HARVESTING HOPE, REAPING SOUL

Gleaning is a old-fashioned concept that never should have done out of style. Now, a number of food banks, together with their networks of partner farms and volunteers, have brought gleaning back in a big way.

Photo: Courtesy of Vermont Food Bank. Gleaning Season.

The participating farms allow the volunteers to glean corn and other produce missed or snubbed by commercial harvesters.  “Perfect” produce has become the expectation, particularly in western cultures, which means many tons of fruits and vegetables are wasted, rejected because of a blemish or a less-than-perfect shape, size, or color.

Photo: Blake Farmer/WPLN. Gleaning harvest for the needy.

The opportunity is enormous: At hundreds of thousands of farms around the country, 6 billions pounds of food gets wasted, while millions of people go hungry.

The gleaners pick thousands of pounds of food each week from each farm, that otherwise would have rotted in the fields, and distributes it monthly through the food banks.

Photo: Courtesy of USDA. Maine FSA Harvest.

The Vermont Foodbank is the state’s largest hunger-relief organization, serving communities in the state’s 14 counties through a network of 280 meal sites, shelters, senior centers and after-school pro­grams.

It’s Gleaning Program harvests excess produce from more than 100 local farms and provides nearly 400,000 pounds of fresh, local produce to Vermonters in need of food assistance.

Photo: Courtesy of Gleanings for the Hungry. Youth Group Volunteers.

Harvest Texarkana, as part of the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, participates in gleaning throughout the growing season. They partner with commercial growers and with the Department of Corrections.  Partnering with commercial growers across the state, AHRA staff, volunteers and the Department of Corrections glean over 600,000 pounds of produce.

Photo: Courtesy of Catlin Gabel. Student Gleans Corn.

On a smaller scale, a smaller group of volunteers, for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, organized a network of ten regional farms and 15 Produce to the People distribution sites to help feed their communities’ most vulnerable.

Photo: Blake Farmer/WPLN. Gleaning harvest for the needy.

Harvesting by gleaning is a win-win-win all around. The volunteer  gleaners feel great doing it. They get outside in the fresh air, get some exercise in beautiful fields, connect with nature, and feed the hungry in their communities. A powerful combination of benefits!

The food bank clients get fresh, nutritious, delicious food, instead of packaged processed fodder -- or nothing at all. The farmers appreciate knowing their harvests are doing more good.

Photo: Courtesy of Wasted Food. Senior Gleaning.

For 33 years, Senior Gleaners, Inc. has successfully supplied food to 135 charitable organizations in Sacramento County and the outlying areas helping to feed over 3.5 million needy people. Volunteers, up to 99 years old, lend a hand.

As you immerse in the harvest season, enjoying its bounty, perhaps you might consider making beauty happen for the needy, as well as for yourself, by gleaning

Read about the beautiful harvests all this week, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science,Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact.

Get busy and enter the BN Competitions, Our theme this week is Beautiful Harvest. Send in your images and ideas. Deadline is 10.06.13.