Who We Are

We are a group of Central Vermonters who are committed to bringing our community together through gleaning to recover surplus food produced on area farms to feed those with limited access to nutritious, fresh local food, and in the process help the community to gain a greater awareness and appreciation of the local food system, healthy eating, and waste reduction.

What is Gleaning?

Gleaning is the practice of walking farmers’ fields and gathering usable food after the farmers have finished the regular harvest.

How Much Food is There to Glean?

Research shows that during each growing season in Vermont, there are 14.3 million pounds of edible vegetables and berries grown that are not sold by farms. There is about 1 million pounds of this surplus just in Washington County that could be gleaned for people to eat. CHCV and the many other gleaning programs around Vermont are making progress in recovering some of this surplus, but only a small portion is being gleaned each season at this point.

What We Do and How We Do It

CHCV is a local grassroots volunteer-powered community service program focused on utilizing surplus food grown in Central Vermont. Through gleaning, we work with local farms to address food waste issues and help provide nutritious food to organizations that serve community members facing food insecurity.

We use food grown on local farms that would otherwise not be harvested and sold to enhance the health and well-being of the Central Vermont community. The program brings together community volunteers to recover produce from local farmers’ fields after the harvest and by doing so keeps farm surplus from going to waste. The fresh gleaned produce is provided to disadvantaged Central Vermont community members, making nutritious fresh local food available to more of our community.

CHCV’s volunteers do virtually all of the gleaning. We provide a diverse group of community volunteers the opportunity to help their neighbors in need and gain a greater awareness and appreciation of our local food system. We engage all ages and economic groups, in particular children and recipients of the gleaned food. CHCV promotes community connections and involvement with farms by bringing people out into the farm fields to work together and learn how and where fresh food is grown in their community.

Our recipients, all serving food-insecure individuals, include food shelves, senior meal programs, afterschool and early childhood programs, community meals, and schools with free meal programs. CHCV’s recipients report that our regular weekly year-round deliveries are critical to their success as they see a continuing need in our community. Our donations are predictable and can be counted on by recipients as they plan their meals and budgets. CHCV provides a unique service that programs cannot get anywhere else.

Throughout the harvest season – June through November – CHCV’s weekly deliveries distribute the fresh produce that our volunteers have gleaned from our farm partners.  Deliveries of stored gleaned produce continue into the winter and early spring months.

We receive a significant portion of our funding from individual donors. We also receive donations from recipient and community partners, as well as from businesses and foundations. We welcome your participation.