Cabbage Gleaning

On Saturday morning, I headed out to Pemberville to help pick cabbages.

Some area farmers save part of their fields for service groups, like the Society of St. Andrews' Meals for Millions (more info here), to come out and do gleanings, meaning they harvest the crops and then donate it to food pantries for people in need.

For various reasons, I hadn't been able to make it out to any of the gleanings all fall. This was the last one, so I definately wanted to check it out.

I'm glad I did. Beautiful day, nice, welcoming people and good exercise to boot.

Some of the cabbages were tiny, like grenades. Like this one:



Others were huge and dense, more like bowling balls.

We gleaned an estimated 12,000 pounds of cabbage in about 2.5 hours. And I'm sore.


(From zimbio.com/Photo by Jonathan Daniel/NBAE)

My rusty college rugby skills actually came in handy as, after a group of guys worked ahead and cut each cabbage head down the row free with a knife, another group of people formed a human chain and, with one person scooping the cabbages up off the ground, threw them from person to person down the line and into crates in the truck.



It was muddy, so it also smelled like rugby. Dirt under my fingernails and the small of grass and mud on my hands, clothes and shoes.

I miss that.