The Numbers Tell The Story- Answers to Your Questions
One of the most common questions we are asked is “When does gleaning season end and what do you do during the ‘off-season’?” We proudly answer that, for us, it’s always gleaning season! CHCV has very purposefully built our operation so that we can accept any surplus food at any time. Our work continues year-round – even as fields rest and snow falls. We consistently make food deliveries to our recipient site partners during all 12 months of the year.
As you might expect, we do glean and send out the most food in the fall. But we also store gleaned food to sustain deliveries and pick up food from farms and food producers all winter long.
You might be surprised to learn that in addition to working with farms, CHCV also accepts food donations from individual home growers and other food producers, and from our fellow Vermont Gleaning Collective member organizations.
While our initial few partners were larger local farmers, we have expanded greatly over the years. In that time, we’ve built the capacity and flexibility to include many more producers that want to share their surplus with the community. The service we provide helps us all utilize more of what they are producing.
If you’ve helped glean or prep deliveries or had a peek inside our coolers, you know that veggies are by far the largest category of food we glean.
We are also fortunate to be able to round out our offerings with a variety of other fresh, nutritious foods.
When folks are getting to know CHCV one of the first things they want to know is,
“What happens to the food you glean?”
We donate the gleaned food to 30 recipient site partners serving Central Vermonters experiencing food insecurity.