When it started eight years ago with less than two dozen volunteers, Village Harvest collected a modest 5,000 pounds of backyard fruit and distributed them to food agencies that feed the hungry.

Today, it faces a very valley kind of predicament, what might be called a convergence: growing demand from Bay Area food agencies and the potential to grow the operation, a record harvest that appears poised to beat last year's 122,000 pounds, and new appreciation for the value of fresh fruit in good nutrition. All this while working with local and state agricultural officials to prevent the spread of a

"A lot of things have come together," said Joni Diserens, "as well as the culture catching up with us.

"In the current culture of food, eating what's in your backyard is to be a "locavore." At food agencies where canned food usually rules, fruit picked by Village Harvest and often served the same day provides a healthy helping of fresh produce to poor and working families.

At an orchard at the Guadalupe Gardens in San Jose where Village Harvest will be picking apricots soon, the Diserenses talked about new volunteer harvest teams forming in Morgan Hill, Sunnyvale, Santa Cruz, San Ramon and Davis.

Between 400 to 700 volunteers pick the fruit Village Harvest collects and distributes to 15 food agencies in the South Bay and other agencies in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Cruz and Yolo counties It has a special permit from five counties to harvest from quarantine areas, and complies with handling, inspection and tracking requirements.

'Connecting the dots'

"The value of what we've done is it's a scalable model," said Joni Diserens, speaking the parlance of her work in high-technology business management. "For a small amount of investment, there's a lot of food that can be collected. It's just a matter of connecting the dots that ends up being efficient ROI."

ROI is return on investment. Homeowners agree to share their backyard fruit. Volunteers pick for a few hours. The return: good food for people who need it most.

The way they see it, Silicon Valley is teeming with fruit trees in backyards and old orchards. Much of the fruit is not used by homeowners. Much of it goes to waste. Yet, there are thousands of people — an estimated 206,000 every month in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, most families with children and seniors — who rely on food banks.

"This is a doable thing for people," said Elaine Hays, a stay-at-home mother of five kids in a one-income family who uses fruit from Village Harvest. She, along with her children, have also been volunteers.

"People look at the problem of poverty and they think it's too big to deal with," said Hays, 42.

"The fruit from your backyard can make a difference."

Karen Hurst, a microbiologist, community college instructor and harvest team leader in Mountain View, has been a volunteer going on five years now. Twice a month, she leads a group of as many as 20 volunteers to pick fruit in Mountain View, Los Altos and Palo Alto. One recent Sunday, she, Joni Diserens and volunteers picked Blenheim apricots from the remnants of an old orchard behind a cemetery in Palo Alto. After a couple hours, volunteers huddled under the shade of a tarpaulin tied to the back doors of a van, sorting the Blenheims. The best fruit go into a box. The ones that are too soft, that will spoil quickly, are put in a bucket. Those too, are consumed. Volunteers split them to take home.

"It's one of those situations where everybody wins," Hurst said.

"Trees and yards get cleaned up. Food goes to the food bank. It feels like you've accomplished something bringing fresh fruit to people who would be eating government bread and cheese.

"'Wonderful program'What's more, Hurst said, "I get to climb trees!"

No one involved with Village Harvest — not the volunteers, not the homeowners, not the food agencies — are likely to apologize for sounding like evangelists. They are just plain convinced.

"It's just a great, wonderful program," said Lynn Crocker, spokeswoman for the Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, which distributes food to more than 300 nonprofit groups. "And it's great food."

Craig Diserens attributes the success of their operation to the Silicon Valley solution he came up with: a simple software to coordinate the volunteers who pick from 1,000 Bay Area homes and old orchards. It also tracks the fruit, as required by agricultural inspectors, from picking location to distribution. Village Harvest is now in discussion with county agricultural officials to allow summer gardeners to donate produce to programs that feed the hungry. To date, Village Harvest has collected 74,514 pounds of fruit, well ahead of last year's pace.

Contemplating an expansion of the program, Joni Diserens envisions, "a Village Harvest in a box": a kind of manual for communities to have their own startup.

"Seeing how many people are committed to it is very gratifying," said Craig Diserens. "Just about any community in the country can do this. The question is, how do we do that nurturing?"