Gleaning bears fruit…or veg!

As you know we have recently benefitted from some gleaning. This brought a lot of very muddy carrots to the larder many of which were quite strange shapes! They were very tasty and well worth the effort of removing the mud and navigating the odd shapes with your peeler. We also received a tray of beautiful squashes from Jolly Pumpkins PYO near Silverton gleaned by a team of volunteers. Even better for us all, they were rescued from becoming wasted food.

Gleaning is collecting leftover crops from the fields after the bulk of the crop has been harvested and sold into the food chain, or collected from areas where normal harvesting methods cannot be used so collecting the crop is uneconomic for the farmer.

For many centuries it was a legal right for poor people to glean leftover crops and the bible has apparently many references advising farmers to leave field edges unharvested and has similar advice about grapes and olives.

In 1788 a court case found that gleaning was trespass, siding with wealthy landowners who brought the case against some gleaners in a Suffolk village, and that gleaning could be accorded as a privilege but was no longer a common law right.  Now, however, many farmers approve and even encourage gleaning as they, too, do not want to see food go to waste. 

There is a national gleaning network which is training volunteers to organise events. Gleaning Devon based in Exeter is our local branch of this national network and they were involved in the recent squash rescue!