refuge, in an act of solidarity with the traditional farming communities that are struggling to maintain their ancient ways. The seeds carry a message of the importance of preserving native seeds and the traditional culture contained within. Students learn from the seed carrier about the genetic modification of corn seeds and the effects of a variety of different modifications, including the threats that these modifications have upon the ancient way of growing our own food from seeds.