A Squash on the Vine is Worth More than we Know
By Kim Lyon-Pratt

I could hear my grandmother’s words echoing in my ears as I stooped over to pick a variety of cucumber called Suyo Long, “Plant enough for you, the neighbors, and the birds & deer,” she’d say. I never thought of it much until this day where I found myself working alongside a group of fellow gleaners from Salvation Farms.

I had come to present Salvation Farms staff and volunteers with a certificate of appreciation for their outstanding citizenship and a basket of gourmet cookies and stayed through the early evening to harvest with this group of wonderful women.

Gleaning is the process of harvesting crops after the farmer has gone through and picked the premium fruits and vegetables for market. Often, there is an enormous amount of food left over simply because it wasn’t “pretty” enough for the market or the wrong size at the time of the harvest.

Salvation Farms located in Craftsbury, VT is an organization that has combined the American spirit of entrepreneurship with the actions of being in service to others; making them an exemplary model of a human service organization. Last year they gleaned and donated over 13,000 pounds of fresh produce to local non profits and the Vermont Food Bank.

Pray, tell say you? How do human services organizations add to the economy? Well, in the case of Salvation Farms—it’s brilliant. Founders Theresa Snow and Jen O’Donnell not only help cover the gap for food insecure Vermonters and help them lead healthier more productive lives; they also provide research data for the farmers whose crops they pick. They currently provide that data to High Mowing Seeds, an organic seed company in Wolcott. Salvation Farms is currently working with 8 farms in Central Vermont.

Salvation Farms doesn’t compete with other farms as the produce they glean is distributed to the tables of our neighbors who would go without it otherwise. What Salvation Farms is doing is cultivating a future market. Today’s preschooler will become tomorrow’s shopper and looking for fresh, local produce to buy.

It comes from a background of a green ethic. “I care about our communities and about people getting good healthy food,” said project director Theresa Snow. Both she and Jen O’Donnell came from Sterling College’s agriculture program with a pocketful of ideas, a great deal of talent and hope for the future of farmers in this state and its people.

“People volunteer for a variety of reasons,” said O’Donnell. “Some do it to retain a balance with the earth and others do it because they care so deeply for the people in their communities.”

If you want to volunteer for Salvation Farms there are many types of opportunities including: field work, deliver routes, and grant writing and fundraising, donating food left over from your own personal garden or from farmers’ market. Or, if you’re a farmer consider donating your fields for gleaning

Salvation Farms has a great website: www.salvationfarms.org or call them at (802) 586-7513. If you want to enter the name of a human service organization for the chance to win cookie drop and certificate of appreciation from Springfield College, call (802-748-5402).