Six years ago, I went gleaning for the first time, gathering sweet potatoes in rural North Carolina.
A year ago, I went through a brief training so as to coordinate future gleaning outings.
Yesterday, I got to supervise one such outing–gleaning sweet potatoes, of course (it is North Carolina). The volunteers were mostly a troupe of girl scouts, who got a valuable lesson in where their food comes from and how much of it is regularly wasted.
The arithmetic looked like this: 20 people + 2 hours = 600 lbs. of sweet potatoes recovered (as pictured). While we worked for a little more than two hours, we could have gleaned that field for two weeks and still found more sweet potatoes.
I highly recommend volunteering with a gleaning operation (SOSA is a large one). In my mind, there’s no better way to honor the spirit of Food Day than by rescuing food that would otherwise be plowed under and get it to those in need.
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