Sometimes The Portlandia Skits Just Write Themselves
NPR's The Salt blog picked up on a very NPR story about a Seattle public plot turned "food forest," where citizens will be encouraged to make friends with one another while frolicking and foraging for luscious, free fruits.
The Friends of Beacon Food Forest (named for Seattle's Beacon Hill neighborhood, where the plot is located) are currently working with $100,000 in seed money to set up a 1.75-acre test zone to be planted by the end of the year. Scattered throughout the zone will be fruit-bearing perennials, like apple trees and blueberry bushes, and, probably, also many, many hippies.
If, in a few years' time, the scheme is dubbed a success, the food forest will be expanded to encompass 7 acres of donated land.
As for how to deal with those threats to the utopia The Salt tactfully calls "overzealous pickers" ("greedy bastards" in the argot of the street): no one's exactly sure. One proposed solution is "to embed ‘thieves' gardens' with extra plants in the park for those people eager to take more than their share."
Failing that, public executions send a strong message.
