Essentially the Boston Area Farm Gleaning Project would involve: 1. Contacting Boston area farmers to see if they have any produce left out in the fields for the gleaning. 2. Organizing volunteers and transport to go out to the farms to harvest the produce. Possibility of finding volunteers from food pantries and shelters to spend a half-day in the country to harvest their own fruit and vegetables. 3. Arranging for the transport of the gleaned produce to the food pantries, food banks, shelters and meal programs that could use the produce. 4. Also arranging for the donation of produce already picked by the farmers which either is extra or is not perfect enough for the market (peach seconds for example). 5. Arranging for the donation of unsold produce by farmers after local farmers markets, and transporting said produce to food pantries and shelters, or to Seconds Market at public housing developments for resale at very low prices ($2 a large grocery bag). To give some examples, last season a second crop of strawberries became ripe while there were still good strawberries on the old patch. Our gleaning crew picked 45 quarts, which we transported to Rosie's Place woman's shelter in Boston. Later at another farm a second field of corn became ripe while the old field was still bearing. Gleaning crews picked over a 1,000 ears over a couple of weeks, which we took to a shelter and a good pantry, much appreciated! Later in the Fall several orchards approached us about gleaning apple drops, perfectly good apples formerly used for the making of cider, but now not so much due to stringent public health regulations. Under just about 25 trees in one orchard, and about 20 in another, we harvested some 57 boxes of apples - Macs, Macouns, Spencers. The food pantries and shelters we took the fruit to dod not seem to have alternative sources. Considering the fact that the one orchard had 2,500 trees, and the other about 4,000, and all the orchards in the apple country of Mass., there's quite a gleaning opportunity to be grasped! Similarly there are lot of other farms we could start up a relationship with for the gleaning of other produce. As stated in the short summary of the project, our goal would be to quadruple the produce gleaned for food pantries and shelters, from 233 boxes of produce to a 1,000, from 7,000 pounds to 30,000 pounds!