Gleaners gather bounty of berries for ‘great cause’

FRUIT VALLEY — Bending down on one knee, Miriam Bates plucked a plump raspberry from a bush and dropped it into a three-quart ice cream tub. She’d already filled nearly two containers with the fragile fruit.

In the bushes surrounding her, a half-dozen other pickers worked, heads bent to the task. Some worked in twos, talking and laughing. Many juicy berries went straight into mouths.

It was the first time Bates had volunteered as a gleaner for Urban Abundance, a nonprofit program that harvests backyard and community orchards around Clark County. Half goes to the Clark County Food Bank; the other half is shared between volunteers and the property owner.

Urban Abundance is a program of Slow Food Southwest Washington, a nonprofit that encourages gardeners, grocery shoppers and diners to grow, buy and eat locally grown foods. It’s the local chapter of the national nonprofit Slow Food USA.

“It’s a great cause. It feels good to help,” Bates said as she continued picking raspberries. “I’m behind the whole philosophy of what they’re doing.”

The berries are owned by Eric Hale and Heather Carpenter, who built their home two years ago on acreage hugging the banks of Vancouver Lake. After years of neglect, the property — including the original house — had been swallowed by invasive blackberries. When they peeled back a 30-foot-high blackberry wall, they discovered rows of raspberry and cultivated blackberry bushes, laden with fruit. They were the remnant of berry fields planted decades earlier during the 1940s, or perhaps earlier.

In preparation for their wedding on their property, Carpenter made 80 jars of raspberry jam, 80 jars of blackberry jam and 16 berry pies. But it didn’t seem to make a dent in the volume of berries waiting to be harvested.

“There were still so many berries rotting,” she said. “The berries take so much work to pick.”

Since then, the couple have invited friends, family and neighbors to pick as many berries as they want. But there are still too many berries.

Hale, a board member of Slow Food Southwest Washington, invited the volunteers to pick berries Wednesday night at the group’s first gleaning of the season.

“Gleaning is such an old tradition,” said Warren Neth, the nonprofit’s executive director, who picked berries on the other side of the bush where Bates squatted. “It ties in with a sense of community. Programs like this try to connect neighbors to services the community needs. We look forward to keep growing this program. Clark County has an abundance of backyard fruit trees.”

Last year, Urban Abundance gleaners saved more than five tons of fresh fruit from going to waste. Most of the apples, pears, plums and cherries were delivered to the Clark County Food Bank. Tree owners and volunteers take home some fruit for their own use.

Fruit tree owners register their trees and the expected harvest on the Urban Abundance website. Volunteers coordinate the harvest. Between backyard and community orchards, more than 1,000 fruit trees in Clark County are registered for volunteers to harvest.

This year, Neth says they hope to harvest seven tons of fruit. The warmer temperatures will ripen fruit earlier than usual. They are already looking for harvest leaders, scouts, fruit tree stewards and other volunteers.

The program plans to develop a crop of leaders, including a Gleaners’ Guild, to manage the harvest. Volunteers learn about Clark County’s food economy, pests, pruning and compost. They learn why food that is transported only short distances stays fresher and retains its nutrition. They also help preserve heritage varieties of fruit for future generations.

“Most of our harvests are brought into the emergency food bank, but considering the fragility of raspberries, this harvest (mostly) will go home with volunteers,” Neth said.

Some of the berries will be used to feed kids enrolled in the At Home At School summer youth program managed by Susan Finley at Washington State University Vancouver, Neth said.

Further down the row from Neth, latecomer Sara Pegarella, another first-time gleaner, dropped berries into her container.

“I like volunteering my time,” said Pegarella, who recently moved to Vancouver from Philadelphia via Montana.

After she got settled, she started looking for ways she could get involved in her new community. That’s when she ran into Neth, who told her about Slow Food and Urban Abundance.

“It’s one thing to give your money,” Pegarella said, “but it’s another thing to help with my hands. I like working with others who share my passion for making the world a better place.”