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.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving was the first time in four years I've been home and able to go to my grandma's house for the big family Thanksgiving feast.

With being off on Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving and being out of the office at trainings all day Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the week was hectic trying to sneak in phone calls and tie up all the loose ends before the holiday.

One of those loose ends was a guy from Tent City who called to say he'd never gotten a letter from Job and Family Services about a food stamps appointment. Uh oh.

After much holding and voice mails and calling around, it turned out he had moved and the letter was sent to his old address. He also may have reversed some numbers in his social security number because they had trouble finding his application in the system, or something like that...

Either way, I felt bad about the delay.

So when he mentioned he wasn't sure what he was going to do for Thanksgiving, I wanted to make sure he had a meal.

I gathered he preferred to fix something, no matter how small, at home for his family rather than go to a free meal at one of the churches or shelters. He said he'd tried most of the pantries in the area already, but I gave him some numbers he hadn't called yet and also promised to keep my ears open.

I thought about just buying him a turkey myself, but I know that's not really my job to solve problems that way. And I had no idea what size to buy. Or if he had the desire or ability to cook a bird or even store a bunch of meat until the big day.

A few days later, I asked if he'd figured out Thanksgiving yet and he was excited to report he had found a church that donated him a turkey, so that was good. Freed of the pressure of trying to work out the meat situation, I offered to try and round up some other fixings, like stuffing and potatoes, and he said that would be great.



By "round up," I really meant "buy with my excessive monthly allotment of food stamps." But I didn't tell him that, obviously. I don't need as much as they give me, so I felt better using some of it to help someone more in need.

We arranged that he would stop by one of my trainings and pick up the box, but he didn't show.

I refused to go home without seeing this through. I'm not sure I could have eaten my fill inside a warm house without knowing I'd done everything in my power to make sure at least this one family has enough food to celebrate. So I looked up directions to his house and, on my way home for the four-day weekend, I dropped it off anyway. He wasn't there, but I hope it came in handy and helped make their Thanksgiving a little more blessed.

I know mine was.

Bye Brie! Hello Maureen!

Last Friday, the day of my first tax training, was my deskmate and fellow VISTA Gabrielle's last day as a VISTA. Sadness! She is moving to New Mexico, which is totally exciting, but I will definitely miss having her around.

Because she spent most of her year of service in Toledo doing things related to food stamp outreach and a hungar study, and only started doing site development and counselor trainings (my job) around when I started, we were being trained and learning the ropes together. Even though we were at the same level in that regard, it was nice to have a cohort who'd been there longer to help sort everything out.

We shared a desk and a phone, although we weren't often there at the same time. It was nice to share rides when we both had to go out of town and I enjoyed our long talks about life and religion and boys and cats. Good luck Brie!

While I'm sad to see Brie go, I was excited to meet Maureen, the new VISTA replacing her. She attended one of my trainings last week, fresh on the heels of a bunch of other trainings, and was understandably overwhelmed by everything. But don't worry, Maureen, it will get better!

The difference between my confidence level at the beginning of October when I did my first training and the end of October -- only about 5-6 trainings later -- was huge. It seemed like I'd been doing it way longer than one month.

However, now that I'm finally feeling pretty confident about benefits, I have taxes to trip me up. So no worries, dad, I'm sure I'll still have stupid blunders to write about here...

So, welcome aboard, Maureen! I'm excited to work with you this year!

OSU vs. Michigan vs. Benefits

The first training I've had to do on a Saturday was the Saturday of the Ohio State/Michigan game, ranked by ESPN in 2000 as the greatest rivalry in sports. Not cool.

The training was in Defiance and obviously set up by a non-football fan, who I'm pretty sure was unaware the game was even going on.

Shockingly, there were actually quite a few people signed up, several of whom arrived in OSU or Michigan gear.

I debated the appropriateness of wearing an Ohio State jersey myself, but decided I should probably look more professional. I'm pretty sure no one would have cared, but I thought I should play it safe. It turned out one of my students was a dean at the school, so I'm glad I looked professional. But she didn't seem like she would have cared.

I compromised by wearing a red belt and grey scarf and finding a coffee shop to watch the first half of the game over lunch.

Go Bucks!

Tax trainings

I taught my first tax training last week with my regional coordinator watching. Luckily I passed and now I'm fully certified to teach both benefits and taxes! Feels good.

Teaching taxes wasn't as bad as I was expecting. The software part of the training is exactly the same -- and sometimes easier if the class has already been trained on benefits because then I get to skip it.

The tax part is pretty basic. Of course, there are still a million questions that come up about specific situations, which is the worst part. Usually I don't know the answer, but so far people have been understanding.

I do write down all the questions and plan to look up all the answers and email everyone back. For both my knowledge and theirs. But you do start to feel stupid teaching a class and saying "Um, I'm not sure..." to every single question. I have two pages of questions for one inquisitive class.

My second tax training -- the first on my own -- got moved into a smaller computer lab after it was discovered that the usual training room had been doublebooked.

We went from this:



To this:



Luckily, only three people showed up for that class so it wasn't so bad. It was intimate, though.

Smart crocs

Last weekend I was in Detroit visiting a friend and stopped at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Besides the unexpected bonus of free admission (woo hoo! my kind of price range!), I came across a piece in the African art section that perfectly captured my sentiments regarding in-fighting among agencies within the nonprofit sector.

It's two crocdiles crossed at the middle so that they share one stomach. The meaning behind the symbol is that two crocs that share one stomach shouldn't fight over food.

I haven't run across too much of the competition between agencies personally, but I've heard stories and I know how some organizations I've talked to about Ohio Benefit Bank are a little standoffish until I say I'm an Americorps volunteer representing a free service and they realize I'm not another agency in competition with them.

There is some kind of bad blood I don't totally understand between the two food banks in Toledo and I'm sure there are agencies around the city with similar missions that don't work together because they are more focused on their own numbers and success.

It's silly and petty. And they should really take notes from the Africans.

Taxezzzzzz

(Photo copyright Marshfield Clinic)

I am avoiding thinking about taxes.

I have my first tax training on Friday and I really need to review the material.

I also need to take the time to organize and put the info into the spiffy training agenda outline form I did for benefits trainings, which I need for my teaching confidence and sanity, but I am having trouble forcing myself to turn to that tax. Hah! TASK. (That was unintended.)

I know a majority of my time over the next few months will be start to be consumed with taxes (trainings, clinics, questions).

I am not looking forward to that. I think I'm trying to put it off as long as possible.