I rarely find the time to glean, but it’s always a pleasurable, grounding experience. This week, I had that opportunity as I helped supervise a group of 15 campers (from a community service camp!) glean collard greens.
As you can see, we did our best in filling the available delivery vehicles, including my hatchback and the camp’s short bus. All told, we harvested 2,300 pounds of greens in a few hours (with water breaks). And those greens went to five different hunger relief agencies.
I can think of few better ways to spend a morning! Plus, I got to witness the excitement that fresh produce elicited from a few residents at a women’s shelter. Meanwhile, the campers, ages 9 to 12, learned more about farming, our agricultural abundance and those in need (the campers helped prepare the collards at one shelter).
And why would a small farmer have thousands of pounds of collard greens to donate? It’s related to the season, but it’s probably not what you think.
While most folks (myself included) think of collards as a cold weather crop, these ones were not only surviving, but thriving! They were available for donation mostly because of that perception. There’s no real market for collards, as few people want to eat them in the summer. Especially when there’s so much competition from those flashy ‘summer veggies’ (that we all love)…