GREENFIELD — The rabbi is looking for a few good gleaners.
Temple Israel’s second year of working with Atlas Farm in Deerfield to see that its unharvested crops go to the needy rather than to waste is due to begin Sunday.
“We’ve let our gleaners from the past know we’re starting up again,” said Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener, and we’ve cleared it with kitchens to see what would be their capacity to get in there to do some canning and contacted Oak Courts to see who’s there to take (food) preservation classes and say, ‘Come glean with us.’”
Gleaning is described in the Old Testament as being when “the poor followed the reapers at their work, and gathered all the remains of the crop, both those that fell out of the hands of the reaper and those that escaped the sickle.”
More broadly, though, said Cohen-Kiener, it was prescribed as part of a social network that provided “a year-round safety net, a universal practice” that took root in Greenfield after the synagogue called together its members and those in the broader community to consider ways to share food growing and preservation resources and work to build connections in “a neighborhood re-design for growing community and resilience.”
Cohen-Kiener coordinates a list of about 30 volunteers who have taken turns collecting surplus food on Sundays from Atlas Farm as well as from a participant’s backyard fruit trees — even finding people willing to climb a ladder to gather the fruit. There’s also an informal process for volunteers, in similar groups of maybe half a dozen, to come together to can, ferment, freeze or dry what they’ve gleaned.
With the temple’s kitchen unavailable this summer because of building repairs, she said she’s made arrangements using the Stone Soup Cafe’s kitchen at All Souls Church, with the kitchen at the new John Zon Community Center as a backup.
This summer, said Cohen-Kiener, Atlas has asked for gleaners to collect produce just as it’s about to be plowed under, “so it’s likely we’ll get less variety but more volume.”
The network of gleaners and processors, who numbered about 20 last year, have relationships with various charitable outlets, including the Salvation Army, Stone Soup Cafe, and Oak Courts, and enough processors have the necessary “ServSafe” certification to distribute the food to outlets like Center for Self Reliance and community meals.
“On any given week, we’ll see what’s available and gather people to use the shared equipment,” she says. “We’ve fermented cabbage, canned beets and tomatoes, made applesauce, done a little dehydrating, and we can do flash freezing. And everyone who’s working should take home food.”