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! Hello Gleaners, Happy Summer! It has been a busy early summer/late spring for us, which you may know already if you follow us on Facebook. It seems that the weather so far this growing season has been great for growing all varieties of greens – so far in 2014 we have harvested and donated 1,755 pounds (148.5 bushels) of kale, mizuna, bok choy, tat soi, arugula, salad mix, and other cooking and salad greens, and we have gleaned an additional 700 pounds of greens and other early spring crops from our pickups of unsold produce at the Arlington Farmers’ Market every Wednesday. Our expansion to the North Shore has also been successful so far this season, with 3 gleaning trips in that region and deliveries to Beverly Bootstraps and Haven From Hunger in Peabody. Once we get our new refrigerated storage unit installed in the next couple of weeks, we will be able to glean and deliver more fresh produce to our partner pantries. Currently we are going straight from farm to pantry, which prohibits us from serving pantries whose schedules do not align with our gleaning schedule. With this operational improvement, we can glean on Friday, store the produce overnight, and deliver it Saturday morning to some of the smaller pantries that serve their communities and do not storage space. As the days get warmer, expect a number of gleaning alerts for more greens, including lettuce (a crop that is very sensitive to heat), and soon enough summer squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and other popular summer crops. We are already averaging 1-2 gleaning trips per week, and soon we may start doing 3-4 trips! So keep your eyes on your emails if you are interested in volunteering with us out in the fields. To the Harvest! PS To honor the start of a new gleaning season, as well as a new album and summer tour by the band Phish, listen to this great live version of their song “Back on the Train” from 2011. It’s only 6 minutes long – a short jam for Phish! Now that the gleaning season is officially over (we think…), I can finally report on the 2013 gleaning season’s stats! Below are a few numbers and averages that we have come up with. If you are interested in more, please email Matt at coordinator@bostonareagleaners.org - there are a lot of numbers and only so little time to manipulate them, so any new ideas are welcome! We will be presenting these numbers plus more along with pictures from this past season at our Winter Volunteer Party/Annual Meeting, February 9 in Arlington. Hope to see you there! As you read, consider listening to the below song by Darkside, an electronic duo from Brooklyn. I find the song’s title, “Paper Trails” to be fitting for this type of work that we accomplish here at BAG in the winter!
Hello Gleaners! Although the fruit and vegetable growing season ended long ago for most farmers, we have still been gleaning up until this past weekend (January 13), when we gleaned the last of the apples that were in storage at Kimball Fruit Farm in Pepperell. We sorted and boxed them up, put them on pallets, and the Merrimack Valley Food Bank and the Greater Boston Food Bank will pick them up sometime this week. With this final trip, our total amount gleaned from this growing season reached 94,000 pounds of food! Now that the gleaning fieldwork is done, my work will shift to two main categories of office work: follow-up and outreach. I will be following up with farmers and pantries to see how well we served them this year, and then reaching out, developing materials, and attending agricultural events to attract new farmers, pantries, and volunteers to our work. I have already tabled at one such event; this past weekend I attended and exhibited at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Massachusetts (NOFA-Mass) Winter Conference. My time was well spent talking with farmers (some who had heard of us, and some who had not), as well as signing up new volunteers and learning about nascent gleaning programs across the state. I hope to see most of you at our upcoming Volunteer Party on February 9 (details coming soon)! In the meantime, I will do my best to keep you updated with what’s going on here at 240 Beaver St. To the Harvest! PS Please check out this traditional folk tune, very fitting for today's weather: "Cold Rain and Snow" performed live by the Peter Rowan and Tony Rice Quartet |
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