Gleaning Stories, Gleaning Change

Voices from the August 29th Glean — Part 2

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The day threatened to be hot and humid, with a whiff of smoke in the air from the fires to the south. The field was one of Ocean Mist's near Castroville, just a short drive from the Giant Artichoke where we all met. Plenty of iceberg lettuce left in the field ....

For more details of the glean and the first page of stories from the gleaners, see Part 1.

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[Once the audio is playing, click and drag across the volume bars to change volume. Initial volume set to 80%.]

Craig Noke

Craig Noke is no stranger to gleaning. But most of his has been "urban gleaning," collecting excess bread and pastry from San Jose grocery stores and getting it to Sacred Heart Community Service food pantry where it gets out to folks who need it. Suze and Kenya talked with Craig about urban gleaning and being in the field gathering vegetables. Craig now lives in Pacific Grove, where he's just as passionate about avoiding waste and helping others as he was in San Jose.

NBC11 TV did a nice news segment last summer on Craig and his co-worker (known as "The Gleaners") making their urban gleaning rounds.

Juan Navarro

Juan Navarro is a field manager and supervises drivers and mechanics for Ocean Mist. But he's also had experience with just about every crop grown in this area. He's brought volunteer gleaners out into the fields many times, always patiently showing us how to harvest lettuce, broccoli, or whatever the crop of the day is. Rusten asked Juan about coming to the Watsonville area at age 18 from Jalisco in Mexico without a green card. His first work was in carnation fields. He moved on to artichokes and broccoli, becoming a foreman and supervising crews harvesting many different crops. He's seen changes in the work and in the fields themselves as concern for worker and food safety have grown. Navarro has worked in both the organic and commercial fields of Ocean Mist. In both, a bird dropping or an animal track mandates a no-harvest zone around the incursion.

Nina Schnall

Nina Schnall, a writer and graduate student of one of our project members, Susan Harding, came gleaning for the first time. She was worried about being too shy to talk, but she and Suze had a wonderful conversation that ranged from killing lobsters to her fiction and non-fiction writing and her mother who was court-marshalled for anti-war work in the military, with plenty more along the way. Don't stop listening when Suze thanks Nina and says she doesn't know how to turn off the recorder. They keep talking, and another piece of their conversation (when they remember the microphone again) comes right up.

Herb and Nancy Greenfield

Suze and Kenya talked with this retired couple from Aptos who've worked at the Second Harvest Food Bank but never gleaned in the field. On most Saturday mornings, they'd be at the farmers' market buying organic produce. But they've come gleaning to be "extra hands" today. They wonder if the lettuce in the field is organic: there are weeds in the field, "but only one kind of weed."

Marco Harding and Weston Gomez

Kenya talked with our project photographer, Marco, and his friend Weston, both 10th grade students at Santa Cruz High this year. Weston was here with his father, a professional photographer, helping with the lighting for their photographs.

Note: For more stories from this glean, see Part 1.