Market Gleaning 2022 Report
Ballard Farmers Market gleaners collected 18,162 pounds of produce for the Ballard Food Bank in 2022! Our single largest collection was a whopping 1,379 pounds. This was a lot of heavy lifting for our dedicated 32 volunteers who gave a total of 484 volunteer hours to make this happen!
We could always use more gleaning volunteers! The amount of produce we collect each month will continue to increase as we move into spring. In the summer we frequently collect over 1,000 pounds of produce, and having the full roster of 5 volunteers can help to reduce the time it takes to sort the produce.
As gleaning volunteers, we sort all produce donations and store perishable goods in the Ballard Food Bank’s fridge. Though there are days when the fridge is quite full, there are also days when we arrive to a fridge without much produce in it. Seeing the visual impact of our work to provide fresh, healthy, and local produce to our neighbors is what keeps our gleaners going! It is also amazing to see the generosity of our farmers, who have all gone through so much in the past few years.