By Jean Blish Siers *
A new gleaner joined our ranks this year, a delightful senior citizen named Gloria who heard about us from a friend and came to a strawberry gleaning early in the season. She’s been out almost once a week since, driving to far-flung fields in places she’s never been before.
On Saturday we were in Rowan County, about an hour north of Charlotte, where both Gloria and I live. She ...
Continue Reading →By Jean Blish Siers *
Late on a Friday afternoon, about the time I assumed I could shut my computer down and start my weekend, my phone started ringing. First came a call from a farmer who had seven rows of peach trees that we could glean. The peaches were small – mostly too small to sell – and some had a bit of frost damage on the skin. While the scarring ...
by Mike Elmore, SoSA’s program coordinator for Florida
Gleaning is different in Florida – our harvest season starts when others are scraping ice off cars and shoveling driveways. We can’t glean past noon due to the humidity and the 100% chance of afternoon rain. And we face the late summer/early autumn succession of Atlantic-borne hurricanes, each threatening to drown our susceptible peninsula.
In the year I’ve worked in the Florida office, I’ve gleaned at nearly every Floridian latitude from north to south. I’ve gleaned ...
Continue Reading →By Jean Blish Siers *
Two conversations on Monday left me deeply troubled by our country’s priorities. First, a woman from Communities in Schools called. She serves one of the largest (and more affluent) high schools in Charlotte. But CIS works with those students who have fallen in some way through the social safety net. She had a student with diabetes and other chronic health issues. ...
By Jean Blish Siers *
While I don’t watch much television and have never seen his various shows, I was deeply saddened to read of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s suicide last week at age 61. He was a towering food icon who touched many of us, whether we were TV fans or not.
Reading about Bourdain a couple years led me to Xi’an Famous Foods in New York City. Bourdain’s attention to this ...
Continue Reading →
Deborah Hunter loves cooking, loves life, and loves people. She shares these passions, along with her recipes and personal stories, in her new book, “My Delicious Mississippi Life,” released in June. Hunter also loves feeding hungry people by volunteering with SoSA, and some of the profits of her book are designated to support the feeding ministries of the Society of St. Andrew.
SoSA is just one element in the ...
Continue Reading →