Here comes the corn! As we transition into mid-summer, we have realized the change in crops that are offered for donation from our partner farms. Similar to the early season crops mentioned in the Gleaning Log from July 8, 2015, corn is also planted in successive plantings. Often, farmers will pick only the first ears from the stalks of a planting, leaving the second and third ears to be gleaned. Or, a farmer will have two plantings (called ‘blocks’) come ripe at the same time, leaving an entire block to be gleaned. In addition to corn, we have started to glean a lot of zucchini, summer squash, and cucumbers, as well as smaller amounts of peas, green beans, and some spring plantings of carrots, beets, and scallions. It is also the time for the first few fruit tree gleans (peaches and early apple crops)! Farms that donated these crops in July include: Alprilla Farm, Appleton Farms, Hutchins Farm, Kimball Fruit Farm, Langwater Farm, Medway Community Farm (new partner!), Newton Community Farm, Powissett Farm (new partner!), and Silverwood Organic Farm (new partner!), among others. Our partner food pantries love it when we have this much variety to bring them, as they are able to ensure that their clients get a healthy variety of produce. In addition, working with our distribution partners (the Greater Boston Food Bank and Food for Free) ensures that a large amount of the commodity items that we glean, such as corn and zucchini, is donated to over 500 hunger relief agencies across eastern Massachusetts that are in these organizations’ hunger relief network. Help us as we harvest this surplus for donation! Visit our website to volunteer in the fields with us, or visit our donation webpage to support our work financially. The more resources we have, the more produce we can glean! To the Harvest! Posted by Matt Crawford, Lead Gleaning Coordinator
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We have instituted a new practice this year using box liners for most produce items that we harvest. These liners are specifically designed for banana boxes and the poly film is food grade quality. Although many people believe adding more plastic into the world in not sustainable, a cost benefit analysis reveals that proper packaging can greatly reduce food waste and improve the perishability of fresh fruits and vegetables (check out this study for more information). The main intention of using the liners in our operations was to improve our food safety practices, but we have already witnessed multiple benefits throughout our supply chain from harvesting, inventory management and ultimately distribution improvements to recipient partners and agencies. Some obvious benefits of using box liners include the reduced risk of product contamination, ease of harvesting for volunteers, reduced perishability, and improved product presentation in the pantries. We began using the liners in the beginning of July and so far all of our stakeholders have had nothing but good things to say about the liners. Volunteers have repeatedly mentioned that harvesting into lined boxes is easier and faster. Pantry managers say the gleaned product looks better and is easier to asses visually because the clear plastic allows them to see the product completely (as opposed to the old method of using white trash bags for greens). Harvesting crops like lettuce directly into the lined boxes allows for a standardized packing technique that improves efficiency in the field as well as significantly improves the quality of the product. Our largest distribution partner, the Greater Boston Food Bank, has commented on the improved quality and presentation which puts Boston Area Gleaners on par with wholesale suppliers. All of these benefits amount to improved product quality and professionalism in our operations. But these benefits come at a cost; at our current purchasing volume each bag costs 24 cents. Last gleaning season we gleaned 5,532 boxes. However, we do not intend to use the liners in every situation; for example, certain crops with high respiration rates and non-edible wrappings (e.g. corn) would not require a bag liner. Either way, we believe the benefits of these liners far outweigh the costs. Posted by Dylan Frazier, Gleaning Coordinator Over the past couple of weeks, gleaning coordinator Dylan Frazier has been busy building our new root washer! It was purchased as a kit from Grindstone Farm in New York, and after a few trips to the hardware store to get some remaining parts and a mounting system, it is now near completion and just about ready to be tested out. This new piece of equipment will allow us to wash root vegetables (potatoes, carrots, turnips, etc.) efficiently and effectively, which will be important as we strengthen our partnership with our distribution partners, The Greater Boston Food Bank and Food For Free. We can't wait to start using it this fall! Last year, we gleaned and donated over 50,000 pounds of root vegetables (1033 bushels!) and we had to borrow Waltham Fields Community Farm’s wash station to rinse off the dirt off of the ones that we had time to wash. This worked well but it was always tricky to schedule washing times amidst the farms’ busy schedule. Now, we will be able to wash roots as they come in, which will greatly increase the desirability of this type of produce with our recipient agencies. So far, the story of this gleaning season has been greens, greens, and more greens (with some radishes and salad turnips as well), including lettuce, baby kale, tat soi, bok choy, mustard greens, and arugula. This is very typical for the early gleaning season, as greens and radishes/turnips are the first crops that ripen in the summer, and farmers often plant many successive plantings of these quick-to-ripen crops so that they can be sure to have produce for their CSA’s, markets, and farmstands. Often times with these succession plantings, there will be more crops ripe in the field at one time than farmers can sell, which is when they call on the gleaners to come and harvest for donation! The farms that have donated these crops include Appleton Farms CSA in Ipswich, Hutchins Farm in Concord, Alprilla Farm in Essex, First Light Farm CSA in Hamilton, and Stearns Farm CSA in Framingham (a new partner farm!). Including some storage gleaning we did over the winter and some post-CSA surplus pickups from farms nearby to our office, we have gleaned over 9,300 pounds of produce so far in 2015. To the Harvest! Matt Crawford Lead Gleaning Coordinator Rebecca Fennel, Development Assistant here. I’ve been in the office for just four weeks, and I already feel like I’m a big part of the team. With the 6th Annual Strawberry Fete coming up in just a week and many other fundraising tasks on my to-do list, things are moving fast. It’s an exciting first job to have!
Before I joined BAG, I was a student at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. In my last year as an Environmental Studies major, I developed a keen interest in food rescue. My senior year, I did field research and wrote a thesis paper about food waste; through the process, I learned that food recovery was a sound way to mitigate the environmental and economic consequences of food waste while simultaneously combatting hunger. Naturally, my spring semester job search led me to Boston Area Gleaners, who occupies an interesting niche in the realm of food rescue. Prior to senior year, I had various food-related experiences, including an internship at a food bank (Food Gatherers), a summer as an urban gardens educator (Groundwork Somerville), work as a farmers market assistant (Siena Farms) and a gig as a prep cook (Sofra Bakery & Café). All of these positions stemmed from my love of cooking and a curiosity about the food system in which I was a part. In these next few years, I hope to continue to grow my knowledge and passion about food. I’m so happy to be back in the Boston area, where I grew up, and to grow with the Gleaners. I am confident that this position will provide me with just as many assets as I am giving back to the organization. Hello Gleaners! This November, we set a goal for ourselves to glean and deliver 10 tons (20,000 pounds) of fruits and vegetables in the 10 days before Thanksgiving. This came about on the 11th day before Thanksgiving (!), due to a request from Food For Free for Boston Area Gleaners (BAG) to supply all of their 80+ recipient agencies with locally grown carrots, apples, squash, potatoes, and greens for Thanksgiving. We shook hands and dove into the challenge the next day. Thanks to the generosity of our partner farmers and the hard work and dedication of our volunteers, we met and surpassed this goal with one day to spare! To summarize the effort: BAG had a total of 58 volunteers (tallying 127 hours of labor) glean at 9 different farms. We gleaned 7,800 pounds of winter squash, 4,500 pounds of carrots, 3,200 pounds of apples, 2,000 pounds of potatoes, and 1,300 pounds of greens (mostly kale and collards). The majority of this weight (17,878 lbs.) was delivered to Food For Free. The generous farms that donated this surplus included: Kimball Fruit Farm, The Food Project, Weir River Farm, Hutchins Farm, Waltham Fields Community Farm, Appleton Farms, Dick's Market Gardens and Greenhouses, and Barrett's Mill Farm. The total amount of produce gleaned by the Boston Area Gleaners this year is staggering: 157,875 pounds in 6,406 bushels, and there’s no stopping in sight! About 57% of this year’s produce has been donated to our distribution partners: Food for Free (taking the majority), the Greater Boston Food Bank, and the Merrimack Valley Food Bank. These partners have distributed the produce to among 600+ hunger relief organizations. The remaining 43% of our totals have been delivered directly by our staff to BAG’s partner pantries located in Arlington, Belmont, Lexington, Medford, Cambridge, Waltham, Watertown, and on the North Shore in Beverly and Peabody. Looking forward, volunteers can expect the number of gleaning trips to slow significantly as the median temperature falls and the ground freezes up. Cabbage and carrots remain in the fields and have been donated for gleaning at two farms, and we will continue to glean surplus squash, root vegetables, and apples from cold storage and barns through the end of December and possibly into the New Year. If you are interested in gleaning with us, please visit our Volunteer webpage to learn more. To the Harvest! Matt Crawford Lead Gleaning Coordinator What’s gleaning? Throughout the year, but especially during the harvest season, the Boston Area Gleaners (BAG) retrieves overripe, imperfect or hard-to-market fruits and vegetables that would otherwise be left in farmers’ fields. These foods are still edible and nutritious, and they are donated to agencies like the Greater Boston Food Bank and Food For Free. These organizations then distribute the food to local shelters and food pantries.
After having been on BAG’s mailing list for over a year now, I was finally able to help out at my first gleaning event! Gleaning events are often announced a couple days in advance, so it can be a little tough for those with full-time day jobs to join in, but there are weekend gleaning trips as well. I’m lucky enough that my employer gives me several hours of paid time a year to volunteer with a non-profit organization of my choosing. I and five other volunteers met on a Wednesday afternoon at BAG’s headquarters in Waltham. We followed our fearless leader, Matt, to Dennis Busa Farm in Lexington where we spent about two and half hours picking 900 pounds of tomatoes, filling 36 cases! As I stood among rows and rows of beautiful produce – huge green bell peppers, sprawling squash, vines full of pinkish and pointy-ended tomatoes I had never seen before – I considered all the hard work required to produce all this goodness that many of us simply devour without a second thought. The gleaning experience really opened my eyes to how much perfectly good food is considered “hard-to-market” and would likely go to waste without the Boston Area Gleaners. (In 2013, BAG gleaned over 88,000 pounds of food!) 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 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! Hi all! My name is Danielle Smith and I am so excited to be the intern this summer for BAG! I graduated from the University of Vermont in December, and enjoyed my time living in Burlington post grad before moving home this summer due to a rock climbing injury. While in Burlington, I stayed busy between interning with Hunger Free Vermont, nannying for four kiddos, volunteering at the food shelf, and trying to figure out my life plans.
During all three and half years at UVM I was an active volunteer and leader in a student organization called FeelGood. The mission of FeelGood is "Ending world hunger, one grilled cheese at a time." Through a student run non-profit deli, we gave away gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches in exchange for a donation to The Hunger Project, an international development organization. My involvement with FeelGood taught me how interconnected hunger is with nearly every other social and economic problem facing people around the world. During the year I spent abroad in Mexico and India, I became more interested in food security and hunger alleviation as a key factor in creating a better future. I saw the benefit that a small school garden had for an entire community living on the outskirts of a landfill, and the corruption facing a government distribution program meant to provide grains to people living below the poverty line. However, one realization I made abroad was that I did not need to travel halfway around the world to make a difference and help people access healthy and affordable food. Upon my return to Vermont, I took all the food related classes I could squeeze into my schedule and became involved in the local Burlington food system. I loved trying new recipes with ingredients from my CSA, and I can't help but smile when I see a farmers market. The work that BAG does with food recovery is incredible, and I look forward to being able to walk soon and join in a gleaning trip! I loved the community feel at the Strawberry Fete, and have enjoyed my first few weeks in the office learning lots about non-profit management and the BAG model. After this summer, I hope to work on a farm somewhere to better understand the production side of things before looking for a food justice related job or going back to school. Of course, I would first need to know what I'd like to study before going for a masters in either food systems, public health or education. |
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