Connecting With Community: Some of the Many Ways Middlebury Students Get Involved

I never thought much about food until I realized that many members of our society spend much time and energy worrying about where their next meal might come from.

I grew up shopping the aisles of the supermarket, plentifully stocked with every food imaginable. I would fill up the cart, and with the swipe of a credit card, the food was mine. This experience, however, is not universal, and it blinded me in two very important ways to a broader understanding of food and food systems.

This past summer, I interned as coordinator of the Addison County Gleaning Program, based at HOPE (Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects) in Middlebury. My charge was to connect with both farmers and vulnerable populations in Addison County to help alleviate food insecurity through gleaning, which is the practice of harvesting surplus or second-rate crops from local farms and distributing them to low-income, food-insecure members of the community.

Until my work with HOPE, I had rarely stopped to consider how, where or by whom the food I ate was grown. My understanding of the life cycle of fruits and vegetables began and ended at the refrigerated produce cases of my local grocery store. This summer, however, I spent much time on local farms, learning the ins and outs of small-scale diversified agriculture, seeing for the first time how vegetables are grown. It was illuminating.

At the same time, I had never realized the extent to which the grocery store, a symbol of American abundance, is off-limits to many in our society.

I passed many hours in the HOPE office interacting with clients whose main source of fresh produce is the Gleaning Program. During this time, I heard first-hand stories of people in Addison County who face poverty, food-insecurity, drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness and homelessness, among a whole host of other issues. Interactions based in this physical desperation (lacking food, housing, money) are raw and true and haunting.

During this internship, I met people who walk into the office, throw up their hands and say, “I’ve got nothing. How can you help me?”

To stare into the eyes of a desperate person is a unique and heartbreakingly unforgettable experience.

The reasons that bring people to seek assistance vary: someone loses a job due to company budget cuts; another person’s hours get cut; a third person’s full-time minimum-wage job isn’t enough to support a family. Some are sick or disabled, and medical bills are too expensive. They fall behind on rent payments, car payments and utility bills. There’s no money for gas to go look for a job. The electricity is shut off. The landlord finally puts her foot down and says, “You’ve got to pay or move out.” Some live in tents in the woods or in their car, if they have one. Many can’t afford food.

These are the stories that made me realize both the importance and the severe limitations of my internship. As a gleaner, I was in a position to provide nutrition to members of my community whose financial hardship denies them access to healthy foods.

The fruits and vegetables I brought in, thanks to local farmers, provided nourishment. Beyond simply filling empty stomachs, food gives people energy to help themselves, to concentrate and perform well at work, to stay in good health, to feed children the wholesome food necessary for their still-developing brains (much better than cheaper but more readily available processed foods). For this reason, I feel that my work was important.

My interactions with our clients also helped me recognize that programs like this gleaning internship are only temporary measures taken while individuals work to turn their lives around, or while change occurs on a broader societal level to work against the root causes of poverty and hunger.

My job was important because it prevented people from going hungry while we work toward a solution, but it in itself is not the solution. This dual perspective — understanding both the significance and the limitations of my position — was a good motivation and a necessary reality check.

E-mail GleanAddison@gmail.com to get involved or to learn more about the Addison County Gleaning Program.