Tess Tomlinson, who's entering her third season with BAG, reflects on why she's drawn to the work. 

-On one of my first truck trips to Appleton farm in Ipswich, MA, after loading from their wash station dock behind their beautiful barn on their beautiful, preserved land, I steered us - Patsy the truck, Leah our OPS leader, and the twenty or so banana boxed vegetables - back towards 128. As I slowed the truck nearing the first of a few crowded intersections, a small bird smacked into the windshield and as the momentum of the truck slowed, it simply sank into the wiper shelf and I did nothing productive and logical Leah said, just turn on the wipers.

I can recall that intersection clearly and shudder each time I pass through it now and so when I thought, I’ll write about the intersection, in gleaning, of all my interests, unfortunately for sensitive readers, this was the story that came to mind.

I do think reactivity is the logical point to glean from this story and the one that does in fact tie what our team and volunteers do when driving, planning, harvesting, deciding not to harvest, sorting, etc, to yoga, wedding planning, restaurant managing, etc.

In all that I’ve found interesting over the years has been a need for efficient decisions, trust, and micro adjustments to the mind and body in order to cope with and surpass blockages, bangs and fatigue. And those are just the adjustments needed to be cool in the midst of turmoil; there is tempering needed too when faced with elation and the desire to hold onto good feelings forever.

Impressive are those who led me on my first gleans and who have joined the team since who can look at a situation and decide what’s optimal in that moment for all involved. It is a huge challenge and we don’t always get it right because we are humans, which is why good-natured, friendly, eager, volunteers play such a crucial role.

​I skimmed recent blog posts and recalled faces from summer corn and fall apples and winter apples, and feel so grateful that as we the staff are called on to react, we are surrounded in many cases by hyper-intelligent, loyal, brave and all around brightly lit others who embolden and challenge us, always with kindness.

That’s the true intersection of gleaning with any other interest I’ve ever had - where kindness allows for an atmosphere in which I’m comfortable constantly learning and circumstance makes a beginner of me at every moment.-

By Tess Tomlinson

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Helen Palmer sporting a solar powered hat to keep her cool in the summer heat.
 
Helen Palmer remembers when she first heard about BAG—it was at a fair in Cambridge on green activism—and the moment itself is crystal clear.
 
“I signed up at once,” she said. “In a way, you don’t need to be convinced. It’s just such a no-brainer. If you think about it, it’s very simply forging a link in the chain that’s missing.” It’s filling a need for farmers, who have produce to spare, and for families, who are hungry for it.
 
Early on, Palmer, who is 72 and a public radio producer, would make harvesting trips with BAG founder Oakes Plimpton in the days when the organization was still getting grounded. Some of the expeditions were memorable. 
 
“I recall going out in the snow to glean potatoes only to discover they were frozen in the ground,” said Palmer. Nowadays, things are a little more organized. And from the beginning, said Palmer, some really dedicated farmers were part of the initiative, even though there was no way for them to write their BAG contributions off their taxes, and they had to put up with strangers, many of whom knew little about farming, out their fields.
 
“I think the teamwork is absolutely awesome,” said Palmer. “I think the farmers are heroes. And I think the staff are amazing in terms of the amount of work they do.”
 
Not only does BAG attract hard workers, said Palmer, all of them are personable.
 
“The amazing thing is I’ve never met anyone at the gleaners that isn’t nice,” she said. “When it comes to the staff, they have such a great work ethic…I’m awed by them.”
 
And for Palmer, whose professional life requires her to spend a good deal of time behind a computer, thinking, the chance to dig in the dirt for three or six hours a week is a good antidote.
 
“It’s a perfect recreation for me,” she said. And inspirational, too. Though Palmer, who lives in Cambridge, has a garden and works conscientiously at it, she says she’s not terribly efficient. So, when she goes out to a farm and sees what’s possible, it’s exhilarating.
 
“People who know what they’re doing can produce these amazing crops that are there at the peak of their freshness, and to deliver to people who otherwise wouldn’t get it—it’s just so perfect,” said Palmer.

Sally Thompson, Devoted Volunteer (in light blue shirt, above)
For Sally Thompson, the Boston Area Gleaners popped up on her radar at just the right moment. About to retire, the Acton resident, now 66, was looking about for meaningful volunteer opportunities she could pursue when her time became her own.
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Thompson’s spouse happened to visit the Wayland Winter Market one day in early 2016 where an enthusiastic BAG representative was handing out brochures and telling passers-by about all the good work the organization does. When the information made it home to Thompson, she knew she had found a new calling.

“I had grown up on a farm and had memories of the fun, the challenges, and the importance of growing crops to feed people,” said Thompson. “I also was retiring from a long career as a physician with an awareness of the importance of healthy food and a healthy environment to reduce the risk of medical illness.”

BAG’s mission spoke to her: Thompson, who is also a volunteer staffer at a food pantry in a neighboring town, was keen on the idea of rescuing surplus crops so they could be used to help those in need. Soon, she was joining gleaning trips, donating money, and volunteering in other ways, too. At the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Public Health Association, for instance, she helped staff a BAG table, and whenever she can, Thompson spreads the word.

“I talk about gleaning when I am in social settings to increase interest and perhaps volunteers,” she said.
And after listening to Thompson, who wouldn’t want to go on a gleaning trip?
“The experience is lovely,” she said, “whether picking apples in an orchard on a beautiful late summer day, picking sweet corn standing in long rows, cutting chard and kale kneeling in a field of greens, or picking tomatoes off their fragrant vines.” 

For those who might worry about the work being too hard, don’t fret. “It can be physically challenging, but staff lean in to make the trip fit your ability,” said Thompson. “It is physically rewarding to glean. The physical nature of each trip differs. I see a gleaning trip as an opportunity to be physically active.”

The camaraderie and knowledge-sharing are additional bonuses, added Thompson. “I have met wonderful people while gleaning,” she said. “Retired professors who can speak very knowledgeably about many subjects. Other physicians with whom I can feel connection. Engineers are always fun. Teenagers meeting high school community service requirements provide their insights and energy.” 

Gleaning organizations like BAG should be encouraged nationwide, said Thompson. “Knowing that I am participating in a process that reduces food waste between the farmers' fields and those in need is immensely fulfilling,” she said. “As a physician I am aware of the value of fresh vegetables and fruits to good health. In my retirement I feel I can continue my career-long mission to help those in need and improve their health.  In fact, I feel I am helping large numbers of people rather than one person at a time.”  

​Rob Ann, Tess and Brad Tomlinson
 
There’s a good deal of truth in the saying about a photo being worth a thousand words: If Rob Ann Tomlinson hadn’t been intrigued by a full-page newspaper spread picturing a harvester in a field, she might never have learned about the Boston Area Gleaners. She might have skipped the story all together.
 
Instead, BAG has become a family affair for the Tomlinsons of Wellesley. Not only did Rob Ann, 72, decide to become a volunteer, she convinced her husband, Brad, (pictured above left) who had recently retired, to give it a try. It didn’t take him long to get hooked—deeply—and now, years later, their daughter, Tess, (pictured above right) has joined the BAG staff.
 
“I just liked the idea of it,” recalled Rob Ann. “It was pretty. It was outside. We enjoyed it entirely.”
 
That was all back in 2013, when the operation was a good deal simpler than now.
 
“I remember that first summer we caught the beginning of corn season,” said Brad, 74. “It was beautiful. Hot and hard work, but we were both healthy and able to do the work. It wasn’t nearly the organized and mechanized-assisted activity that it is today. It was pushing a banana box through the corn row and filling it up.” When the boxes were brimming, volunteers would lug them out of the field themselves, or call to one of the coordinators for help.
 
Today, Brad said, refrigerated trucks and front-loading buckets for apples make the work more efficient for everyone. But the charm of those early days, he added, lives on in the camaraderie and friendliness volunteers find in the fields.
 
“It’s still wondrous,” said Rob Ann.
 
And it’s still hard work. That’s inevitably the nature of farming. But knowing that up front helps volunteers gauge what they’re capable of, and which crops might suit them best.
 
“While there is a lot of bending, kneeling, squatting, lifting, and walking involved, there is no pressure on volunteers to do more than they can handle. Therefore, there is no reason for a healthy person of any age not to give it a try,” said Brad. “If you have flexibility in your schedule, it’s a wonderful way to fit in volunteer time.”
 
And BAG makes it easy: When gleaners sign up for a harvesting trip, they have a choice of crops, locations, and weather conditions, Brad noted.
 
For the Tomlinsons, there’s satisfaction in working with an organization that is striving to keep pace with a critical local need, and providing healthy eating options for people who might not otherwise have them.
 
“It’s exciting to be part of something that’s growing so much in terms of the pounds of food that is gathered and delivered to the various food pantries,” said Brad.
 
“It’s not a can of DelMonte’s green beans we’re talking about here,” said Rob Ann. “It’s pretty exciting to be able to produce high-value products.”

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.