Gleaning Stories, Gleaning Change

Marco Harding

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Marco, now 16, was a 9th grader at Georgiana Bruce Kirby Preparatory School in Santa Cruz when this was recorded. He's now at Santa Cruz High. The first time he came gleaning, he wasn't sure that was how he wanted to spend his Saturday morning. But he found he enjoyed the gleaning: harvesting with the knives and meeting people. Now he's a regular gleaner and part of the Gleaning Stories team. He's been taking photographs of gleaners and helping with story collection.

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Nature

Marco's interest in nature got him interested in gleaning.

His First Glean

He was unsure he'd like gleaning when he went out the first time because he had other things he wanted to do with his Saturday morning. But the knives and the little game he set himself of finding larger and larger heads of broccoli won him over, as well as the sense that he really was helping provide food to people who needed it. He found it a real "bonding experience" to glean with others. And the switch of perspective from looking at workers in the fields from the road to working in the field himself is, he says, "Kind of like being in two people's bodies at once."

... and Now

Now it's the full experience of gleaning that keeps him coming back: being outdoors, the colors, the look of the soil, the people, and the chance to help other people.

Field Work

In his old school, he'd driven by the fields daily and wondered what it was like to work like that. Now, he has a little sense of that. "I like it," he says about gleaning for an hour or two, "but I wouldn't want to be doing it for a whole day ... or your whole life." He has a different appreciation for farm workers' lives. "You wake up early ... you get paid not that much ... and it's hard. It's very intense."

"Gleaning"

Gleaning in the fields has given the word a new meaning for him.

Why Glean?

Marco says that after gleaning, like after a swim, he feels refreshed. It's partly knowing that other people share his commitment to trying to make a difference in his community.