The Ancient Practice of Gleaning

in #community6 years ago (edited)

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Gleaning is an ancient tradition that has been practiced by peasants for thousands of years. After farmer’s take their profitable crop, gleaners go to the fields and gather what is left behind that would otherwise go to waste.
 Gleaning means to extract resources from various sources, in a way that seeks to do no harm, but rather work in harmony with nature.
 Like foraging, gleaning incorporates harvesting of wild foods from forests, parks, backyards, and gardens, for edible plants.

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-Oranges gleaned on a road trip in Arizona to the Truth Mind Reality conference


Modern day gleaning includes saving food waste from co-ops, grocery stores, and their waste bins too, as they throw away tons of perfectly good produce due to aesthetic and government regulation.


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Gleaning can be incorporated into personal gardening as we observe and work with nature, rather than against it, extracting from various sources. Gleaning what nature gives freely such as utilizing edible and medicinal weeds and planting seeds that are well suited to the environment, using all parts of the plant, and making and using compost from what we don't consume directly.

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-Wild edible weeds

Why is gleaning important?

 It is estimated that 40% of food is wasted in the United States, while 1 in 6 people in America don’t know where their next meal will come from. Many of us struggle to afford food, while our own health is sacrificed as the expense of a corrupt consumerist capitalistic system that doesn’t care about our well-being, nor the well-being of the earth.
 80% of fresh water consumption goes to food production, yet nearly half of this water is carelessly wasted in food waste, showing a systemic lack of Care for our sacred waters.
 34% of methane gas emissions come from the food wasted that ends up in landfills to rot.
 $165 billion dollars of food is wasted in America each year, meanwhile we work as slaves to this system for minimal wages and long hours, to just barely get by.



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How can we stop supporting the violent food system and eat for free?

To live in harmony and respect with Nature, and for the sake of our independence, sustainability, and freedom, we should strive to obtain food directly from Nature herself. Harvesting from nature, growing our own food, gleaning, choosing vegan, and salvaging food waste can all help subvert the violent food system.
Get in touch with your local gleaners group where you can take part in volunteering with a group to save food from otherwise being thrown in a landfill.
Many gleaning opportunities may only be a walk away, and gleaning groups often offer ride shares and transportation for those who need it. If your community does not have a gleaners group, consider dumpster diving independently, contact stores about their food waste, or starting a gleaning group yourself.

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Go gleaning independently in nature, especially at this time where wild foods are in abundance. I gather free fruit and berries from parks, allies, and the sides of streets.

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-Wild and Free Blackberries


Gardening and growing our own food empowers us to remove our support from the waste in conventional farming such as toxic pesticides, heavy machinery, proceeding, plastic packaging, fossil fuels to be transported long distances, taxation, etc by directly nourish our bodies while connect with mama nature. To subvert the violent food system in society, gardening is something we should all be learning and teaching. If we don’t have the space to garden, it is worth making an effort to look into community gardening opportunities, gorilla gardening, and container gardening.
When there is True Will to do something, True Will always finds a way.

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-Container gardening
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Food banks are another great voluntary organization which saves food waste from stores, and receives gleaned food donations. Many even have organic produce options, gluten free breads, and other special dietary needs foods available too. 


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It is important that we choose to care for our mother earth and all her life forms, our sacred waters, and all of the living beings effected by the violence and rape occurring on mother nature through the violent system of power and control in place. As within, so without. It is important that this care is given to ourselves internally, in exercising our conscious and free will with what we consume with our mind and body is reflected in the exterior world around us.



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If we want to eat healthy, we have to decide that it is important and actually make an effort in these choices, even when we are salvaging food waste.
Voting with your dollar is a concept you have probably heard of, but we can do even better by expressing our vow to love nature with our actions, and living the example of what we want to see in the world
.

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Whenever possible I like to volunteer with a gleaners groups, as well foraging as independently in nature. Even with my food allergies, sensitives, and food products my body and soul just refuses to accept, I am discerning with what I eat, but still find amazing food options that are organic, Vegan, gluten free, non-gmo, and do not require the use of federal reserve notes to be acquired.



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You are what you eat, and if we choose to eat food that does good rather than harm and represents Freedom, Truth, and Love, we allow ourselves to Truly live it, cultivating Care for ourselves and our bodies on all levels, directly reflected in our lives and our well-being.
Thank you for your Care.
Blessed be.


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I've never heard of gleaning and to be honest I wonder if such practices are even spread in Europe already. But I hope it will grow as I feel very sad anytime I read another post about food waste. It always makes me think of poor people who don't even know when their next meal will be. There is abundance of everything and we don't use it wisely. I will check if there are any gleaners around me.

I know that the food from stores here is mostly donated to retirement homes and orphans. I don't think they donate everything but at least part of it.

I would love to see more people living closer to nature and nourishing their body with healthy vegan food that our mother earth provides us. But I hear more and more talks about it and this is the start of something big to happen :) The most difficult is to get to the first sparkle.. when it's there, the fire will start soon :)

Thank you for your care and curiosity about gleaning in your area!

This sounds pretty similar to a foragers group we have here. They share information on what weeds are edible, where foods growing wild can be collected and help with identification of plants. Sadly, few people share information on dumpster diving. The best locations are usually fiercely protected as they don't want awareness being raised and bins getting locked.

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Dumpster diving is like foraging the concrete jungle. Thanks for your awareness on the subject. I see far too many dumpsters locked and have watched Whole Foods employees take out boxes of perfectly good organic produce and throw it in and lock it up so that it rots and nobody can have it...It is unjust.


This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
@c-squared runs a community witness. Please consider using one of your witness votes on us here

I am learning more about what it means to give a witness vote and will definitely consider you, thanks for your comment and for sharing my post!

This is a beautiful post - your story was captivating and your images stimulating! I am biased already in that I love gleaning, especially from farms and gardens, and also from our grocery stores. I've worked for several homesteaders that have set up gleaning relationships with local stores and restaurants that significantly contribute to their family's diet as well as their livestock. I suppose my favorite place to glean is in nature and this year I gleaned some excellent food (also including blackberries) and seeds to bring back into my garden to encourage wild foods :) I really love your article and I hope it encourages more people to learn how to glean. There is really no reason not too, the only things holding us back from gleaning is our culture and our minds - but you astutely observed that gleaning is natural, this is the way nature works - zero waste. Thanks for sharing your passion and encouraging others to look at our food and nature through a new lens!

btw, I see that you are new to steem and I've gone ahead and delegated some Steem Power to you from our community account @homesteaderscoop to help you have more mana while you are building your account. I hope it helps!


Homesteaders Co-op

A community marketplace of ethical, handmade and sustainable products available for STEEM, SBD (and USD): https://homesteaderscoop.com

follow: @homesteaderscoop

Thanks so much for doing your part in living in balance with the earth! I look forward to learning more about your homesteaders co-op. Thanks for the stream power!

You are very welcome :)

Woah, what a post to read first thing in the morning! Thanks @riverflows for sharing :)

Howdy Tarah, welcome to steem! You sound like a superhero! River sent me this way to give you a welcome comment and try and summon up some support for you :) there's a lot of folks here on steem of like mind. I've heard of gleaning before, but it was referred to as "freeganism." I think that was by @powellx5, but she's gone inactive I think. Womp.

A lot of folks on here are very permaculturey. If you're looking for community, we've got it! And a budding economic platform powered by steem and merchants of sustainable goods. First, @riverflows has made the vast and growing @naturalmedicine community and NM Discord server. I think you'd fit right in with us there. Looks like you're big into herbs and (judging by a quick look around) alchemy. Then, @sagescrub has set up the extremely progressive @homesteaderscoop, and the Homesteaders Co-op online marketplace, where folks can exchange goods with Steem, SBD, USD, barter, and through a gift economy! It's only a few months old and we already have vendors all over the world, which I think goes to show how ready the world and the crypto space actually is for this kind of counter economic model. Next, there's @freedompoint and @freedomtowrite, the nomadic homesteady creators of @ghscollective and the Global Homesteading Collective discord server. A very active place for Homesteaders around the world to gather and grow. Then there's the people! @bobydimitrov and his wife @bghandmade. @porters, @mountainjewel, and @walkerland. @allyinspirit, @phoenixwren, and @papa-pepper. @sugarcreek, @goldenoakfarm, and @pennsif, our community steem guru and organizer of the State of Steem. And @stortrbeker, @makinstuff, and @metamethus. That'll get you started with a few of us. ;)

I hope we can see more from you and what you're doing, and I'm glad to see you earned the anarchapulco scholarship too! I'll be sharing your post to try and gather community folks to come show you some love :)

Be blessed

Nate

There you go... you do this SO well!!!!

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Thanks to y'all finding them!

This is fun! It's amazing seeing new people coming to this community and seeing everyone welcoming and supporting them so much! This is the example of what it means to get on steem.

Yes! Thank you for your part in this warm welcome and support.

Thanks so much for the warm welcome and introductions! I am looking forward to interacting with all of you more!

Woot! I'm looking forward to more! Go anarchy! 🖤🖤🖤

Good one! I had never heard of gleaning although I do practise it in some of the ways. It does amaze me the food waste from grocery stores and restaurants but one of the worst wastes I had heard of was from the dairy farmers who had quotas to fill which they could not go over or they would be fined plus they could not sell unpasteurized milk to the public so it was thrown out! Yikes!
Let's all keep Gleaning on!

So much food goes to waste due to laws. Thanks for reading my post! Yes, glean on!

Congratulations @tarahgreen!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade for newcomers in the following category:

  • Pending payout - Ranked 8 with $ 3,03

I also upvoted your post to increase its reward
If you like my work to promote newcomers and give them more visibility on the Steem blockchain, consider to vote for my witness!

Thank you, i really appreciate your work in welcoming new comers and will definitely consider you for a witness vote as I learn more about it.

Thank you @tarahgreen. I wish you all the best on the Steem Blockchain!

Wow! That was a pretty powerful read. I am excited about gleaning. Stacie D and I have publicly harvested before...mostly berries and fruit. We have yet to try ut from a super market.

Thank you @nateonsteemit!


Global Homestead Collective Come join us on discord! https://discord.gg/hPJs5Rb

Thanks for reading my post and thanks for exploring gleaning and public harvesting!