Giving Thanks to our food sources: Grateful for bringing local food to those that need it the most

Recently, a group of us got together and gleaned a potato field at Morning Glory Farm, the largest farm on Martha’s Vineyard. Gleaning is the collecting of crops left behind after the farmers have collected what they need or want. There are many reasons farmers leave the crops behind,  but mostly it is driven by economics. There is an abundance of food still in the fields, but farmers don’t have the energy or hands to gather, or possibly the motivation as there may not be the customers available to purchase the produce. Here on Martha’s Vineyard just before a hard frost there seems an abundance of food in the fields that can provide armloads of food for our local tables.

Last year a group of us women ( we call ourselves The Sowing Circle) decided we wanted to form a project around gleaning and we met throughout the winter and early spring to discuss the logistics and needs of how we might best go about it.  Emails, gloves, boxes, bags, scissors and small knives seemed to be the basic necessities. Each of us aligned with a municipality that would take the food. I aligned myself with our local charter school asking the chef of the school if she would be willing to take produce and determining the conditions and logistics that she would receive the produce. Others aligned with other schools, day cares, elder centers, food pantry, etc.. We notified farmers of our project and waited for a call that they had a field ready for us.

Our first gleaning happened  over peppers, and eggplant.  Emails went out the night before and 14 of us showed up. A group of high school students came from a class bringing along their teenage energy which made for a jolly time. The day before a hard frost was expected we harvested what seemed like thousands of rows of lettuce.

Recently, about 16 of us gathered in a potato field to harvest 700 pounds of potatoes. It took us less than an hour to clear the field that Simon Athern of Morning Glory Farm turned over for us. His tractor turned five rows approximately 75 feet long. The turning allowed for us to see and gather the potatoes easily. As we glean the fields we tossed the ones spotted with green or those that were a bit mushy. The green in the potatoes contain high levels of a toxin, solanine, which can cause nausea, headaches and neurological problems. Potatoes naturally produce small amounts of solanine as a defense against insects, but the levels increase with prolonged exposure to light and warm temperatures. Some of the potatoes were very green.

We  each delivered well over a car load of food to each of our alliances

Each time I gather with my fellow gleaning comrades, I feel a sense of gratitude. Gratitude towards the farm that is thoughtful and generous to invite us into their fields and also for their time for the extra work that is needed to accommodate our needs to be there. It’s a sense of community, a sense of giving and receiving.

I ran into the chef from the charter school where I delivered the food a few days ago and she was so grateful to be serving local food on the menu.  I walked away from her with a feeling of fulfillment and gratefulness.  It’s a small amount of time, but a huge impact in getting local foods to those that need it the most.