Gleaning Stories, Gleaning Change

Voices from the May 16 Glean

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This glean took place in one of the fields of Lakeside Organics near Watsonville. The substitute driver had a little trouble getting the flatbed truck going, but we managed to harvest 6 bins of 4 different organic lettuces. The day was sunny. The field was dry. The gleaners, many of whom were first timers, were wonderful. Here are a few of their voices.

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

Brown Berets

One of the first time gleaners was Ramiro Medrano, a member of the Watsonville Brown Berets. He talked briefly about how growing up next to the fields in Watsonville grew into concern about field workers, our food system, and waste.

Ramiro says he can imagine gleaning as part of a Brown Beret youth project. It could both give at risk youth a taste of what field work is like and give them the experience of providing needed food to the community they live in. Christina Jogoleff, a UCSC student who works with the Brown Berets and with the Gleaning Stories project, suggested that the Brown Berets' Bike Shop is also a kind of gleaning project.

Eloisa and Lisette, who came with Ramiro, were dismayed at how much of the lettuce in the field was still going to be disked back into the soil instead of going to feed the community. I particularly liked their descriptions of why they'd come to glean.

Belle Yang

Writer and artist Belle Yang came to the glean with a couple of friends. She'd written about the experiences of her greatgrandparents in Manchuria and wanted to be able the smell and feel the fields herself. She hopes to bring a sketchpad into the field on a future glean.

Belle wrote a beautiful blog on Red Room about the glean.

Dion Dow

One of the regular gleaners, Judy Dow, brought her husband Dion to the first glean of the season in April. Here again for the second glean, Dion may be becoming a regular himself. He remembers his mother working two jobs during WWII: as a pipe bender at Lockhead and picking tomatoes in the field.

Workers on the Truck

I caught up with three of the gleaners who were taking a turn on the truck dumping harvest crates into the cardboard bins: Jeff, David, and Denise.