July 25: Gleaning Plums

A real glean in an organic plum orchard near Castroville. The farm had been in the same family since the late 19th century. We were doing the third pass through this orchard, so pickings were slim. It took sharp eyes and a little luck to find the remaining plums that were ripe but not over-ripe. The ground was dotted with too-ripe plums that had already dropped, and we had to be careful shaking the trees not to bruise the remaining fruit. Still, we gleaned a couple of hundred pounds of wonderful San Jose plums that the food banks and food pantries will be delighted to get. And we got to take plums home. Most of us grabbed bags of slightly over-ripe fruit to slurp immediately or cook into a favorite jam or sauce.

Listen to stories from the July 25th glean

Stories of Ananda Jimenez

Gleaners with Ag Against Hunger know Ananda as their gleaning coordinator. But fewer folks probably know her history as an organic farmer. She farmed in Oregon, Florida, and New York, and got a first-hand look at the amount of waste on even small farms. She home-schooled her kids, so they spent plenty of time in the fields with her. Her mother's father was a Jewish baker in Massachusetts, and Ananda says she got her entrepreneurial spirit from her grandparents. Her father's family lives in a small town in rural Spain, where sharing is a way of life.

Listen to Ananda's stories

Stories of Lupe Rivas

Lupe Rivas is one of the pioneers of bilingual education in Bakersfield. She now lives, teaches, and is politically active in Watsonville.

Rivas grew up in Texas, the oldest of 7 children. Her father was an auto body repairman, while her mother worked as a housekeeper. The family did field work, as well, traveling to Michigan as seasonal laborers. Her stories tell of making dolls of the overgrown cucumbers in the field while her parents worked, of gleaning strawberries, of the move to California and her transition from field work to store work to teaching there, and of her attempts to introduce her children and grandchildren to the experience of field work.

Listen to Lupe Rivas's stories

June 20: Red Lettuce

It was a cold and windy morning for gleaning. We were out in one of the fields of Tanimura and Antle near Salinas. We had the big truck and folks worked fast. Not only was the lettuce easy to get to, it was easy to cut and clean as well. So the bins filled fast and folks carried crate after crate back to the truck.

Lots of good conversation today. I got out my recorder and asked folks to remember back to what a typical breakfast in their childhood had been like: what they ate, when they ate, who they ate with, and where the food had come from. That started lots of reminiscences of family farms and gardens or of shopping with a parent at the local store. One gleaner, who particularly liked leftovers (and particularly left-over vegetables) for breakfast, remembers eating peas while her sister threw her portion of peas around the kitchen. A fair number of gleaners remembered special breakfasts of pie made from local fruits. And lots of the younger folks mentioned favorite boxed cereals.

Folks without jackets or sweaters were shivering by time the truck was full and it was time to get back to our cars. But the shivered goodbyes were warm.

June 6: Iceberg Lettuce

Iceberg: Luther Burbank's revenge on the lettuce-eating world! Actually, when I'm after crunch and not flavor, I like it.

The field today was one of Valley Pride's just south of Salinas. We had more folks than there were knives and crates, so teamwork and division of labor were the order of the day. A mild day, with overcast sky turning sunny as we cut, cleaned, and carried the lettuce heads. With so many working, it wasn't much over an hour and a half after we had all gone into the field before the 16 big bins on the truck were full and we were free to glean lettuce to take home for ourselves.

Today kicked off gleaning for Monterey County high schools. Everett Alvarez HS in Salinas hosted a barbecue after the glean and many students came to complete community service hours, activity credits, or just to do something worthwhile. Other students came from high schools from Watsonville to Monterey. Further afield, Archbishop Mitty HS in San Jose sent 24 students and 4 staff down as part of their 10-day immersion trip in their Ethics, Culture, and Justice class. Groups came from United Methodist Church and other area churches, and lots of families and individuals came to help out.
Listen to stories from the June 6th glean

May 16: organic lettuce

This glean took place in one of the fields of Lakeside Organics near Watsonville. We had a little trouble getting the flatbed truck going, but managed to harvest 6 bins of 4 different organic lettuces. The day was sunny. The field was dry. The gleaners were wonderful.

Listen to stories from the May 16th glean
Highlights: Brown Berets think of making gleaning part of their youth programs (Ramiro), a writer gleans to put smells and colors to her stories of life in Manchurian China (Belle), and a gleaner remembers his mother who was both a pipe bender at Lockhead and a tomato harvester during WWII (Dion).

Wonderful blog on the glean by artist/writer Belle Yang:
http://www.redroom.com/blog/belle-yang/against-hunger

May 30: lettuce

The glean on May 30th took place at one of the fields of Tanimura and Antle in Chualar. We had the big truck and gleaned 14 bins of delicate head and robust romaine lettuce. We had to carry our crates a little farther than usual, but had a dedicated groups of carriers who brought us empty crates and carried our full ones back to the truck. The field had been watered recently, so our shoes picked up more and more black mud and got heavier and heavier. The weather was overcast. The wind came up as we gleaned. There was a wonderful spirit of camaraderie.

Listen to stories from the May 30 glean
Highlights: Arizona "Snowbird" retirees swarming "like ants at a picnic" over produce spilled off a truck (Mark Adamek); huge piles of under-sized apricots gasolined and burned near Paris (Eva Lothar); widows and nimble-handed orphans gleaning after the harvest in Manchurian China (Belle Yang); and a banker doing "just about anything you can do to a cow" on the family dairy to put herself through college (Jennifer Millican).