A Program supported by WSU Clallam County Extension

Clallam Gleaners

The Clallam Gleaners harvest extra fruits and vegetables from farms and gardens and deliver them to folks in need.

Click here to see a short video about how our program works.

What is Gleaning?

Gleaning is an ancient form of food recovery & support that’s making an amazing modern comeback! It is the gathering of leftover fruits and vegetables from a farm, yard, or garden.

Gleaning has been an important form of social welfare for well over 2,000 years. The Old Testament of The Bible commanded Hebrew farmers to leave a portion of their crops un-harvested and allow poor neighbors and strangers to come onto their land to pick what was left for themselves and their families. In England and France, the government actually protected the rights of rural poor to glean leftover crops from nearby farms.

Picking leftover crops for the local community was an essential part of farm life and the harvest process for hundreds of years, until new private property laws and farming technology began to limit gleaners’ rights. It was common to see people out in fields picking leftover crops until after the end of World War II.

Why Glean?

Food insecurity is a broad concept that refers to the many factors at play when people and families don’t have enough food to eat, such as unaffordability, lack of access to transportation or proximity to grocery stores, inadequate nutritional or cultural value of available food, the inability to cook or process food, insecure food supply and supply-chain barriers, and many other details that feed into the bigger picture. Here in Clallam County almost 15% of residents are considered cook-insecure, and our relative geographic isolation and high rates of rural poverty play a big role. Despite all that, Clallam also has a robust agricultural scene and many native and wild food crops. Gleaning can help connect the abundance of backyards and local farms to the emergency food relief system and other venues where our neighbors turn for help in accessing food. As a glean volunteer, you will also get a portion of the harvest, so gleaning can be a great way to save money, stock your pantry, help out community members in need, and prevent the waste of perfectly good food.

Join our Gleaning Programs!

Ready to volunteer to pick fruits and vegetables?

The WSU Clallam Extension office houses two gleaning programs. The Clallam Gleaners connects individual volunteers with homeowners who have produce in their backyards to donate. The Farm Glean Program organizes regular group gleans at local farms, led by an Extension staff member.

How to Become a Gleaner - Ready to Harvest Local Fruit?!

Harvesting residential fruit looks like going to a home with your ladder and boxes ready to work.

Let’s get into the details of how to go about it.

• Sign up to be a volunteer on our website.
• Check the website regularly to see what gleans are posted.
• When you see a glean you are interested in, sign up to ‘Lead’ the glean.

Leading a glean just means you signed up for it and you arrange it with the homeowner. You may invite others to glean with you, if the homeowners are ok with that. Once you sign up to lead a glean, you will receive an email with details about access to the property, the homeowners phone number, what tools may be needed such as ladders, and then you call the homeowner to schedule the day and time and hear any specifics that are relevant to that site.

Please keep in mind the 3 C’s of Gleaning

• Call to arrange the glean and listen to the specifics the homeowner shares with you and ask any questions you may have about that location and fruit.
• Come prepared with ladders, buckets, boxes, etc.
• Carry through on your commitment or cancel. The homeowner will be expecting you, so please be courteous and communicate if you need to change or cancel the plan.

Post glean, please enter data about the glean into our website. When you ask to lead a glean, the info email will contain a link to a data form for you to fill out after you have finished the glean. The link will ask you to describe the site, the number of pounds you harvested plus where you distributed some of the harvest.

The expectation is that you share about 50% of what you glean with organizations or institutions that support those in need, this includes you sharing it with elderly neighbors, food banks, churches, schools, or other civic groups, like the Boys and Girls Club or Senior Center. You can enter that into the post glean data form.

Gleaning is a great way to build community, while spreading the wealth of the harvest. Some homeowners enjoy the process so much that they request the same gleaner year after year. Although the goal is to reduce food waste and increase food access, community building is a great bonus.

If you are a foodie, gleaning is a great way to try new varieties, as in new to you. Many of the varieties that are gleaned are from very old orchards with heritage varieties, often mysterious in name and mostly not sprayed. There are many beautiful places with old, abandoned orchards to discover gleaning. Take the afternoon and treat it as a special event with friends or family to contribute to food access while having an adventure that is delicious and active outside.

Finally, if you are at a glean of a senior citizen who can no longer pick their fruit, please make a gesture of sharing the fruit with the homeowner. Offer them a bag. Again, this is a generous way to make a friend and honor the kindness that they have extended.

Harvest Produce from a Farm

Different from a residential gleans, most farm gleans are in organized groups. Learn more about Farm Gleaning here.

The Farm Gleaning group tends to run on a scheduled day of the week, and all meet up to harvest crop/s together regularly. These farm produce gleans are donated to community meals, little free pantries, and food banks. If you are interested in joining a farm glean, contact Benji Astrachan to learn more via email or by calling 360-460-7850.