6 January 2009
A Gleaning We Will Go
Posted by admin under: community service .
I’d never heard of this term in relation to farming, but apparently gleaning is taking all the little leftovers from a crop harvest. The farmer wasn’t going to do anything with it. Might as well use this extra stuff to help other and advance to Eagle at the same time.
Alex Manson, from Troop 440 of Monroe, helped feed thousands of people for his Eagle Scout project. Alex organized over 70 volunteers for a gleaning at Lawrence Farms in Newburgh on Nov. 2 with the help of Stiles Najac, the food safety officer for the Orange County Cornell Cooperative Extension.
Gleanings are coordinated volunteer events where farmers donate the crops that are leftover in their fields after a harvest. The volunteers pick the remaining produce and pack it up to be donated to soup kitchens and food pantries.
…
Everything really started to take off when Alex approached Robert Lawrence, owner of Lawrence Farms, who told Alex that he was excited to participate in a project like this that could help so many people.
After Alex lined up all of the supplies and enlisted the volunteers, everything was set for Nov. 2. On the day of the gleaning, volunteers picked apples, beets, broccoli, peppers, cabbages, squash and collard greens.
In total, they collected more than 3,200 pounds of produce which is the equivalent of over 4,300 servings of food.
Once the food was all picked, it was packed onto trucks to be stored overnight. The next day, Alex, along with Najac, Assistant Scoutmaster Jack Rallo and his father, Jeff Manson, distributed the food to four food pantries, two soup kitchens and the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley, which in turn distributes food to nearly 360 member agencies in six counties in the Hudson Valley.
Wow! 3,200 pounds of potentially wasted food. My mom would have had a fit! Good thing Alex was there to be thrifty and helpful.
- A Dear, Deer Project
- Seeds of Kindness
- Sunday’s Golden Girls – 12/07/2008 (delayed)
- Sunday’s Golden Girls – 02/15/2009 (delayed)
- Saturday’s Eagle Nest – 02/14/2009 (delayed)
One Comment so far...
Wasted Food — Jonathan Bloom on food waste and how it can be avoided » Blog Archive » Friday Buffet Says:
19 May 2010 at 5:33 am.
[...] honor: Whether eagle or cub, hopefully gleaning outings can become part of the scouting [...]
