By: Erin Murphy Sanders
Looking for a community service project where you can have fun, be outdoors, learn something and make a difference?
Try gleaning – gathering the leftover produce after the harvest and giving it to the hungry. Cleaning spelled with a "g." It’s not new. God told Moses about it long ago.
"When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field to its very border, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest … you shall leave them for the poor and the sojourner," it is written in Leviticus 18:9.
On Sunday, the owner of Russo’s Orchard Lane Farm in Chesterfield, Nick Russo, knelt among the fallen apples in his orchard showing 40 volunteers which apples they should collect, because "one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch."
It was a hot, humid afternoon and the shade under the trees was a welcome relief for the volunteers who gleaned 2,000 pounds of apples in little more than an hour. The gleaning was organized by New Jersey Farmers Against Hunger, a hunger relief program of the New Jersey Agricultural Society.
This was the first gleaning Mr. Russo and his wife, Marilyn, have had at their 250-acre farm. But they are not strangers to NJFAH. The Russos donated more than 14,000 pounds of produce in 1999 and already have donated more than 8,000 pounds this year.
They don’t do it for the tax write-offs. There aren’t any.
"It’s not the money," Mrs. Russo said. "It’s wasteful. You’re throwing away food and there are people that don’t have it. I like to see it go back out."
Robin McGovern, director of NJFAH, said gleanings "are really very good at getting people to look at agriculture in a different light."
Depending on the ages of the individuals in the service group, and what the leaders want, Ms. McGovern begins the gleaning with an informal discussion on subjects ranging from food security to open space and the challenges farmers face today.
Mr. Russo showed Sunday’s volunteers what a seven-minute hailstorm had done to his orchard. Hail marks – tough, gray, scar tissue on the apples -reduced them from first quality to seconds, suitable only for cider.
"You need No. 1 quality," he said. "Cider doesn’t pay the bills."
Ms. McGovern said "gleaning is a good learning experience for the kids" because they come away with an appreciation that produce doesn’t come from a supermarket.
Children often associate farming with animals, not vegetables, Mrs. Russo said.
"Old MacDonald doesn’t have corn, peaches and strawberries," she said with a laugh. "I tell them that we use to have five, 250-pound pigs but they got out one night. Chasing them around at night wasn’t too much fun."
Many of the apple-pickers Sunday were Webelos Cub Scouts from Washington Township Pack 79, and their families. They were performing a "special good turn" required to earn the Citizen Activity Badge.
The Ross family of Princeton Junction said the gleaning was a "nice thing to do and fun." The family was working on a goal – 13 hours of good deeds required for their children’s bar mitzvahs.
Nina Burghardt, a volunteer at Catholic Charities’ food pantry in Trenton, also came out to pick apples. She collects food for the pantry at a food bank on Thursdays. She said some produce, like eggplant, is harder to distribute because the clients don’t know what to do with it or do not have adequate cooking facilities.
Ms. McGovern agreed. She thanked the volunteers for their efforts, explaining that Mercer Street Friends and the Egg Harbor Food Bank would be happy to get the apples because they are "delicious, nutritious and you don’t have to cook them."
With a record 500 volunteers participating in 30 gleanings last year, Ms. McGovern has learned a few things about how to run a successful gleaning: Assess the group, set a goal, keep it to a little more than an hour, and avoid having kids pick anything small.
"If you want to make the volunteers feel good, have them pick cabbage," she said. "A huge basket is done in no time."
Seniors are consistently the best pickers because they systematically work their way through the field. Children require more guidance: "Straight down. Keep going. Finish the row."
Most of the volunteers are youth organizations: Scouting groups, Hebrew classes, and high school students, but Ms. McGovern has started to get corporate involvement. Groups work best, but can be difficult to schedule.
"Gleaning is a matter of timing or the market price," she said. She doesn’t always know in advance what will be ready to pick.
That’s how inmates help out. They are available on short notice and can work with crops too heavy for young volunteers. Inmates gleaned 34,000 pounds of watermelon in 1999, helping the farmers, who were caught in a sudden price drop after Labor Day, and helping NJFAH collect the melons for the hungry.
"Last year was the first time we used inmates," Ms. McGovern said. "They are very low risk. We have not had one incident."
Volunteers glean about 15 percent of the fruits and vegetables distributed by NJFAH. Farmers also donate pick-outs – produce that is edible but nonsellable – and produce they can’t sell because the market price has dropped below cultivation costs. Annually, 10 to 25 percent of New Jersey produce falls into these categories.
Wholesalers and distributors donate produce that is edible, but was rejected at market. In 1999, NJFAH distributed 1.04 million pounds of produce at four distribution sites in Trenton, Hammonton, Mount Holly and Moorestown, and to the state’s food banks.
The fruits and vegetables are passed on to local church pantries, senior centers, day-care centers and shelters.
The Russos sell everything from "A to Z – apples to zucchini" at their Orchard Lane Farm Market and at the Trenton Farmer’s Market. A fourth generation farming family, they bought the Chesterfield farm in 1973, driven by housing development and congestion from the Mount Holly homestead started by Nick Russo’s grandfather in 1921.
Unable to move the mature English walnut trees planted by his grandfather, Nick Russo transplanted a small walnut tree at the Chesterfield farm, where it is fondly referred to as "Great Grandpop’s Tree."
NJFAH gives farmers an organized way to donate their produce. Before NJFAH was established in 1996, "a lot of it was just discarded," Mr. Russo said. Farmers gave to soup kitchens and other hunger relief organizations, but not in the quantities their association with NJFAH allows.
The gleaning season begins in August with tomatoes and peppers and ends in December with yams, sweet potatoes and cabbage. But hunger knows no season. Donations from Wakefern Food Corp., Frank Donio Inc., and Wegmans Food Market keep the supply of fresh produce available during the winter months.
"We are mostly trying to reach the working poor, those who are working and can’t make ends meet," Ms. McGovern said. "As they say, your food budget is the most expendable budget you’ve got. So they’ll pay the rent, they’ll pay the utilities and the food is the one that goes.
"One of the first things I always say to the kids is that I know you think of starving people in foreign countries but there are hungry people right here in New Jersey. One in four children in Trenton are hungry."
Erin Murphy Sanders is a free-lance writer who resides in Robbinsville.
