Healdsburg teens harvest to feed community

Gissel Custodia winces as she bites into a Hichya persimmon. The heart-shaped fruit hangs heavy on trees around Healdsburg in the fall and early winter, but they are bitter when eaten before fully ripe.

Other junior high school students bite into Fuyu persimmons and smile at the sweet taste and crunch, which bring to mind apples.

Healdsburg teens are in a backyard just a block over from Healdsburg Junior High to pick excess fruit growing on Paul Beseda’s trees. The Teen Gleaners, as they are known, contribute their harvest to Healdsburg’s Farm to Pantry organization, which delivers it to local schools, the Healdsburg Food Pantry and the low-income senior community.

Students also cook and eat some of their harvest the following week.

The teens are part of the Healdsburg Park and Recreation Department’s Club H, an after-school program.

“We offer one-on-one homework assistance, games and sports. We keep the kids entertained and active. Gleaning offers us nutrition education, community service and enrichment,” said Lana Marquardt, recreation coordinator with the City of Healdsburg.

“I want to help people get the food they can’t afford,” said Jonny Botello, an 11-year-old sixth-grader. He also appreciates the help with his homework.

Felipe Martinez, 15, agrees. “I’ve done gleaning for two seasons to help the community,” said Martinez, who has been attending Club H for three years. “It helps us with teamwork and creates a community of students, too.”

Adilene, a 13-year-old eighth-grader, said, “I’m gleaning because it’s necessary to help the community, to help the homeless and those that have homes but no food.”

The teen program gets students into gardens and orchards and connects them to their food, said Melita Love, who founded Farm to Pantry in 2008. “It also exposes them to healthy food and healthier choices.”

In Beseda’s yard, the students stripped persimmons from the tree and slid them into white buckets to be sorted and destemmed. Adult volunteers moved the boxes into a truck that will deliver the produce.

Dani Wilcox, Farm to Pantry’s new gleaning coordinator, encourages the students even while boxing up the fruit.

“I don’t like to see good produce go to waste,” she said. “What we do is helpful to farmers and to the community.”

Love likes to break down the numbers into portions to give the students a clear idea of the community benefit.

“Last year, the teens rescued over 1,137 pounds of oranges, lemons and grapefruits resulting in 4,500 servings of nutritious fruit for our neighbors,” she said.

About 30-40 kids in Club H take turns gleaning on the first and second Tuesday of each month, as long as a nearby property is available and the weather permits.

When they aren’t gleaning, they learn to cook or prepare the produce they harvest. One week the students made gazpacho. Other days they have prepared lemon raspados (a lemon and ice drink) and favamole (a mole made with fava beans) and have eaten raw grapefruit with Tapatío sauce. They also used dehydrators to preserve the persimmons.

Next up, students will harvest walnuts and learn to make walnut butter. They also will plant seeds in the Terrace Neighborhood Garden to grow produce for the Healdsburg Food Pantry.

Contact Healdsburg Correspondent Ann Carranza at Healdsburg.Towns@gmail.com.