Welcome to Boston Area Gleaners.

Gleaning is a Biblical term referring to the law of those times that required farmers to let peasants onto their farms after harvest to “glean” whatever produce was left in the fields.

Today farmers plow it under. Produce is left out there for various reasons — the imperfection of harvest machinery (ie potatoes), or because the produce became overripe, slightly damaged by frost, or otherwise imperfect and hard to market, but still edible and nutritious.

Hayden Crilley delivering wintered-over parsnips gleaned from Parker Farm to Food For Free in Cambridge.

Boston Area Gleaners’ mission is to remedy this waste of food, and thus to supplement low income people’s food budgets!

Our core activities include:
* Contacting Boston area farmers to ask if they have any gleaning opportunities.
*Harvesting left over produce and donating it to food pantries, meal programs, and homeless shelters.
* Working with farmers to donate produce seconds after farmers’ markets.
* Contributing produce to Seconds Market at Arlington’s public housing where donated and gleaned produce is sold at $2 a large grocery bag.
* Contacting produce stores for produce and baked goods seconds, thus supplementing farm-gleaned produce particularly in the winter for hunger relief programs.

Boston Area Gleaners was started in 2004, and incorporated as a 501 c 3 non-profit corporation in November, 2007. Through 2007 B.A.G. had gleaned and donated 897 boxes of produce, over 22,000 pounds to charity. With the addition of Hayden Crilley as Co-Director, B.A.G. more than equaled that record in just one year (2008!) delivering approximately 23,500 pounds of produce plus 4,500 pounds of potato 2nds and 1,600 loaves of artisan breads from produce stores -- see 2008 Annual Report!