(A belated but still relevant meditation on our gleaning trip last fall at Pippin Orchards).
By Michelle Zheng, Special Events Coordinator
“I went on a gleaning trip this weekend!”
“What? What did you clean?”
“No, gleaning, with a G.”
Most haven't gleaned more than information from a book, but
gleaning has another definition that's important to know about. It's also the
act of gathering surplus crops that would otherwise go to waste from fields
when farms don't have the resources or time to harvest everything they've
grown. A practice with biblical origins, farmers would leave excess produce in
their fields as a form of charity, so that strangers and the poor could gather
the food. Nowadays, it's practiced by humanitarian groups, but the principle is
still the same: redistribute excess food to those in need. And what FRN does on
college campuses can be considered gleaning in a more modern context: the
dining halls are now the fields, and leftover food the crops.
But this doesn't mean that we can't practicing gleaning as
it's traditionally defined as well.
Here at Brown, we decided to try gleaning for ourselves.
After contacting a few farms, we got a response from Pippin Orchard, a local
farm located just half an hour away from campus that graciously welcomed us to
come and pick as we liked at the end of their season.
So on a sunny Saturday in November, we drove over as a group
of nine to see what we could recover. With us were both FRNds from campus and from
the Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project (RIHAP). After we were greeted by
Farmer Joe, who came out to greet us with oven mitts still on both hands (the
smell of Thanksgiving pie wafting from behind him hinted at why), we headed out
to the orchard to pick apples – buckets, crates and bags in hand.
The trees were so laden with apples in the area we were
picking from that dozens of apples would literally fall off a tree if you gave
it a nice shake. It was clear that we could've recovered several times as many
apples were it not for transportation difficulties – we ran out of containers,
and only had a truck and a car to load our harvest on. After hardly more than
an hour, we had already filled every single one of our containers to the brim
with apples as fresh as they come. And if that wasn't enough, the icing on our
already robust gleaning cake, so to speak, was already-harvested pumpkins that
Pippin had just sitting around, unused after Halloween. We then toasted our
success with some apple cider and snacks, chatting about everything from how
classes were going for us students to the experiences of our friends from
RIHAP.
After weighing everything back on campus, we arrived at our
grand total: 703 pounds of tasty, tasty produce. 703 pounds from just one
morning of gleaning, and potentially so much more had we been more prepared
with transportation. Definitely not the worst way to have spent a Saturday
morning.
Gleaning has been on our minds since then. We're hoping to
organize even more gleaning trips next fall, and take advantage of the huge
potential sitting out there in the farms around us. Not only is the potential
for recovery huge, but the potential to make local connections as well: by
gleaning, we can support local agriculture both by helping farmers reduce their
waste and allowing them to make tax deductions for the gleaned produce. It's a
vote for sustainable local food systems.
Legality is an issue when it comes to organizing gleaning
events, but our good old friend the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation
Act takes care of liability associated with gleaned food, save instances of
gross negligence or intentional misconduct. And volunteers can sign liability
waivers that prevent growers from legal responsibility in the case that
volunteers injure themselves while participating.
Now that I've had this experience, I'd love to see other
chapters organize gleaning trips as well. It's as easy as contacting farmers,
figuring out a few logistics, and then going out to the fields. And if gleaning
from farms isn't geographically feasible, there's also urban gleaning, where
gleaners collect produce from backyards and public spaces. Both are great ways
to translate a hunger for action into the freshest kind of food possible for
those who need it. So onwards, my FRNds – get out there and get gleaning!
