Gleaners waste not so others want not

Volunteers scour fields and give bushels of produce to the needy.

By RON MATUS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 5, 2003

THONOTOSASSA -- Despite nose-numbing temperatures and a tangle of spiders, Debbie Griffin and her 12-year-old daughter plucked away in a remote orange grove Saturday, filling 5-gallon buckets with piles of sweet citrus.

But they didn't get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Not unless the fruits include the glow that comes from helping others.

The Griffins volunteer for Gleaners of Hillsborough County, a group that scours area farms almost every weekend to salvage produce that would otherwise rot. The food is distributed to churches, food banks and retirement homes.

"It's important for (Kate) to learn that part of living is giving back," said Griffin, a human resources consultant in St. Petersburg.

And not wasting.

Nearly 100-billion pounds of food are thrown away in the United States every year, enough to feed 4-million people, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some of it is produce that is plowed under because it isn't perfect enough for Americans, or because prices drop so fast that farmers can't afford to harvest.

Groups like the Hillsborough gleaners, started in 1995, are trying to get that food to some of the people who could use it.

"There's a lot of people hurting out there," said Polly Shewfelt of Seffner, who founded the gleaners group with her husband, Gene.

The Shewfelts started the group after reading a Times article about a Pinellas County Boy Scout leader.

He got tired of seeing citrus rotting beneath his neighbors' trees, so he led his Scout troop in picking the fruit, taking it to a local juicer and giving the finished product to charity.

The Shewfelts decided to do the same with their fruit. Then the effort blossomed.

Today they have a roster of 250 volunteers. Typically, 20 to 30 show up per outing, but one day last year more than 200 showed up to pick tomatoes in Ruskin.

The gleaners have culled grapefruit near Bradenton, eggplant in Dover, tangelos in Odessa. Once, they drove 150 miles to Belle Glade to snap off 4 tons of corn. In coming weeks, they'll scarf up squash, broccoli and cantaloupes.

So far, they've saved 1.6-million pounds of produce.

"Pretty good for a mom-and-pop organization," said Gene Shewfelt, a retired accountant and Air Force veteran.

The group is affiliated with the Society of St. Andrew, a Virginia-based charity. Some 35,000 volunteers in the society's gleaning network, considered to be the largest in the country, corral 11-million pounds of fruits and vegetables each year.

Yet the need remains unmet.

"We haven't even come close," said Mike Waldmann, the group's director of operations. "We have 30-million Americans that don't have enough to eat. It's crazy."

About 15 people showed up Saturday to work a 20-acre grove owned by Marvin Williams. Workers harvested most of the crop in October, but some of it wasn't ripe. There wasn't enough left to hire another crew, so Williams turned to the gleaners.

They were happy to oblige.

"It's not that much trouble," said Polly Shewfelt, a knit cap keeping her ears toasty beneath a straw hat.

To make sure the citrus was good, Shewfelt did a taste test herself. The verdict: "Sweet as sugar."

As she spoke, volunteers zipped in from different directions, dropping off buckets of oranges like bees bringing nectar to a hive. Gene Shewfelt stacked 50-pound boxes in the back of a truck, preparing for dropoffs at the Salvation Army and Metropolitan Ministries.

"I can relate," said volunteer Michelle Cruz, who will succeed the Shewfelts as director later this year. "As a single mom, I've seen many hungry days. We've eaten oodles of noodles, six packs for a dollar."

Cruz persuaded her parents to help.

Her father, Andy Mendez, stood in a tree, twisting off fruit by hand while her mother used a picker with an 8-foot handle.

"Practice makes perfect," Yvonne Mendez said.

After they finished Saturday, the couple planned to make a haul to the Mary and Martha House, a shelter for battered women in Ruskin. Before Christmas, they dropped off 50 pounds of tangerines there.

"They said, 'We went through them so quickly, can you bring two boxes next time?' " Yvonne Mendez said.

A few rows away, Griffin warned her daughter that spiders lurked in the tree they were working.

"But we're not going to let them beat us," Griffin said.

"I am," her daughter joked.

Then they got back to work.

To become a gleaner, call the Shewfelts at 689-8621.

-- Staff writer Ron Matus can be reached at 226-3405 or matus@sptimes.com .

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