Lincoln County Gleaners were Rising Tide’s August Co-op for Community Days (CCD) partner. Every Wednesday, Rising Tide donates .5% of sales to an organization nominated and voted on by their 5,000+ owners. Rising Tide views this program as a way to both provide financial and in-kind support to community organizations. In addition to a monetary contribution, Rising Tide helps CCD partners share information about their organizations through digital marketing, in-store communications, and meet-and-greets, each Wednesday.

Rising Tide Co-op front end team member, Kat Cavalieri, presented a check for $748 to Mary Kate Reny, Project Coordinator for Lincoln County Gleaners, after a day of gleaning on Goranson Farm in Dresden. If you’re not familiar with the term “gleaning”, it refers to the act of taking produce off a farm that would otherwise go unused and redistributing it to those in need. So far this growing season the Lincoln County Gleaners have moved more than 7,500 pounds of gleaned or donated food to several schools, libraries, Mobius, Head Starts, low income housing, and many pop-up share tables each week. The Gleaners are able to keep these distribution sites amply stocked, thanks to the generosity of local farms and backyard growers. The Gleaners harvest veggies each week throughout the season at Goranson Farm in Dresden, and receive produce from both of Lincoln County’s Grow-to-Give farms, Twin Villages Foodbank Farm and Veggies to Table. Brown’s Farm, and many backyard growers as well, have been very generous to the Gleaner’s efforts of getting more good food to more people.

Goranson Farm is also one of several anchor produce vendors at Rising Tide Co-op, providing veggies for their produce department all year. Rising Tide Co-op is pleased to help support the Lincoln County Gleaners because their collaborative approach gives farms an opportunity to put underutilized produce to good use.

Reny, who’s been doing this work for many years, coordinates gleaning throughout the area and is willing to talk to anyone who has extra produce to share. Volunteers can come to a farm or garden and harvest from the field, or if it’s already been picked, the gleaners can come and pick it up.

The Gleaners have had a long partnership with the cooperative grocery store, where they use the store’s community kitchen to process and store produce that’s been gleaned off local farms. Last year, when several pallets of gleaned purple potatoes from an Aroostook County chip processor came to the Hub at Twin Village Food Bank Farm, The Gleaners brought several bags to Rising Tide’s kitchen to process into hash browns for area schools. Because there is so much unused food and increasing hunger in the United States, programs like Lincoln County Gleaners play an incredibly important role in our communities to make sure that food goes to those who need it.

If you would like to learn more about Lincoln County Gleaners, you can find them on Facebook.

Rising Tide Co-op is a cooperatively owned grocery serving southern Midcoast Maine since 1978 and is open and welcome to anyone who wants to shop, regardless of whether they are a co-op owner or not.

To learn more about Rising Tide Co-op’s work in our community, visit: https://risingtide.coop/