Even fruit trees standing in the open countryside in a meadow have owners. You are therefore not allowed to simply pick apples, pears, plums, mirabelle plums or nuts or pick them from the ground. That would be theft and can be punished. However, there is one exception: if the tree has a yellow ribbon, the owner has released the tree for harvesting. Anyone may then pick fruit for a cake or eat it directly from the tree. But: Harvesting is only permitted without a ladder and only for personal consumption. And no matter how tempting the apples on the next tree may be, harvesting is only permitted on the tree with the ribbon—all others are taboo. This is stated in the Nehren community newsletter, for example. The campaign goes back to a campaign by the district of Esslingen, which won the national “Too good for the garbage can” award in the agriculture category in 2020. The following year, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture called for it.
Nehren, Ofterdingen and Pfullingen take part
There is definitely a chance of coming across a tree with a yellow ribbon in Ofterdingen: The municipality there has been handing out yellow ribbons since the beginning of August. Tree owners in Nehren have also been able to pick up labels since the beginning of September. There is another special feature in Nehren: everyone is allowed to harvest fruit for their own consumption from the municipality’s own apple, pear and plum trees. The exact location of the trees can be found on a map that the municipality has published online:
Rathaus Nehren | Obsternte
Bodelshausen has a similar regulation, but there the trees are marked with a white and red ribbon:
Bodelshausen Mediathek | Obstverkauf
The fruit and horticulture department of the district office is not involved in the campaign. “There are two hearts beating in my chest,” says district fruit-growing advisor Joachim Löckelt. On the one hand, he is happy when the fruit is recycled. On the other hand, he also understands the tree owners’ concern that branches will be torn down or that neighboring trees will be illegally harvested. That is why the issue of yellow ribbons is the responsibility of the municipalities. In the district of Reutlingen, the town of Pfullingen is participating for the 13th time with “Harvesting allowed”: the ribbons there are white. Here, too, the municipality has a map on the Internet showing the areas where white ribbons are displayed.:
Stadt Pfullingen | Weiße Bänder
There are other sources of free fruit on the internet. The website www.mundraub.org offers a map on which released trees are marked. However, some of the data is apparently quite outdated, as can be seen from the comments on the homepage. On the website www.streuobstwiesen-boerse.de, tree owners offer trees for harvesting. You can also make contacts there, for example to lease or buy a meadow orchard yourself.
Old and young trees with different types of fruit grow in meadow orchards. Some tree owners process apples and pears into juice or distil schnapps from them. Orchard meadows are an important habitat for many animal species, especially insects. The orchards are traditionally not fenced in. The meadows in the Neckar valley, on the Albtrauf and the edge of the Schönbuch are considered to be one of the largest orchard landscapes in Central Europe.
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Streuobstwiese am Albtrauf. Foto: tuenews INTERNATIONAL / Martin Klaus.
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