KANSAS CITY, Kan. - "Gleaning," in a historical context, means "gathering (leftover grain or other produce) after a harvest."
This is a practice kept alive today by After the Harvest, a nonprofit organization in Kansas City that works with farms, orchards, gardens, and markets in the metro area to take produce that would otherwise go to waste and give it to those who need it most.
41 Action News joined After the Harvest for a gleaning event that brought out about 30 volunteers to the Cider Hill Family Orchard in Kansas City, Kansas.
"One of the most common questions we get is, 'What happens to all the apples that fall off the trees?' People just want to pick them up and treat them as seconds," Scott Perry, an employee of the Cider Hill Family Orchard, said. "We don't consider them seconds, we consider them how we give back to the community."
After getting their assignments, volunteers walked through corn fields gathering readied cobs, picked apples from trees and gathered apples that had fallen to the ground. One of those volunteers, Mary Dees, had her gardening gloves on and was ready to get to work.
"If you look at the ground, it's full of beautiful apples. So, I scoot along and harvest them," she said.
People who volunteer for After the Harvest don't know where they will be gleaning until just days before.
According to Sandy Vivian, communications director at After the Harvest, the volunteers can be going anywhere "within 30 to 45 minutes of Kansas City. The day before they will find out this is where we are gleaning, this is the farm, and this is what we are gleaning. They don't know where they are going or what they are going to be doing, but they are on board."
A few hours in the fields can have a huge impact in the community. Volunteers picked up 555 pounds of apples which were then delivered and distributed to local food banks, pantries, shelters and community kitchens, including the Bethel Neighborhood Center, Hope Faith Ministries, Kansas City Community Kitchen, New Hope in Olathe, Operation Breakthrough and Shawnee Community Services.
And all those ears of corn volunteers collected? It totaled 440 pounds, which will be frozen by Cider Hill Family Orchard and then distributed later to people in need.
So far this summer After the Harvest has helped glean more than 80,000 pounds of donated produce from going to waste.
