Is it ethical to harvest someone else's fruit, if it's hanging over the public sidewalk? We urbanites tend to be sensitive to each other's boundaries. I can hear my neighbor's toilet flush, after all. And so, we construct imaginary boundaries, invisible lines over which we don't cross.

But fruit is delicious, and thus merits special treatment. Here's my rule of thumb. If fruit hangs over a public space, like a sidewalk or park, it's fair game. If I have to reach my arm over a fence, that's trespassing.


The persimmons were barely legal.

NPR's Day to Day had an interesting story a while back about this form of foraging. Personally, I wouldn't feel justified in fetching a ladder. Even though the fruit 15 feet above the sidewalk is available, a ladder would make me look like a thief, or a peeping tom. Luckily, I found that I could fold up my umbrella stroller, and holding it high above my head, pluck the fruit without compromising my air of confidence. In such circumstances, one's soul should appear spotless.


Even I would not harvest these figs.

I try not to go overboard. I limit myself to a single fruit, or perhaps three if we're talking about Italian prunes. I avoid perfect apples for fear of pesticides. And I never take the last fruit.

Of course, the polite thing to do is knock on the door and ask. But sometimes they're not home, or you can't be bothered.

Some may be bothered by my cavalier attitude. For those humbugs, I recall the fodder radishes I grew as a cover crop last year.


One of them in the parking strip grew to several feet tall. I was just about to harvest one to feed to my chickens, when an elderly woman walked by. "Oh, I love that plant," she said in a thick Eastern European Accent. "What was it?"

"It's a fodder radish," I said.

"It's delicious. I take the leaves and cook them. My husband loves them."

She never thanked me for the leaves she'd stolen. She didn't seem to feel any explanation was required. And somehow, I didn't mind. I left the fodder radish in the ground an extra month before I pulled it out.

How about you? Do you have trees that overhang a sidewalk or street, or harvest from someone else's? What's your take on the respectful harvesting of foodstuffs from other people's property?