In the harvest season of 2009, 1,200 volunteers across Washington State gleaned produce with Harvest Against Hunger for local food banks. Volunteers are at the heart of a successful gleaning program: they harvest apples on sunny autumn days, they gather potatoes that have been dug and discarded, they pull carrots out of the mud on Halloween.

Stocker Farms
Stocker Farms offered carrots, beets, and parsnips that weren't going to be harvested. They regularly donate some unsold pre-harvested produce, but this was a great opportunity to use gleaners to increase their donation. We arranged for a group of Seattle volunteers to glean the produce on Halloween. Despite heavy rain and elbow-deep mud, they enthusiastically dug carrots and beets for several hours. The local food bank picked up the produce, which they cleaned and bagged. The result: 1,200 pounds of beautiful root vegetables that would otherwise have rotted in the field were distributed to those in need.

Alderson Orchard and La Salle High School
RFH coordinated a field harvest project with Northwest Harvest –Yakima and La Salle High School that resulted in roughly 120,000 pounds of apples being gleaned from a Yakima orchard.

Last season, RFH was not able to harvest the orchard due to a shortage of available picking crews (which were used for this orchard in previous years). So in 2008 La Salle High School staff developed curricula based on the project, including social justice, mathematics, history and other components. RFH coordinated with the orchard manager to maintain, water, prune, and spray the trees in preparation for harvest, and then arranged for bin delivery, pickup, storage and distribution – all of which were donated.

The logistical model developed with this project could be applied in other areas to incorporate schools, farms, and hunger relief agencies while enhancing educational experiences and address issues of hunger and food production.

Gleaning Kale
For the first gleaning project of the season, ten volunteers woke up early on a rainy Saturday morning to harvest kale for Northwest Harvest. As soon as we arrived at the farm, the skies cleared, Mt. Rainier appeared, and we found a sea of kale to be gleaned. After working a couple of hours and picking 400 pounds, the farmer who spent her morning gleaning along side of us, thanked us for our efforts. She told us that the previous winter she relied on a food bank for her needs and was happy to be able to give back and offer much-needed fresh produce to others.

Seattle Fruit Tree Harvest
Our first fruit tree harvest took place at a group of seventeen plum trees outside the Seattle Business Center. It was a hot hot day, and we picked plums galore from trees along the sidewalk. As people walked by, they looked up to see what we were doing and were amazed to see the fruit right here in the city.