GLEANING FOR MEANING!

Dedicated Addison Whitney employees gathered together early this Saturday morning at a farm in Midland, NC for Addison Whitney Helping Hands to GLEAN!

Now what exactly is Gleaning? According to Wikipedia, “Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest.” In ancient times, farmers would allow villagers to glean for self-sustainability. In modern times, humanitarian groups glean to deliver food to shelters and impoverished neighborhoods for their ultimate cause: to end societal hunger.

Addison Whitney partnered up with the Society of St. Andrew, a hunger relief nonprofit organization, to pick turnips and turnip greens. After three hours of picking turnips, dividing turnips and its greens, and loading them onto trucks, our clothes got muddy and our hands got dirty, but in the end it was all worth the while. The final count came to 2325 lbs of turnips, 1105 lbs of greens, with a total of 3430 lbs! Think about how many families this amount of food will feed! Event organizer Emily Hassell at Addison Whitney stated “This event was quite a success! I’m glad we were able to make such an impact with our gleaning efforts. It was refreshing to see people of all ages (3-50+) working as a team, and having fun in the outdoors.”

The amount of food that is wasted every year in the US can fill up “a 90,000 seat football stadium to the brim at least once every single day”, according to NaturalNews. So the next time you look down at the plate of food you are about to throw away, think about how many peoples’ lives you could have saved. Be resourceful in your food and donate to the community if you have a little extra.

Check out our pictures on Flickr @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/addisonwhitney

If you are interested in learning more about Gleaning or want to volunteer as a Gleaner, please visit http://www.endhunger.org/

Contributed by Tiffany Lan