I worked for the State of Oregon for 30 years. Soon after I retired, four
neighbors on our block in Salem noticed that fruit from backyard trees in our neighborhood was going to waste so Salem Harvest was formed. I signed on to develop the website (which meant first learning from scratch what website development was), and the organization quickly expanded. Now in our fourth season, we have harvested more than 300,000 lbs of food.
Seeing families come out to harvests and all being involved in the work.
Kids learn a lot at our harvests. I also like the simple tasks of figuring
out the most efficient way to get the job done and organizing the work so that it runs smoothly. Best might be when we unload the results of the harvest at the local food share and see that it will have a substantial
impact on the food shortage in our community.
A local farmer called to say that five acres of green beans were going to be plowed under in two days. We mobilized nearly 200 volunteers and rescued several tons of food on very short notice. Everything worked smoothly even when our systems were pushed to their limits.
Salem Harvest thought other organizations might find our information
management system to be useful and we were looking around for ones that might be a good fit. Carolyn Eicher inquired about it and we eventually installed a new website for GleanSLO with dynamic database features that enable automating information flow including volunteer and crop registration, scheduling, attendance records, and data reports.
