Gleaning Stories, Gleaning Change

Voices from the September 4th Glean

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For this inaugural Friday glean, fewer than 30 gleaners met at the Giant Artichoke in Castroville and caravaned to a field a few miles south owned by Ocean Mist. Henry pulled the flatbed truck up close to the field, so we didn't have to carry our baskets too far. A couple of the young men tended the bins on the truck and saved our backs by exercising theirs. The comraderie was wonderful. A breeze kicked up, making a balmy day even more pleasant. With fewer gleaners than the Saturday gleans have been getting, it took the whole morning to fill the 6 big cardboard bins with over 5000 pounds of lettuce.

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Bob, Alec, and Janie Brunson

Bob Brunson is a Third Order lay Franciscan. He came gleaning with his two children, Alec and Janie, and one of Alec's friends. Quiet and well-spoken, Bob started his answer to my question about why he'd come out gleaning with the mission of St. Francis, then more and more reasons just kept tumbling out: from the kids need for community service hours, to the desire to be more in touch with where their food came from, to the pleasures of doing good on a lovely, sunny morning, and more. The family made a great gleaning team.

Alec Brunson and his friend Fred spent a good part of the glean on the flatbed truck, taking the baskets we brought from the field and dumping them into the large cardboard bins. I asked Alec to describe his reaction when his father suggested they come gleaning. Janie soon chimed in to elaborate the story. Alec is a tennis player, and that's probably what he would have been doing this morning if he hadn't come gleaning.

Janie said she would probably have been reading somewhere. She's an inveterate reader. She is also blind and has won the Northern California braille challenge the past couple of years. I asked her about the competitions, which start with local and regional challenges and go all the way to the national championship. When I asked about how her computer deals with braille, Bob provided an analogy for the braille reader. From there our conversation moved to creative writing and to maybe even using her gleaning experiences in her writing.

Download "Forever" [ 41KB], a short story by Janie Brunson.

Maeve & Samantha

Maeve Mitchell-O'Connor and Samantha Hiura, third graders at Carmel River School, have been best friends since first grade. They wanted to be interviewed, though they were a little disappointed I wasn't filming for TV. Both were obviously having a giggly good time, but became very thoughtful when I asked them how they decided what lettuce heads to cut. When I asked them what was the most fun part of gleaning, expecting that they'd say it was the chance to talk with each other, they went straight to it being fun to help people who are hungry ... though getting a Girl Scout badge for the work was a welcome reward, too.

Henry Arias

Henry Arias, 73, has driven a truck for Ag Against Hunger for the past 6 or 7 years. He'd been a driver for an ice plant and his knowledge of the packing and shipping side of agriculture has proved useful in this job. I caught up with him alongside the truck at the end of the glean, with the wind rumbling and folks dumping lettuce in the bins on the truck. He talked about the crops that need ice and those that would be spoiled by contact with ice or too cold temperatures.

Forty years driving for the ice company gave Henry an intimate look at the changing face of refrigeration in agricultural shipping. When he started in 1960, he saw the railroad boxcars with "bunker ice" in a space on top of the cars to keep produce cool. Then railroad cars gave way to semi trucks with bunkered ice again, but in the front. Field packing and ice slurries again changed the face of produce storage and transportation. Today, refrigerated cars and trucks mean ice has a very limited role, and that spelled the end of jobs for Henry and his two brothers.

I asked Henry about other members of his family, other than the two brothers who'd worked at the ice plant, too, and whether any of them had ever worked in the fields. He said no quickly, and it was clear that field jobs weren't considered good jobs in his family. Nonetheless, as he told the story of his siblings, it became clear that nearly everyone in the family, including Henry, had had a stint in the fields, at least for summer work ... picking apricots, drying apricots, and more.

After we'd finished our conversation, Henry came over to me and said he'd forgotten to mention his years in the navy. We talked a bit more, and he also remembered a couple of years working as a butcher. A man of many talents.

Denise Wojtowicz

Denise Wojtowicz recently got laid off from a job as a software manager, so, she says, "Now I've got time." She didn't know what to expect coming out gleaning, and enjoyed learning about the process and about where the food goes.

The software project Denise was managing when she was laid off was for the propulsion systems for hybrid tanks for the military ... tanks that can run on diesel or electric batteries. I asked her a little about the challenges of hybrid technology for such huge vehicles and about her background.