On May 12, a friend of ours tagged us on Facebook comment. Joel, a farmer in Somerset, had posted a photo of a heap of strawberries, saying how much it bothered him to compost what he didn’t sell, simply because he didn’t have a place to take them.
Strawberries can be a tough thing for us to come by while we’re gleaning, so that Monday we loaded up the van and drove to Pulaski County to find them a home. Local residents met us at the farm and helped us glean the strawberries, delivering the harvest themselves to local feeding programs around the area.
Since then, our volunteers have returned to Joel’s farm six more times to glean strawberries, and then tomatoes in August – between all these trips, we’ve rescued 4,914 pounds of produce from going into the farm’s compost pile, distributing it to feeding programs who need it. Just as importantly, we’ve built a relationship with Joel and some great volunteers in Pulaski County – we’re already excited to glean more in 2018!
Your support is what makes this possible. For each $100 we raise, we’re able to make a rapid response gleaning trip to a Kentucky farm just like Joel’s. Less fresh produce rots in the field, and more locally grown produce makes it onto the plates of our neighbors facing food insecurity.
Please donate today to help us take more of these trips in 2018 than ever before!
