Published June 28, 2023
A Day Gleaning at the Johnny’s Selected Seeds Research Farm
Veggies For All and Johnny’s Selected Seeds Are Working Together to Feed the Community
By Mattie John Bamman
It’s an early morning in neighboring Kennebec County. Spring-green farmland stretches out to the horizon, and a half dozen cars and trucks are parked along the roadside. The well-known seed company Johnny’s Selected Seeds, which has a mission for “helping families, friends, and communities to feed one another,” has invited Veggies For All to glean at its Research Farm. Today, the gleaners will harvest from its spinach trial.
“It’s a pretty unique gleaning experience,” says Allie Smith, who coordinates the Veggies For All gleaning program for Waldo County Bounty. “There’s a new type of spinach growing every six feet.”
At its Research Farm, Johnny’s Selected Seeds not only tests how its seeds grow under different conditions but breeds a variety of crops. In 2022, Johnny’s Selected Seeds trialed close to 2000 seed varieties.
“We trial everything that’s in the catalog for flavor, adaptability, disease resistance, and many other specifications,” says Sophia Lindsay, Johnny’s Community Harvest and Requests Coordinator and a Waldo County bounty volunteer board member. Among her job duties, she connects gleaning groups and other area food access programs with excess produce from the Research Farm.
The gleaning volunteers harvested 200 pounds of spinach in under two hours for local food pantries.
Armed with buckets and harvest knives, Allie and Sophia lead gleaning volunteers into the fields of brightly colored spinach blocks that extend in rows like a green color scale. People from all over volunteer to attend gleaning events with Veggies For All, and each person has their own reasons for gleaning.
“I started gleaning to help put fresh produce on the Frankfort Give and Take Shed, but, I must say, it has become more than that,” one volunteer told Waldo County Bounty. “I met some of the nicest people who all have a heart for giving back. What a wonderful thing at all levels—the farms, the Waldo County Bounty team, the volunteers...”
Gleaning at Johnny’s is a great way to work with a ton of different produce varieties. It’s also an opportunity to ask questions and learn more about the crops that are being harvested.
The relationship between Veggies For All and Johnny’s Selected Seeds goes back a long time—to even before the Community Harvest Program had a name. In recent years, Allie and Sophia have found new ways to strengthen their relationship.
“Allie has really grabbed ahold of Veggies For All,” says Sophia. “She never says no when I call up and say, ‘I have 400 pounds of cucumbers.’ It’s incredible to have that as a resource, because we really are producing 400 pounds of cukes every other day at times.”
“I really value all of the resources and hard work that goes into growing food,” says Allie, “and, when that food doesn’t reach people’s plates, it feels like those resources and work are not being honored. I understand farmers and those running businesses won’t be able to make money on beets that grew too big, and I don’t think they should be responsible for getting that food out to the community when it doesn’t make financial sense. That is why gleaning plays a really important role in agriculture.”
That is also why gleaning volunteers play a key role in our agricultural sector. After two hours, they have brought in more than 200 pounds of fresh, nutritious spinach. Allie loads the crops into her Subaru and heads off to share the bounty with local food pantries, which are eager to stock high quality fruits and vegetables.
Veggies For All was founded by young farmers as a hunger relief effort in Unity in 2007. It originally operated as a food bank farm that grew produce for local soup kitchens and food pantries. Over the next decade, Veggies For All developed in collaboration with a variety of organizations, including Unity Barn Raisers, Unity College, Volunteer Regional Food Pantry, and Maine Farmland Trust. In 2019, as a project of Unity Barn Raisers, it transitioned from growing food to gleaning food, and it expanded its gleaning efforts countywide during the pandemic. After managing Veggies For All for several years, Waldo County Bounty took ownership of the project in 2023.
Sophia records spinach yields during the gleaning event.
Allie loads her Subaru with the fresh spinach and distributes it to local hunger relief organizations.