When volunteers from Salem Harvest go to collect excess produce, it’s a big communal event. (Courtesy/Salem Harvest).
Elise Bauman remembers the field of green beans that would have gone to waste.
During the summer of 2011, a processing plant rejected the green beans grown by a local farmer after too much mold turned up in a sample. Much of the harvest was perfectly edible, recalled Bauman. But sorting the moldy green beans from the edible could only be done by hand, labor the farmer just didn’t have time for.
So the farmer contacted Salem Harvest, a nonprofit that brought in a group of group of volunteers who spent the day hand-sorting the green beans. By the end of the day the group had salvaged 3,316 pounds of green beans for hungry people in the Salem area.
The harvest was Bauman’s first time volunteering for the group. Since then, Bauman has become Salem Harvest’s executive director and only paid employee. Coming up on its 10-year anniversary, Bauman said that the group harvested 507,000 pounds of produce — a new record — that’s gone to food pantries and directly to needy families.
Salem Harvest started as a handful of neighbors trying to curb food waste by picking and donating fruit from backyard trees. It’s since grown to a nonprofit with its own F-450 extended-cab pickup truck named “Sunflower,” as well as 3,000 volunteers willing to pick excess plums, leeks, cherries and other produce that’s grown across Marion and Polk counties.
In the U.S., an estimated 30 to 40% of food goes to waste, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture In Oregon 14.6% of people, 552,900 of which 194,070 are children, are food insecure, according to statistics from the Oregon Food Bank.
Bauman said this year’s record harvest is hard to fathom. It was made possible by the area’s agricultural abundance and forming community ties.
“It’s not always about pounds,” said Bauman. “It’s about the relationships we build.”
‘A big deal for those that need it’
Dick Yates remembers going on walks with his wife and neighbors in south central Salem and noticing fruit from residents’ trees falling and rotting on the ground. He said they came up with the idea to organize residents to pick the fruit and donate it to local food pantries and charities.
The first donations were relatively small but the fresh produce was much appreciated. Yates said the group thought it would remain a neighborhood-based activity until they started a website.
“As soon as you’re on the internet, the world knows you exist,” he said. After farms started registering their crops, Salem Harvest started growing quickly.
Because of the nature of farms, markets, seasons and other variables there’s plenty of food that goes to waste. Yates recalled a crop of squash that was unmarketable because each had grown too large. He recalled another farmer who had grown more than enough cauliflower to meet a contract. But after volunteers were called out, the food was recovered.
“Some of these amounts are trivial for the farmer, but 10,000 pounds of cauliflower is a big deal for those that need it,” he said.
Bauman recalled Salem Harvest volunteers picking a crop of watermelons with hollow heart, irregular growth that leaves a cavity in the melon. She recalled volunteers picking Comice and D’anjou pears that were used to help pollinate a crop of Bartlett pears.
At least half the food recovered by Salem Harvest is donated to the Marion-Polk Food Share or affiliated food pantries.
Kendra Alexander, the food share’s director of food resourcing and warehouse operations, said they’ve worked with Salem Harvest since 2011, when the nonprofit donated 20,000 pounds of backyard produce. Salem Harvest donated 264,500 pounds of produce in 2019, she said.
She said that the produce Salem Harvest brings in varies with the season and includes blackberries, cherries, broccoli, hazelnuts and plums. Client surveys show that fresh produce is the number one thing people go to food pantries for she said
“It’s not our only source,” she said. “But it’s our number one for fresh, local produce.”
A communal event
By about 2015 Salem Harvest had grown to the point where it needed a full-time employee to manage farms and volunteers, Bauman said. In 2016, she was hired as its only paid employee.
In addition to coordinating the harvests, she attends growers’ conventions in the off-seasons to network with farmers. She’s also a presence at places where people Salem Harvest is seeking to serve might be getting services. She said she’ll go Head Start programs or food pantries equipped with fliers, stickers and free apples.
“It’s straight from farm to family,” she said.
Yates said that Salem Harvest is different from other food-recovery organizations. Salem Harvest’s mission aims to feed people who are elderly, unemployed or underemployed, homeless or low income.
Unlike other organizations where the owner of the crop keeps a third of the harvest, volunteers take home half of what they pick. He said giving people who need the food the opportunity to pick it provides them with a tremendous psychological benefit.
“It gives them a sense of agency and being able to help people in a similar circumstance,” he said.
Yates described harvests as “communal events” where a group of people who don’t know each other will work side by side. He said it’s not uncommon to hear several different languages spoken.
Vikki Wetle, the co-owner of Redford Wetle Farms in Amity, said that she’s been very happy working with Salem Harvest for the last five years. Her farm grows heritage plums, peaches and pears. Volunteers help her farm harvest excess fruit while also helping her qualify for a tax credit farmers get for donating part of their crop. She also said volunteers have been trained to use ladders and harvest fruit.
“This, to a farmer, is gold,” she said.
Elise Bauman, executive director of Salem Harvest, will go to the outer reaches of the Salem area to make sure produce doesn’t go to waste. (Jake Thomas/Salem Reporter).
‘We never turn down food’
Bauman said that she still suspects Salem Harvest is getting only 11 percent of all the produce it could be harvesting. That’s why she makes sure not to miss any opportunities for fresh produce.
“We never turn down food,” she said.
On a morning in December, Bauman drove her Nissan Versa to a farm near the borders of Polk and Yamhill counties for one of her last chores for the year.
She turned onto a dirt road lined with plum trees picked clean and stopped at a gate. Behind it was an unpicked persimmon tree still brimming with the orange fruit. This was the last harvest of the year. She carefully picked all of the persimmons from the tree, placing it in tote bags that she would donate to the Simonka Place for Women and Children shelter in Keizer.
The fruit from the tree boosted the nonprofit’s total harvest for the year by 110 pounds.
“Not bad for one small tree,” said Bauman.
Contact reporter Jake Thomas at 503-575-1251 or [email protected] or @jakethomas2009.
Update: Dick Yates provided updated information on the amount of green beans harvested in 2011 and the story has been updated to reflect the new information.
