Erica Kenner talks as fast as she works, chattering nonstop as she wields her 5-foot-long, wooden-handled fruit picker with the ease of a teenager with a lacrosse stick, snagging fruit high inside the leafy canopy of an ancient orange tree. She fills the cardboard box at her feet quickly, worried that she and her crew of three pickers won't make all of their appointments that day. She considers it a personal failure when she has to leave fruit to rot.

Southern California has a surfeit of two things that Kenner works every weekend to bring together:  delicious backyard produce and homeless, hungry people. One of the leaders of Food Forward, a Southern California backyard harvesting effort, Kenner has helped build a 1,200-strong volunteer network of pickers. In 2009, Food Forward's first year, these volunteers harvested 100,000 pounds of produce. This year they are on track to harvest twice as much food. And they have barely scratched the surface of the free food available just for the asking in Los Angeles, says Kenner.

An abundance of extra fruit

The first weekend in May when I caught up with her, Kenner and the Food Forward crew had joined forces with the largest regional community service event in the country, Big Sunday, a mitzvah or "good deed" day started more than a decade ago by the members of Temple Israel in Hollywood. Still, despite dozens of extra helpers, Kenner was right when she predicted there would be more fruit to harvest than they could handle.

"We'll harvest 1,000 pounds from these three trees alone," she says as she looks around the postage stamp backyard of a Studio City bungalow. "That's typical of mature citrus trees in the San Fernando Valley." The food goes from the backyard straight to a collection of food pantries and soup kitchens equipped with the refrigeration necessary to handle fresh produce.

Discovering the backyard bounty scattered liberally throughout Los Angeles' tract-home sprawl was a revelation for Kenner and she quickly began to evangelize other young, socially conscious food enthusiasts. "We need people interested in leading picking crews," she says. "And more neighborhood captains who can scout for fruit and let us know when it's ready to harvest. With just a couple of hours work on a weekend, you can make a real difference."

Homeowners benefit too

Tracy Kettler, the owner of the Studio City home where Kenner's team is working, is a grateful beneficiary of Food Forward's good works. When Kettler bought her house 12 years ago, she looked at the backyard orange and grapefruit trees and imagined lazy summer afternoons spent nibbling fruit as she enjoyed the shade of these 100-year-old survivors of the original citrus groves that once blanketed the San Fernando Valley. Then she tasted the fruit -- pure turpentine -- and there has been nothing lazy about the pruning, feeding and watering it has taken to return these trees to their former glory.

The payoff? Twice a year the branches of Kettler's trees are filled with giant yellow and orange globes of juicy, delicious fruit. It's the tyranny of the healthy fruit tree. Kettler has worn out dozens of friends and family members trying to pick the fruit herself. And even then, she says she can't find enough people willing to take the fruit. When she heard about Food Forward, she seized what she describes as a lifeline.

"I'm incredibly happy to have this fruit going to people who need it," Kettler says, balanced on top of an 8-foot stepladder yanking bright yellow grapefruits from the top branches. "It took me a month of weekends to harvest these trees by myself."

Further into the valley, dozens of other volunteer pickers have gathered to sweep through a Northridge neighborhood under the direction of Rick Nahmias, Food Forward's founder, who is frankly overwhelmed with how quickly his project has evolved into a movement. "We've created a great sandbox, and lots of people want to get in and play with us.  It feels good," he says.

Finding ways to extend the harvest's bounty

There is ripe citrus year-round in Los Angeles. But Food Forward also harvests avocados, loquats, peaches, plums, tomatoes, and even wild herbs, anything fresh and edible. Lemons are so abundant in Los Angeles; the group has started to preserve them, selling the canned fruit to raise money for a much-needed van.

"We hope to one day be able to teach our clients how to preserve the fruit themselves, so there is even less wasted food," Nahmias says.

A utopian dreamer? Nahmias says he's just being practical. "The people who are tired of throwing out their fruit get a tax deduction for letting us pick it for them," he says. The volunteers get the benefit of being outside, working together, having fun and making friends. And hungry people get fresh food. It just makes sense.

The only wonder, he says, is why it never happened before.

Photos: (top) Food Forward organizer Erica Kenner picking fruit in Studio City, Calif. (second) Food Forward's tools of the trade for picking fruit. (third) The yield from three backyard trees at the Studio City home of Tracy Kettler. (bottom) Kettler, picking grapefruits in her backyard from a tree whose untended fruit once tasted like "turpentine." Credits: Corie Brown.

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