The day threatened to be hot and humid, with a whiff of smoke in the air from the fires to the south. The field was one of Ocean Mist's near Castroville, just a short drive from the Giant Artichoke where we all met. Plenty of iceberg lettuce left in the field, so with 50 or so gleaners working together, we made short work of filling the 9 big cardboard bins on the flatbed truck: an hour and a half to cut, clean, carry, and load over 8000 pounds of lettuce. With two microphones, we collected some fun stories: one of the gleaners running from bull oxen in a sweet potato field in S. Korea; another doing “urban gleaning” of bread and pastry from grocery stores in San Jose for the food pantry; mother-daughter teams working with the homeless and hungry; and the field manager explaining some of the huge changes that heightened concern about food safety has brought to the fields; and more. Two of our project members from Seattle were down helping out: Rusten's sister Suze and her friend/intern Kenya. They gleaned a while, then grabbed a microphone and headed out to collect stories, too.
Listen to stories from the August 29th glean
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