It happens to all successful gardeners sooner or later.
The overloaded apple tree is desperately waiting for Eve, the zucchini patch looks like a set from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and even a visit from Peter Rabbit would be welcomed in the carrot patch.
The day when an embarrassment of riches strikes the garden is one all gardeners dream of. But when supply outpaces demand those feelings of success can quickly fade. You’ve just become another wasteful American, letting nature’s bounty rot on the ground.
Cancel the visit to the therapist. There’s another way to ease your guilt: gleaning.
Gleaning is the term used to describe the salvaging of excess crops in farmers’ fields. But home gardeners can glean as well, and there are plenty of food banks in Pierce and Thurston counties ready to take the bounty.
Even if you have just one row of lettuce or part of an apple tree, your produce is needed somewhere in the South Sound says Kevin Glackin-Coley, director of the St. Leo Food Connection. St. Leo staffs the Pierce County Gleaning Project – a mostly volunteer-run organization that gets food from the fields and gardens to those who need it.
That can take the form of simply providing resources to the public or it can mean providing volunteers to come to a residence to harvest.
Glackin-Coley stresses that while St. Leo provides a staffer to the PCGP, the goal of the organization is to get food from its source to the nearest food bank.
“If we’re gleaning in Bonney Lake we give the food to the Bonney Lake Food Bank,” Glackin-Coley said.
The Thurston County Food Bank has its own gleaning program where the bounty of home gardeners is greatly appreciated.
“We love any kind of fresh produce. We’re very happy to have it. It’s prized by our clients,” said office manager Binda Douglas.
And the need is great. According to the Emergency Food Network, there were just over 1 million visits to food banks in Pierce County in 2009 and almost 900,000 visits to hot-meal sites.
Despite the volume of need Glackin-Coley dispels the notion that food banks are interested in only large amounts of food.
“No amount is too little. Conversely, no amount is too big,“ Glackin-Coley said. “Even if people don’t have much, it all adds up. The goal is to get the food into the hands of the people who use it.”
Douglas echoes that thought. Both programs encourage home gardeners to drop off produce at their local food bank. But if amounts are large, gardeners can call their respective gleaning projects and volunteers will harvest the bounty for them.
The Thurston County Food Bank gets gleaned donations every day from farms and individuals. Douglas said cleaning of fruits and produce is appreciated as well as attention to quality.
“If you wouldn’t eat it yourself, then we wouldn’t give it to our clients,” she said.
Every year Tacoma resident Heidi D’Andrea ends up throwing away hundreds of apples. She gathers enough for a pie, but that’s as much as she can use from her three trees.
“I love the apples, but all I ever do is pick them up and put them in the recycle can.”
This year D’Andrea called the PCGP and within a day Glackin-Coley and his son Shay were in her yard harvesting crates of fruit. They took it less than a mile away to the Northwest Tacoma FISH Food Bank at Mason United Methodist Church.
“It gave me such pleasure to know that somebody out there who can’t buy food will have fresh fruit,” D’Andrea said.
Judith Jones, spokeswoman for The FISH foot banks of Pierce County, said their agency is always happy to get gleaned produce.
“That is one of the challenges for people living on the edge: eating nutritiously with fresh fruit and vegetables,” she said.
But gleaning can be more than just plants. Has your backyard chicken project proved to be a clucking success?
“We would love to get eggs. They are a rare thing and expensive to buy,” Glackin-Coley said.
Even hunters can get in on the action. If you’ve filled all your tags and are faced with buying another freezer, call your local gleaning project or food bank instead. The only caveat is that all meat must come from a professional butcher.
But it’s just not food you can volunteer. Time is also needed. With just a couple of hours a week or month to spare you can organize gleaning projects as large as your neighborhood or as small as your block. By collecting spare food from your neighbors (ask permission first) you can combine a few small donations into one large one for needy families and individuals.
Glackin-Coley says small scale projects like that can build a sense of community.
One community project that relies on volunteers is the Madison-Avanti Giving Garden located between Madison Elementary School and Avanti High School on Olympia’s east side. Built in February, the 4,000-square-foot garden was tended by and provided food for students at the two schools. During the summer months when food would go to waste, it’s being harvested by volunteers and community members for the Thurston County Food Bank.
“It’s really been a community effort with people who don’t even have kids at Madison,” said Katie Stoll, parent of a Madison preschooler. Last week she and her two children harvested 22 pounds of cucumbers, zucchini, beets, kale and parsley. And a single tomato. “We just put it on top.”
No amount is too small.
Craig Sailor: 253-597-8541
craig.sailor@thenewstribune.com
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