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New Galesburg community orchard aims to increase access to fresh fruit

Libby's Corner, located near South Academy Street and Louisville Road, will offer free fruit picking. Anything left over will get donated to River Bend Food Bank.

GALESBURG, Ill. — Galesburg residents will now have a new way to get freshly grown fruit, thanks to a budding community orchard.

With the help of a $25,000 Urban Agriculture Grant from the City of Galesburg, Walter McAllister and his wife Annette are transforming a vacant south-side parcel of land into a community orchard. It's called Libby's Corner, located near the intersection of South Academy Street and Louisville Road.

"I had a business in town and we had a tree grafting class," Walter McAllister said. "I knew the guy who owned the land, and he planted them here. So I was always driving by all the time, just to see how they were doing. And it came up for auction, and I thought, 'Oh, I had to have it.'"

The few apple trees that were planted then have now been joined by cherry trees, plum trees, nectarine trees and pear trees. Anyone in the community can plant on the land and pick fruit from them. Around 20 trees have been planted so far.

"We want the community to really feel that it's theirs," McAllister said. "And if they want to come and plant a tree in remembrance of somebody, or they just want a tree, or they've made a project for the kids to do, we're hoping that it'll really be the community who will kind of take ownership of it."

The leftover fruit will get donated to River Bend Food Bank.

"I work for River Bend Food Bank now and it's showed me exactly how there is a lot of food insecurity where people don't have access to enough food, especially nutritious food," he said. "That was a big part of why we wanted this to be able to succeed because there'll be a lot of fruit and we want to give it all away. Let people just have at it and hopefully, have a little less food insecurity. We definitely, this is in a food desert. If you don't have access to reliable transportation, it's very difficult to live in this side of town and have access to nutritious food."

Libby's Corner will have some lesser-known fruit as well. Craig Dietz, who lives in the Galesburg area, planted four pawpaw trees. He describes the tropical fruit as a combination of a mango, banana and passion fruit.

"One of the great characteristics of Galesburg is that there's a bunch of open land," Dietz said. "It's really nice, it's great for the community to make these things available to people."

McAllister thinks some of the older apple trees will produce fruit this year, but his goal is for most of the fruit to be available for picking in two years.

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