Nine years ago, Erin Garrison and a friend were looking for fruit to make preserves.
They turned in their hour of need to the internet.
“We decided to put an ad on Craigslist just to see if people would let two random strangers come in and harvest their unused foods,” said Garrison, an Albuquerque resident.
About 10 people replied, and the two friends set out.
After arriving at the very first tree in Albuquerque, they realized there was more fruit than they could possibly use on their own.
“The very first tree we went to was over 200 pounds (of fruit) and that was way more than our families needed,” she said. “And we had nine more trees to go.”
Seeing the amount of fruit ripe for the taking led Garrison to begin a project to distribute it to those who needed it.
Food Is Free Albuquerque is now a nonprofit with 10 staff members and over 500 volunteers that distributes the produce they harvest to over 90 organizations, according to Garrison, the organization’s executive director. It is a local chapter of a project that was started in Austin, Texas, according to the organization’s website.
While the organization has always focused on collecting and distributing food, they are expanding the scope of their project with the Farm & Orchard Gleaning Program, beginning with the harvest season in June.
“The Orchard Program is the same as our harvesting program, it’s just we’re looking for larger harvests to accommodate more volunteers and subsequently harvesting more food to be able to distribute,” Garrison said. “So if a farm or an orchard would like to book us, they would just book it on our website like normal and we would set up the harvest.”
Food is Free then manages distribution of the produce to organizations like the Rio Grande Food Project and the East Mountain Food Pantry.
“We practice something called ‘mindful distribution,’” Garrison said. “Mindful distribution is, we want to honor the people that grew the food, we want to honor the food itself, and we want to honor those who will consume the food, so we take a lot of things into account.”
To this end, recipients of produce from Food is Free are able to take as much or as little as they can manage, based on the number of people they serve.
The program benefits both the people who receive the produce and the operations that allow the gleaning, according to Meri Wacker, the greenhouse manager at Silver Leaf Farms in Corrales.
“What’s really nice is that we can call up Food is Free and be like, ‘Hey, we have an entire pond of lettuce. You can have it if you harvest it,’ and they’ll gather volunteers and come harvest it all, and then we don’t have to expend the manpower harvesting it and they get 50, 60, 70, 80 pounds of lettuce,” said Wacker.
The relationship between Food is Free and Silver Leaf Farm is about four years old, according to Wacker, and what makes it work is that the volunteers come to the farm to gather the produce themselves.
“We’ve had other people be like, ‘We want some of your donations, but you have to deliver,” and we’re like, ‘Nope!’” Wacker said.
