The Seed and the Story: Channeling the Tradition of Gleaning

Gleaned potatoes. Photo from the Society of Saint Andrew.

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

As the days grow longer and the afternoons warmer, Arkansas’s agricultural fields are beginning to grow and produce food for our tables.  This week’s column focuses on the ages-old tradition of crop gleaning and the role it can play in today’s society.

First, some background information.  A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit with Representative Kathy Webb, the recently named director of Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance.  With a 27.6% poverty rate throughout the state, Arkansas ranks six points above the national average.  According to a recent USDA survey, Arkansas is third in the nation for instances of food insecurity, meaning that a significant number of Arkansans, especially vulnerable populations like children and the elderly, are unsure where their next meal will come from. Access to fresh fruits and vegetables are especially difficult, as these tend to be some of the most expensive items in the grocery store.  In some areas, it can be hard to find fresh food stocked in the stores whatsoever.  The Hunger Alliance addresses the multiple layers of poverty-based hunger through several channels, including the ancient tradition gleaning.

Gleaning refers to act of collecting any leftover crops from the fields after it has been commercially harvested or collecting crops from fields where it is no longer economically profitable to harvest, due to factors such as low market prices. In some studies it is estimated that around 40% of the crops are wasted after a commercial harvest, withering in the field.  Through the process of gleaning, these fresh foods are gathered and then transported via food banks and distributed to the hungry, providing people with nutrient-rich food and preventing the needless waste of crops rotting on the vine.

The concept dates back thousands of years, with mention of this practice documented extensively in both the Bible and the Quran.  Typically gleaning is referred to as leaving the edges of the field un-harvested for the needy, travelers, and widows. Here’s an oft-quoted verse from Leviticus 23: 22 regarding the practice in Jewish society: “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  Leave them for the poor and the alien.”  Drawing from its Biblical roots, this practice was also common in Europe throughout the 18^th and 19^th century and provided countless peasants with food to sustain their families.

Here in Arkansas, since the summer of 2008, the Arkansas Hunger Alliance has worked in partnership with the Society of Saint Andrew, a national non profit whose mission is to provide hunger relief and save excesses fresh produce to donate to critical feeding agencies.  To make gleaning effective, the agency relies on volunteers—everyday people, church groups, and organizations who are willing to denote their time to gather the crops for distribution.  In recent years they’ve also partnered with the Department of Corrections, which has increased the gleaning yields exponentially.  The year before they began working with the Department of Correction they gleaned 289,000 pounds of food, says Michelle Shope of the Arkansas Hunger Alliance.  The following year, with the help of the Corrections Maintenance Crew, 800,000 pounds were gathered.   With the help of both volunteers and the Department of Corrections, they’ve gathered 1.9 million pounds of food in the past four years. Their goal is to reach six million pounds a year, helping to eradicate childhood hunger.

If you or your church or community group is interested in taking part in this ancient tradition of gleaning, you can contact Michelle Shope at 501-399-9999 or mshope@arhungeralliance.org.  If you’re a farmer and want to have your field gleaned, contact the Society of Saint Andrew at 1-800-333-4597 or visit them online at www.endhunger.org.

Do you take part in the tradition of gleaning?  What are some historic examples of this practice here in the river valley?  I’d love to hear about them.

Friday Video: Truck Farm

From Truck Farm film.

This week’s video is a teaser from one of the films they showed last week at the Dig In Festival in Fayettveille, Arkansas.

Based in Brooklyn, this film chronicles the making of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in the back of a 1986 truck, an effort to supply healthy, locally grown food in urban centers.  The concept has grown and there are truck farms popping up all over the nation.

Follow the project online and watch portions of the film via truckfarm.com.   Check out the film teaser below.

Would something like this work in your hometown?  Maybe you already have a truck farm.  We’d love to hear about it!

The Seed and the Story: CAAH and Arkansas Seed Swaps

2011 Russellville Seed Swap. Photo by author

The Seed and the Story is a bi-weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!

The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  

You can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading!

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Beginning earlier this month the organization CAAH (Conserving Arkansas’ Agricultural Heritage) began their yearly series of Seed Swaps across the state.  With the motto “One for the cutworm, one for the crow, one to share and one to grow,” the organization seeks to preserve both the agricultural folkways of Arkansas and the seeds themselves, many of which have been in families for generations.

They operate a Seed Bank on campus at the University of Central Arkansas, studying and preserving the genetic diversity of regional seeds and host twelve statewide swaps, providing a space where community members can trade heirloom seeds and gardening knowledge, sharing the wealth with both fellow community members and the CAAH organization.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting project leader Dr. Brian Campbell and hear him speak about this project and his other work, and I attended the Russellville Swap last year.  Regardless if you’re a master gardener with decades of experience or a person who’s never put a thing in the ground but posses an interest in learning more about growing your own food, CAAH is an excellent resource.

They seek to raise awareness about the problems with crop monoculture, wherein regional heirloom seeds are replaced by hybrids, the seeds patented and owned by major corporations.  As growers shift to these seeds, the regional ones die out, taking with them genetic diversity, regional traditions and a hardiness to local conditions. Just take the example of tomatoes.  There are only few varieties sold in grocery stores but literally hundreds of different heirloom tomatoes you can grow at home, ranging from pink to green to yellow and each with their own unique taste.  Heirloom gardening opens up a whole new world of eating.

Last year when I attended the swap in Russellville there were several people who brought seeds to give away and an even larger group of folks who just wanted to meet other gardeners in the area, many of whom were starting their first plots.  I came home with some okra seed, daffodil bulbs, a hummingbird vine, and French melon seeds, all of which have done well. If you have seeds passed down in your community, donating some to CAAH is an excellent way to make sure they never die out.  But don’t feel like you have to have seeds to swap to attend the event. It’s for everyone, gardener or not.

The event in Russellville will take place on the 25^th of this month at All Saints Episcopal Church from 10:00-1:00.  If you miss the Russellville event, you can make it to the Conway swap on Sunday the 26th 1:30-3:00 at the Faulkner County Library.   You can check out the full list of swaps below.

You can read more about CAAH and learn what’s in their Seed Bank here: www.arkansasagro.wordpress.com.  If you want to read more about last year’s swap and see a few more photos, go here. If you have seeds that have been passed down to you, I’d really love to hear about them!  I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for spring.  What are you going to be growing?

Friday Video: Immokalee: A Story of Slavery and Freedom.

Lucas Benitez, ICW. From Yes! Magazine. Photo by Jeffrey Slater

Earlier this week we posted about Yes! Magazine’s Breakthrough Fifteen. One of the people profiled in the issue is Lucas Benitez, a man who helped to form the  Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).  The Coalition works to fight modern-day slavery in the agricultural industry and organizes for better pay. They operate a low-power radio station, “Radio Conciencia”  as well as a co-op to give families access to affordable food.  They have also led hunger strikes and multiple marches.

From Yes!:

IW started in 1993 when Lucas and other workers got together to discuss working conditions. In 1995, they staged a weeklong protest that forced a grower to change his decision to lower pay. But an incident in 1996 galvanized Lucas and CIW. A teenage field worker had asked his foreman for a water break. The foreman refused; the worker stopped for a drink anyway. The foreman beat the worker brutally. Lucas helped spread news of the attack and more than 500 workers gathered in protest, waving the victim’s bloody shirt. The action grew to a boycott of the foreman lasting several weeks. In keeping with his belief in acting as an animator, Lucas was not the leader of this action. Instead, he used it as an opportunity to build confidence among the farmworkers in their own power and the power of collective action. Lucas keeps the teenager’s blood-stained shirt with him to this day.  To read the entire profile from Yes! go here.

This week’s Friday Video is a short documentary produced by Jeff Imig about the CIW and their fight against unfair wages and practices, including their effective boycott of Taco Bell.  The video highlights both their struggles and successes.

“Compost Cuisine”: Article from AlterNet.org

From Alternet.org

I just came across this article via Rodele’s facebook feed, and I love, love, love it.  Ever feel like there has to be a way to make more use of the those scarps headed for the compost pile or down the drain?  Well, here’s your inspiration.

Exploring a movement called “compost cuisine,” this article written by Anneli Rufus for Alternet examines creative ways chefs are finding ways to use food that might typically wind up in the compost pile.  From the article:

Such waste-not ingenuity is part of a new movement among chefs who are taking sustainability to new heights by gazing into the depths: that is, at what would otherwise be deemed not fit to eat. While we’ve heard of snout-to-tail, “whole-animal” restaurateurship, the practice of creating fabulous dishes from stems, seeds, skins and other usually discarded plant parts gives “bottom of the food chain” a whole new meaning.

“When you have high respect for how things are raised and produced, you’re not going to throw any parts of them away if you can help it,” says Baker, who was named Esquire magazine’s 2010 Chef of the Year and is the executive chef at Gather restaurant – also in Berkeley. “If we’re using the whole animal, then why not use cauliflower leaves, carrot peels, corncobs and cornsilk?”

So, what kind of ways are they using the would-be scraps?  The article is full of example.  Here’s just one:

At Origen, Leighton and co-owner Daniel Clayton boil fruit cores and peels into syrups to use in sodas and cocktails. Ditto fennel fronds. Bumpy Brussels-sprout ends, spinach stems and other typically discarded produce parts are boiled into stock, puréed into mousses, diced and sautéed and served au gratin.  

Read this and all the other examples by clicking here.

What are some ways you keep food out of the compost pile?  Here’s a post we did a while back about an idea for over-ripe peaches.  Tell us your ideas!  We’d love to include them here.

Loblolly Creamery Opens in the Green Corner Store.

From Eat Arkansas.

I got a chance  to check out the new Little Rock-based cremary last night and posted this short review on the Eat Arkansas blog.   Anyone who is a fan of Arkansas-made foods will want to check this out!

Operating out of the historic soda fountain corner of the Green Corner Store on 15th and Main, the newly-opened Loblolly Creamery serves locally made ice cream, sweets and sodas. Inspiration for the business, co-owner Sally Mengle explained, came from the building itself, former home to the C.H. Dawson Drugstore 1905 to 1967. Both she and co-owner Rachel Boswell are passionate about making sweets and ice cream and wanted to honor the building’s rich history.

The business idea “fell in our laps,” Mengle said. “We got to fit the business around the location.”

Continue reading at the Eat Arkansas blog.

Farmscape and the Potential of Backyard Gardens.

From Farmscape webpage.

Yesterday the excellent organization Cooking Up a Story posted a video of Jesse Du Bois of Farmscape discussing his vision for bringing food production gardens into Los Angeles.

Regardless of where you live, whether it’s a large city, small town, even a rural area, this is a great discussion of the possibilities and challenges of raising food in neighborhoods.  Such a vision, adapted locally to each community, has the potential to greatly alter our local food supply for the better.  And such a community initiative has the power to increase local economy and provide access to affordable, organically grown fruits and veggies for all.   You can read more about Farmscape online here.   While Farmscape is a Los Angeles based company, the concepts presented in this online video are universal and are already being implemented in communities everywhere.  As he says, it’s an old idea, similar to Victory Gardens of the past.

Is something like this happening in your community?  Tell us about it.  

Check it out.

The Seed and the Story for Wednesday September 21st: Muscadines!

Earlier this week, we posted about our search for Muscadine-related stories, many of which wound up in this week’s column.  Thanks so much to those who contributed! The Seed and the Story column is published every other week in the central Arkansas Post Dispatch and Courier newspapers.  

In Little Rock there’s a local food buying organization called the Arkansas Sustainability Network where you can purchase weekly groceries straight from regional, small-scale farmers.  This past week, in addition to our regular eggs and veggies, I purchased some muscadines from Bluebird Hill Berry Farm out of Atkins.  Surprisingly tart with a sweet aftertaste, muscadines are a form of grape native to the  southeastern United States.  They’ve grown wild in this region for at least four hundred years, and since the 1970s they’ve also been grown as a cultivator, used to make juice and wine in Altus wineries such as Weiderkehr and Post.  

Like so many people in the area, my late grandmother, Mary Caroline Caldwell Martin, made jelly from the wild variety she and her family picked in the rocky soil of Harkey’s Valley.   “Musk-kee-dines,” she called them, and her jelly was purported to be some of the best around.  Muscadine picking is alive and well today, and many people continue to make their own jams or jellies, a sweet concoction that takes the edge off the sour taste.  Some of us like to eat them raw, a somewhat involved task that requires  biting through the tough outer skin to get to the sour insides, being careful to avoid biting into the bitter seeds.  Roughly forty percent of the muscadine is skin and seed, but if you’re a fan of their tart flavor, the end product is well worth all the effort.

My grandmother (and grandfather) the queen of muscadine jelly.

My good friend Samantha Dill, an ESL teacher in Danville Schools, said this past week their school-wide fresh fruit and veggie grant provided muscadines as an afterschool snack.  As they nibbled on the antioxidant-loaded fruit, she discussed the various ways people eat and prepare muscadines.  Some of the students, she reported, even saved their seeds to take home and grow.

Inspired by Samantha’s story, I began asking around to see what others had to say about this regional delicacy.  Joanna Corder recalled her mother’s muscadine vine in the backyard of her North Little Rock home that took over an entire clothesline.  Aileen Reed recalled a muscadine hunting trip in south Arkansas that resulted in a bad case of poison ivy.  Dennis Pockrus said that as a child he’d eat so many wild muscadines that his “lips would itch.”   And when it comes to muscadine picking advice, Denise Taylor suggested checking the low branches of trees, being careful to watch out for chiggers, of course.  It’s even been said that in the 1950s-1970s wild muscadine wine could be found at the Chickelah store.

Recent agricultural research reveals the muscadine (including the shell and the seed) to be loaded with nutrients.  Muscadine-derived supplements are popular online and muscadine growers near and far are researching ways to market these health benefits.  They’re typically harvested from August through October, so you’ve still got a little time to pick some wild ones or purchase some of the many varieties of cultivators from area growers.

We’d love to hear your muscadine stories!  Leave a comment here or send us an email via the contact page!  Thanks so much for reading!

Muscadine related links:

Muscadine: Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Muscadine Grape,  California Rare Fruit Growers

Recipe from Muscadine Meringue Pie from The Communal Skillet (suggested  by Jen Erwin of Food Orleans)

Recommended muscadine varieties for home and garden, via U of A Division of Agriculture

Williams Muscadine Vineyard and Farm in Nesmith, South Carolina (more detailed post about this in the near future!)

What muscadine links are we missing?  Let us know!

Let’s Talk About Muscadines.

Purple and gold muscadines from Bluebird Hill Berry Farm out of Atkins, Arkansas

Every other week the Seed and the Story column comes out in the Post Dispatch and the Courier newspapers.  I’m thinking this next column should be an ode to the greatest regional fruit known to humankind, the muscadine.

I’ve eaten my fill of them lately, and I’ve been hearing others talk about them as well, including one friend who teaches at Danville Public Schools, Samantha Dill,  who said the students recently had them for an after-school snack followed by a discussion about the fruit’s various folkways and the variety of different ways to eat their delicious contents.   Isn’t that great?   She’s an excellent teacher!

Here’s what she had to say about it (via comment section): As part of the grant program, teachers and cafeteria must document lessons they incorporate into their classrooms. Every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and sometimes Thursday and Friday afternoon, we all all get a beautiful tray. There is a watermelon plant that out groundskeepers have obviously ignored on our playground from the watermelon seeds some fifth graders spit out while enjoying the fruit outside with Mrs. Rose.

I’ve found that a few different farmers that sell them around here in the central Arkansas area, including Bluebird Hill Berry Farm in Atkins, Arkansas.  Right now they have both the gold and purple varieties available.  Typically these are the tame kind as opposed to the wild, gathered kind.  But they’re still quite tasty.

I’d love to hear your muscadine stories!  How do you like to eat them?  Do you make jelly? Eat them raw?  Maybe you do a little fermenting even?  Let’s talk muscadines.  Or mus-cee-dines, as my grandmother said.

Farmer and Seed Advocate Percy Schmeiser on Democracy Now!

Percy Schmesier is a Canadian farmer who has spent decades fighting seed giant Monsanto in an effort to protect regional food systems, heirloom seeds, and farmers’ autonomy against cooperate seed ownership. He is a 1997 recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (often referred to as the alternative Nobel Peace Prize), the subject of the documentary Percy Schmeiser: David versus Monsanto, and travels around the world advocating for farmers’ rights. His work addresses issues such as patents and the right to private ownership of seeds and seed research.

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