Hello Gleaners, Our newest staff member and our brand new gleaning van couldn't have come at a better time! We are currently running at least 1 gleaning trip every day of the week thanks to these improvements. Dylan Frazier, our Seasonal Gleaning Coordinator, hit the ground running this past Sunday with his first solo trip, gleaning over 2,100 pounds of tomatoes at Kimball Fruit Farm. And the new van, which has twice the carrying capacity, has been absolutely vital in ensuring that we harvest as much as possible from the fields. So far this growing season, we have gleaned nearly 35,000 pounds of fresh produce from 17 different local farms. That is equal to nearly 140,000 4-ounce servings! So far in August, we have gleaned and donated 17,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables, which is compared to only 4,300 pounds in August of 2013. Hopefully this trend continues! The large poundage we gleaned in August can be attributed to new relationships with larger farms, as well as solidified relationships with older partner farms. Right now, the big crops for us are corn (thanks to Marini Farm in Ipswich), tomatoes, some greens, and even some apples (an early -but delicious - variety, Jersey Mac allowed us one large glean in Topsfield). This is the beginning of our busiest season, so if you are looking for a time to help out, now is the time to start paying attention to those Gleaning Trip Alerts flooding your inbox! To the Harvest! Matt Crawford Gleaning Coordinator
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Hello Gleaners and BAG Supporters! This is the first Gleaning Log entry in a few weeks, mainly because we have been so busy with gleaning and delivering the gleaned food to our hunger relief partners, which is a very good problem to have! So far in 2014, we have gleaned and donated 27,688 pounds of farm fresh fruits and vegetables. This total includes the 17, 388 pounds of produce that we have gleaned during the 2014 growing season and the 10,300 pounds that were gleaned from the previous year’s storage crops during the winter of this year. Currently, we have been slowing down a little bit with gleaning trips. At this time of the year we mainly get calls from farmers to do post-harvest pickups of cucumbers, and summer squash/zucchini, which there seems to be plenty of this year (2,925 pounds and 2,780 pounds, respectively, gleaned so far this season). Earlier this year, we were gleaning a lot of greens such as kale, arugula, mustard, and mizuna, but in the high summer, those crops stop producing as much as they were as in the beginning of the summer. However, we hope to start getting some calls soon about gleaning corn, and then just around the corner is tree fruit season (peaches and apples), so if you are itching to volunteer to glean, just sit tight! There will be plenty of opportunities to help out soon enough. To the Harvest! PS. Listen to the song below that describes our work recently - "(I'm A) Roadrunner" by the Motown great, Junior Walker & The Allstars. We feel as though we are roadrunners - driving all around eastern Massachusetts to harvest surplus crops and deliver it to those in need - and we enjoy every second of it! |
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