Gleaning is an ancient tradition that typically gathers food left behind after a harvest, but on a summer evening at 3 Birds Berry Farm among hayfields west of Blacksburg, about twenty volunteers with the NRV Glean Team were buried in blueberry bushes, elbow-deep, talking and laughing, gathering rapidly ripening berries with both hands.
“We glean all year,” Mary Walters-Eyestone, long-time orchestrator of the NRV Glean Team said.
She’s standing in the grassy aisle between head-high blueberry bushes, Duke cultivar, making sure everyone has a bucket.
“We start gleaning in the spring with early salad and greens. That continues through strawberries, peppers, kale, tomatoes…,” Walters-Eyestone.
“Squash!” yells a voice from a bush.
“Yes. Squash! and zucchini. We’ll continue all the way to turnips. We harvest ‘til the ground freezes,” Eyestone said. “We were at Windy Hills Farm in Riner for turnips ‘til after Thanksgiving last fall.”
In straw hats and baskets expertly lashed to their belts, the team is both carefree and no-nonsense.
The NRV Glean Team is part of the Society of St. Andrew, a forty-year old ecumenical organization that coordinates gleaning in eight eastern states as it works to reduce the country’s abysmal 30 percent food waste loss.
Hauling in fresh fruit and veg to food pantries improves nutrition for food-insecure people and engages communities by connecting people not just to food, but to each other. This old tradition of gleaning seems to do all of those things and is supported by state and federal tax incentives.
The Society of St. Andrews website reports that thirty-two thousand volunteers gleaned farmers’ fields and orchards last year gathering16 million pounds of fruit and vegetables.
Back in the golden light of 3 Birds’ hilly fields, the NRV Glean Team’s buckets are filling up.
The team has a relationship with 3 Birds Berry Farm. They gleaned there last year, harvesting 16 gallons of berries for the Roanoke Area Ministries, or RAM, House, which shelters and provides lunch to homeless and hungry people every day.
“The RAM House was delighted,” Eyestone said as she drops clusters fat fruit into her basket. “They’d never had fresh berries at all! It was wonderful to share with 3-Birds that their fruit was so welcome.”
So 3 Birds contacted the team this year when a field of early blueberries were ripening too quick to pick, enticing birds and increasing the danger of rot.
With extra-ripe fruit, 3 Birds contacted the NRV Glean Team who sent out an announcement for a dozen volunteers, twenty arrived, some representing food pantries like Plenty! in Floyd County who will carry part of the harvest back with them.
Gleaning helps berry farmers who work hard to manage pests.
Interestingly, at 3 Birds, discouraging marauding birds is a constant struggle.
The farm’s strategies are ingenious and festive. Long-tailed rainbow kites corkscrew above the hilly farm’s blueberry, blackberry, and raspberry bushes. The kites have got big painted eyes and a recording of raptor calls comes from the tree-line.
“I move the kites every day. But when we have too much fruit, there’s bird pressure. One starling can eat a pound of fruit a day,” 3-Birds’ Bill Sembello, co-farmer with Irene Lamb. “We’d rather the people have it,” he said of gleaning.
“Gleaning helps us. This field is the first berry that comes in. In three weeks, it’ll be susceptible to pests and birds. Our harvest’s not over. It’s just started. The best way to keep the field clean is to keep it picked,” Lamb said.
For more about gleaning, visit NRV Glean Team at: localwiki.org/bburg/New_River_Valley_Glean_Team or 3-Birds Berry Farm, at 3birdsberryfarm.com or call 540-552-4195
