100,000 pounds!!!
Can you believe it?
We had two recent harvests
which brought our totals this year to over
100,000 pounds– a new record!
A note about GleanSLO’s history…
In 2009, I read an article about a Central Coast chapter of a national organization, Backyard Harvest. I contacted the director, Gail McNichols, who was interested in having someone take over the program. With the encouragement from Gail and the support from Amy Grey, (National Backyard Harvest Director), we moved forward with this idea. My husband Andy and I started gleaning by approaching neighbors who had fruit dropping to the ground. The homeowners were happy to have their fruit picked for donation. The work seemed easy and rewarding, and after much research and thought, a small group of us gathered together to talk about the vision of gleaning on a larger scale in the county. The Food Bank came forward as the lead agency, with the amazing vision and support from Executive Director, Carl Hansen. We formed a larger committee, got organized, and GleanSLO was officially created. SLO Grown Kids, the non-profit that took over the existing Backyard Harvest chapter, hired Marjorie Collins Design to create the beautiful GleanSLO logo. Our committee believed that we had enough food around us and collectively we could make a difference helping feed people in our community.
An early significant partner was Cal Poly’s SUSTAIN program with dedicated professors Linda Vanasupa and Liz Schlemer, and consultant Roger Burton. Additional important contributors such as Stephanie Teaford, whom we’ve highlighted in a previous newsletter, collaborated and brainstormed with the bigger picture in mind. We have many people to thank: Norma & Jim Cole, Jennifer Codron, Caroline Ginsberg, Pam Stein, Jim Patterson, Rob Coghill, Greg Ellis. We’ll feature many of these early contributors in future newsletters.
We had many hurdles to overcome, challenges to discuss, but we knew it was possible. How? Through collaboration. With much gratitude for those early collaborators who shared this big vision, we are well on our way to being a program that many people know about in our county. We hope that through GleanSLO’s success, more people will notice the abundance around us. We want gleaning to bring people together, neighbors getting to know each other over an abundant plum tree, volunteers meeting at a glean in a sweet corn field. That is how we have reached the milestone where we are today. Tree by tree, veggie by veggie, volunteer by volunteer, farmer by farmer.
I remain humbled to be part of GleanSLO and to have helped create this program. With the community’s support, we have rescued over 260,000 pounds of food in total (to date). I never could have imagined that when we were standing in front of that first orange tree.
-Carolyn Eicher, GleanSLO Co-Founder
From our e-newsletter sent out on 8/19/13
Carolyn at peach orchard in See Canyon, 2012.