Todd Kaplan
 
At 60, Somerville resident Todd Kaplan suspects he may be one of the longest-serving volunteers among the ranks of many who flock to the fields for the Boston Area Gleaners. He started picking produce for BAG back in the early 2000's when the organization trundled volunteers from farm to farm in a rickety, old van that belonged to founder Oakes Plimpton.
 
“That was the sole vehicle for Boston Area Gleaners” said Kaplan. “We are so much more professional nowadays.”
 
Since the beginning, Kaplan, a lawyer with Greater Boston Legal Services, has been drawn to BAG’s mission, especially after all he had learned about food delivery while volunteering in a soup kitchen in Washington, DC where up to 300 people a day were receiving meals.
 
“When you’re doing that kind of volume, you really have to do a lot of scrounging for food,” said Kaplan. At the wholesale markets, his team would retrieve foodstuffs on the verge of being discarded. “That got me into the idea that food recovery was a great thing and that you could turn it into something…to fulfill a real need.”
 
So, when Kaplan learned about BAG’s approach—gathering good, fresh food and getting it to people in need—it struck a deep chord.
 
“It was very attractive to me. I said that’s something I really want to do,” he recalled. “Once I started, the thing that kept me going was not only the mission but also feeling that we were really giving a gift of high-quality food to people in need.” Plus, a lot of the food is low-spray or organic—the kinds of produce that can be priced out of reach for many people.
 
“All of those things have kept me going, in addition to the camaraderie of people working together,” said Kaplan. “And, of course, it’s really nice to be out in the country. I don’t really get out to farms at all, except for gleaning.”
 
Even though he’s busy with work and frequently has to rely on carpooling to get to the farms, Kaplan still manages to squeeze in about 10 gleaning trips a year.
 
“Corn and apples are definitely the favorites,” said Kaplan. But he’s not averse to heading out on winter days to glean carrots, potatoes, and kale—all of which are hardy enough to survive the cold.
 
“It’s kind of nice, as long as it’s not raining,” he said, recalling one December trip to a farm where the gleaners stumbled on a row of pristine greens stretching almost as far as the eye could see. The farmer said they could take as much as they wanted as he had harvested all he needed and was about to plow the produce under to nourish the soil.
 
As wonderful as that gift was, there was a limit to how much the gleaners could actually take, said Kaplan, because the other side of the equation is distribution.
 
“One of the biggest challenges is matching the food to people in need—getting it to them quickly enough. And figuring out if you can hold stuff back in storage,” said Kaplan. “It’s a logistical thing.”
 
Logistics. That may be the operative word for BAG as it continues to scale up its operations. And from where Kaplan sits, the challenge isn’t just about how to get harvests from field to table, it’s how to get volunteers from home to field: He longs for a more robust carpooling system.
 
If only Zip cars could be gleaned.

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Katherine Tarca
 
As a working mom with three young children, there’s not much time left in Katherine Tarca’s busy life for extra-curricular activities that don’t include people under the age of five.
 
That’s why the Medford resident, who works on curriculum and instructional support in the state Department of Education’s office of literacy and humanities, has yet to take a gleaning trip with BAG. But that doesn’t mean she’s not keenly interested in the work the organization is doing to ensure that fields of gorgeous produce don’t go to waste.
 
“There’s a very easy way of taking this resource that would otherwise go to waste and put it to use: It’s such an appealing idea,” said Tarca, 35. “It’s the same as Airbnb or car sharing where you take a resource that’s sitting there, otherwise unused, and find a way to make it work, except this doesn’t make money for anyone. It does good for people in need.”
 
One example that always sticks with her are the drops in the apple orchards Tarca likes to frequent with her husband and kids.
 
“People don’t pick up the apples that are on the ground. What’s going to happen to all those apples?” asked Tarca, who is a gardener and knows well the energy and time required to nurture produce.
 
“A farmer went through all the work to grow this crop. It’s a terrible idea that it would just rot in the field—especially when there is someone who would like to have it,” said Tarca. “So it’s like a win, win, win.”
 
Tarca first learned about gleaning eight years or so ago when she was reading about sustainability issues. When she Googled the term to find out if there was any one locally involved in the concept: up popped BAG.
 
“There was stuff in Colorado and I think California. This [BAG] was the only thing around here,” she said. And so she began sending money.
 
“I like how much impact they make,” said Tarca, who reads all BAG’s newsletters. “To me, that’s evidence that it’s a good idea. When I send them a little bit of money I know it’s going to translate to pounds of food harvested or hundreds of servings shared. It just feels good.”
 
What would also feel good is getting out there with other gleaners and helping to harvest, but for Tarca, that hasn’t happened—yet.
 
“Having young kids I’ve never had the chance to actually go on a gleaning trip, although I really, really want to, and I am looking forward to doing that one day,” she said. “They’re starting to do some child-friendly excursion-like trips and I think there’s one coming up next month which I’m going to do with my older daughter . . . she’s only 5, and as they get older I’ll do it with them, or by myself.”
 
In the meantime, Tarca said she would love to see more photos of BAG’s process on social media because, for people like her who can’t easily go on field trips, it’s fun and inspiring to see all that the volunteers accomplish.
 
 “When I get those images in my head of what the work looks like, it makes me want to support it more,” she said.

​Mary Sue Ankner
 
When you live in a densely populated part of the world dotted with malls and office parks, crisscrossed by highways, and jammed with suburban homes, the notion that working farms—a lot of them—could be part of that mix might never occur to you.
 
For Mary Sue Ankner, an IT expert in the financial services industry who lives in Watertown, that has been one of the biggest delights since she first started volunteering with the Boston Area Gleaners.
 
“One of the best things I ever discovered was how many farms there are within an hour of my home,” she said. “I had no idea. These little beautiful farms tucked in all over the place. They’re fantastic.”
 
And it’s not just the number of them that thrills Ankner, it’s the spirit of the people who till their soil.
 
“I’ve been amazed over the years at the generosity of farmers,” she said. “More and more we have seen somebody plant an extra row for the gleaners. It’s remarkable. They’re going about making their living but they’re thinking of others, too.”
 
Ankner has been involved with BAG for about eight years, ever since she spotted a woman, a card table, and a simple sign at a sheep sheering festival.
 
“It was a little painting. It said Boston Area Gleaners. I was a little nervous, actually, walking up because the only thing I could think about the word gleaning was to glean an idea. . . . I was so afraid it was going to be a religious organization.”
 
But the next thing Ankner knew, she was hooked.
 
“She explained how they harvest the vegetables, excess crops. They get them to the food pantries and she had me at that,” said Ankner. “I hate seeing things go to waste. I have a tremendous amount of abundance myself and people are hungry.”
 
Soon, she was contributing as a gleaner herself. It’s the kind of volunteering that suits her spontaneous style—signing up for harvesting trips a few days in advance with no long-term planning required.
 
“For me, the gleaners are the most perfect thing in the world because I certainly know when I see an email on Wednesday that I’m available on Saturday,” said Ankner. “It’s a lot easier than saying a month from now I’ll give you my Saturday because who knows what might jump into my life between now and a month from now.”
 
And from the beginning the trips fed her soul.
 
“I have volunteered with a lot of organizations, with the gleaners I always felt like I contributed, right from the start,” she said. “You come home a little dirty. You come home a little tired, but you know you were put to work and you know it went to good use.”
 
For Ankner, who is keenly aware of how vulnerable families can be to hard times and how quickly healthy food can become out of reach for them, knowing her volunteer efforts will have an immediate effect is particularly gratifying.
 
“When I think about who is challenged by their meals, it can be pretty much anybody,” she said. “One health scare, one medical burden on a family could put them in that bucket. . . . One job loss could put the family at having to make decisions between pay the rent or feed the family.”
 
It’s important, she said, to ensure that families can get access to fresh produce.
 
“We’ve all got to eat, and it’s going to be better for us if we all eat better,” said Ankner.
 

​Gretta Anderson
 
Gretta Anderson knows better than most the myriad challenges farmers face: She spent years working as one. Now, she’s sharing that deep-rooted expertise with the Boston Area Gleaners as a member of its board of directors.
 
Anderson, 59 and a resident of Arlington, recalls clearly her reaction when she first learned about BAG back when she was running a community supported agriculture program.
 
“The first thing I thought was what a clever idea,” said Anderson, “because as a farmer I knew that to be successful I always needed to plant more crops than I could harvest.”
 
Overproducing is one way farmers can manage the risk of crop failure.
 
“As my mentor used to say, if you haven’t grown it you can’t sell it,” said Anderson.
“The profit margins are pretty narrow for these small farms, so overplanting by 10 to 25 percent was just a way of increasing the chances that I could stay in business.”
 
Tight budgets never allowed her to hire agricultural workers to harvest food for which she wasn’t paid, so the idea that BAG would bring a group of laborers into the fields to glean those extra crops for a good cause was an appealing concept, said Anderson.
 
But then, her next reaction was trepidation.
 
“I did not invite the gleaners to my fields for a number of years, because as a farmer I was very concerned about having non-farmers in my fields. Volunteers can really do significant damage to a farmer’s crops. They can inadvertently spread disease through high-value crops. They can trample crops. It’s just a little horrifying.”
 
Those worries were laid to rest when Anderson met BAG’s Matt Crawford and she quickly realized she was dealing with a fellow farmer deeply in tune with her perspective.
 
“He was very sensitive to my concerns  . . . and that really made all the difference,” she said, adding that BAG volunteers are lead by people who are very well trained in how to harvest crops properly. “They are a paid staff and volunteer crew who have excellent leadership and training about being in farm fields.”
 
That’s good news for farmers who are drawn to BAG’s mission of rescuing surplus crops for people in need.
 
“I think the gleaners provide a very important service in helping the folks who are food insecure have a healthy diversity of food, including fresh fruits and vegetables” said Anderson. “Most farmers are pretty darn excited about working with the gleaners.”
 
But harvesting the produce is just one step in ensuring food diversity. Storing it and delivering it are also essential steps, and the staffers at BAG are experts in that arena, too, said Anderson.
 
“If you want to try and distribute a million pounds—or whatever our goal is—you’re going to have to think bigger…which means cold storage, trucks for distribution, fork lifts,” she said. “It’s pretty amazing the level of expertise on the staff.”
 
And the same goes for BAG’s board, which Anderson says is filled with smart, thoughtful, committed people.
 
“For me, in retirement, it’s the perfect fit,” she said.  “I wanted a place I could use my experience, knowledge and brain. The gleaners’ board is a very satisfying place to work.”
 
 
 
 
 

At 55, Ken Osgood of Cambridge has the good fortune to have been retired for a few years, but that doesn’t mean he’s the retiring sort.  He’s anything but that.
 
Three days a week during harvest time you’ll find him—with a water bottle, knee pads, a three-legged ladder, or whatever the job requires—working in fields around Massachusetts. One of those days he gives to the Field of Greens in Lincoln, and two of them he donates to BAG, travelling to farms where there is produce to glean.
 
Osgood has always spent a lot of time outdoors. As a child growing up in southern New Hampshire, his playground was the swamps and woods on the 30 acres his father bought in the 1960s. Later, through his teen years and college, he worked part-time at an apple orchard.
 
 “I just came to find a lot of satisfaction in being able to track, in that case, fruit through the entire cycle of the year,” he said.
 
With BAG, Osgood has found that kind of satisfaction again—on multiple fronts.
 
“My primary interest was in just getting out and being physically active. And I’m interested in food waste issues and things like that,” said Osgood adding, “a lot of my pattern of charitable donations is about groups that help people who are disadvantaged in various ways. Hunger groups have become a significant part of that.”
 
Having volunteered for BAG for four years, Osgood’s preference is not to work on consecutive days because sometimes the tasks can be draining.
 
“The morning after some intensive gleaning, I feel older than I am,” he said, recalling one 90-degree day he spent picking chard. “That was intensely difficult.” But Osgood has developed a strategy for those kinds of brutal temperatures: He carries a water bottle together with a cold pack in an insulated bag, and makes sure he takes a swig every few minutes.
 
However tough the conditions occasionally may be, the camaraderie on gleaning trips helps to smooth out the bumps.
 
“The people who do this tend not to be boring, one-track type people,” said Osgood, who is a history buff and was delighted to learn from a fellow gleaner the other day all about the history of mead. “I enjoy chatting with people I’m working with while we’re picking.”
 
Sometimes, because it’s so delightful to be outside, Osgood will work beyond the usual three-hour shift volunteers commit to.
 
“There was a time last year where I basically picked apples until dark. It was a really nice day in October. It felt nice to be out there,” he said.
 
And then, there are the gleaning trips that are like no other—the ones that can send you tumbling back through the years to the more carefree time of your childhood. That’s how Osgood described a trip to Dracut to pick collard greens in the snow. Unsurprisingly, he said, there were just two gleaners working that January day.
 
“There was a space between the road the field that was covered with hard-glazed snow pack, so we were kind of sliding down the hill, bringing our boxes out to the field—laughing a lot in spite of the cold,” he said.
 
All told, Osgood has been on 140 trips. And like other people talk about their jobs, he talks about BAG—a lot.
 
“People tend to be very interested,” said Osgood. “They mostly aren’t familiar with this sort of work.”

For two years before moving to the Boston area, Sarah Bither, 27, lived in Japan where she taught English and soaked up the local ethic.
 
“They’re very against waste. You use everything. You don’t throw anything away,” she said with admiration. “And also, they don’t really do prepared foods: everything is fresh.”
 
So when Bither, a product manager for a financial tech start-up, relocated here she began looking around for like-minded people, and that’s when she first learned about BAG—at an expo on volunteer opportunities. As she was about to leave, empty-handed, something caught her eye.
 
“The gleaners had this great sign…about food,” said Bither. And the next thing she knew a man at the table was telling her all about how much food gets thrown out each year and what BAG does to tackle the problem of waste in a hungry world.
 
“I thought that was absolutely fantastic,” said Bither, who has been a committed BAG volunteer ever since. “It is not a supply problem. It’s a distribution problem.”
 
She found the stats staggering: “They rescued like 500,000 pounds just from farms within a one-hour drive radius from Boston…This is the stuff you would pay an arm and a leg for in Whole Foods.”
 
Now an evangelist for the cause and in her third season of gleaning, Bither tells everyone she can about BAG. “I love talking about the gleaners,” she said.
 
For busy people who want to help tackle hunger, but don’t have a lot of time, BAG makes it very easy to head to the fields for a few hours of harvesting with other volunteers.
 
“They send out one email a week that lists all of the trips in all of the locations, all the times, and all the crops, and if it suits your schedule, you can pick one, you can pick several,” said Bither. “It’s super low-commitment. No spam.”
 
Her first trip was a bean-picking expedition—a good one to start with as the beans were growing in such abundance that harvesting them was not much harder than sitting in a circle with other volunteers and filling boxes, said Bither.
 
“If you’re digging potatoes with a shovel, that’s more intensive,” she added. But trip leaders are attentive to everyone’s energy levels, and if team members start to get tired, the leaders will find something else for them to do, said Bither.
 
Since she doesn’t have a car, Bither, who lives in Somerville, depends on others to give her a ride to the fields—a challenge she knows some fellow gleaners are facing was well.
 
But Bither has found a way around that hurdle. Having made friends with other volunteers, she just sends her buddies texts, finds out who’s going on which trips, and catches rides with them.
 
Aware of the car issue, BAG recently created a Facebook group where volunteers can self-organize carpools. Additionally, enough people have offered to drive that BAG is now able to offer carpools on about one out of every four or five trips it organizes. When volunteers sign up, they can look for the trips with carpools. 
 
 
 
 

It’s hard to believe how fast the past 10 weeks have flown by.  Each day is different at Boston Area Gleaners, and, as I look back, I realize that the work is driven by nature – the changing seasons, the daily weather, the maturation of various crops, the “shelf life” of different vegetables.

My name is Sandro Carboni, and I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to intern with this amazing organization.  I am a rising senior at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, where I’m majoring in Environmental Studies.  My college is in Geneva, NY on Lake Seneca.  A sizable percentage of Geneva-area residents suffer from food insecurity, and I have become acutely aware of – and interested in – this issue through coursework and community involvement.  My experience with Boston Area Gleaners has taught me so much about the food ecosystem and about what people – farmers, volunteers and non-profits – can do to help.

During this past summer, I had the opportunity to work in all aspects of the Gleaners and I learned so much about the way in which the pieces all fit together.  On some days, I went on gleaning trips and was able to meet fun and generous volunteers.  I learned a ton from Jack and the team about various vegetables. I really enjoyed being out in the sun getting to know some of the area’s beautiful small farms.  On other days, I worked with Matt to organize our gleaned produce and assisted in distributing it around the surrounding area. It is an amazing feeling to deliver bushels of carrots and radishes to pantries, shelters and food banks, knowing that people will have something fresh and healthy to eat.

  It is hard to visualize our ecosystem – Where are the farms that have produce for us to glean?  Who/Where are the volunteers in relation to the farms?  Where are the recipient agencies in relation to each another so that we can plan our delivery routes?  With this in mind, my main project was focused on analyzing data that the team currently relies on to manage information regarding farms, volunteers and agencies.  I assisted in cleaning up the existing data and then looked at challenges facing the team.  I researched visualization software tools and chose one to experiment with (i.e. Espatial).  I am hoping that this tool will help the team to replace some manual tasks with automation to keep improving the ability to distribute food from farms to families.

I am going back to college with a real connection to this organization, its people and its mission.  It has been an amazing feeling to deliver banana boxes full of beautiful fruits and vegetables and to know that this food will be enjoyed by families rather than left in the fields.  I am eager to use what I have learned here to help a current gleaning nonprofit in Geneva. 

I couldn’t have imagined a better summer and I’m excited to see how Boston Area Gleaners continues to grow. 

By Sandro Carboni,
2018 Forest Foundation Summer Intern