Gleaning Stories, Gleaning Change

The Gleaners

Gleaners spend hours gleaning fruits and vegetables in the fields to help fight hunger. Some of the gleaners are young. A few area high schools have organized gleaning programs that provide community service credit for students. Some of the gleaners are older. Elders in the California Grey Bears Gleaning Project have had a gleaning project for years. Some gleaners speak English, some Spanish, some both or neither. Some work with church groups, others with labor unions. For some, this is one more project in a life of "activism." For others, gleaning is their first commitment to work with others to make theirs a better community. The gleaners come from communities throughout Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.

Gleaners' Stories

The Gleaning Stories Project talks to gleaners in and out of the field. We record and archive their stories, posting excerpts of them on this website, and turning them into compelling radio. In our radio work, we try to place gleaners' stories in the local contexts of hunger, agriculture, and community. more ...

Gleans: Listen to conversations recorded in the field at gleans. (See photos of the gleans.)

Gleaners: Listen to longer, out-of-the-field stories of gleaners.

Search: Find the story of a particular gleaner or group in an alphabetical list.

Radio: Listen to gleaners' stories that have been turned into episodes of the Gleaning Stories radio series.

Videos: Watch video slideshows of gleans with soundtracks of gleaners' stories and music.

Common Threads: A cultural historian and an anthropologist reflect on connections they find among the stories.

Gleaners Write About Gleaning

Recording the stories of gleaners isn't the only way their stories get out. Some of them have blogs or websites where they describe their own experiences.

Share your stories by commenting on our Gleaning Stories Blog.

Artist/writer and gleaner Belle Yang wrote a beautiful blog on Red Room about one of the lettuce gleans.

Let us know if you have a blog about gleaning.