North Bay Spirit Award winner gleans food for residents, organizations in need

Virtually everyone associated with Healdsburg’s Farm to Pantry nonprofit knows its origin story well.

It goes like this: Long ago during the Great Recession, Healdsburg newcomer Melita Love was in Big John’s market, toting out her groceries, when she spotted a collection bin for the local food pantry. What a good idea, she thought, getting people to donate something from their cart before they left the store.

But she also was dismayed by the disparity between the barrel filled with processed food and the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables in her own bag. In a region renowned for its bounty and consciousness about healthy food, it seemed to Love terribly wrong that the groceries she took for granted were beyond the reach of so many in her community.

“There is something about this picture,” she thought, “that I can change.” And she did.

She started talking to people who work “in the world of food insecurity” and heard about gleaning — harvesting leftover or extra food from farms and orchards that might otherwise go to waste. An ancient practice described in the Hebrew Bible, gleaning was recognized as a legal right centuries later in many parts of Europe. The image of peasants cleaning the fields after harvest was immortalized in an iconic 1857 painting by Jean-Francois Millet and reinterpreted by Vincent van Gogh.

Love’s first efforts were small. She gleaned unsold produce at the farmers market or extra fruit from people’s yards that might otherwise drop and rot. Armed with an MBA from NYU and experience in banking, the recent empty nester applied her skills and savvy to what came to be called Farm to Pantry, marshaling volunteers to pick excess produce and getting it into the kitchens of people who couldn’t afford it.

Twelve years later, Farm to Pantry is regarded as one of the most respected nonprofit organizations in the community, with an expanding reach that now extends north to Cloverdale, west to Forestville and Sebastopol and south to Santa Rosa.

So far in 2020, Farm to Pantry has rescued more than 100,000 pounds of produce, which translates into 400,000 individual servings of fruits and vegetables. This year so far, 295 volunteer gleaners have fanned out to 194 farms, orchards and fields, harvesting and delivering fresh and healthy food to 75 partner organizations that serve people for whom fresh food is a luxury.

“Melita felt like everyone should have a chance to eat food like she had. And that is one of the pieces of the story that sings the most loudly to me,” said Duskie Estes, a Sonoma County chef and a longtime food activist who recently took over as executive director for the nonprofit for which Love remains a guiding light.

For her vision of “food equality” and her determination to bring it to fruition, Love has been selected as September’s North Bay Spirit Award winner. A joint project of The Press Democrat and Comcast, the award honors people who have made a major contribution to the betterment of the community. Through creativity, ingenuity and determination, they have identified a need and found a way to fill it.

Powerhouse nonprofit

Healdsburg artist and philanthropist Barbara Wollner was one of the first volunteer gleaners for Farm to Pantry and has been a supporter and donor ever since.

“We would meet in her backyard or meet on the plaza and she’d tell us which home garden we were going to that day,” Wollner recalled of Love. “There was a real camaraderie, and people were drawn to her because of that.”

Love’s inclusivity helped build the organization quickly into a growing concern. People joined for many reasons, whether for the companionship, a desire to feed the hungry or concern about food waste.

She took care to never pick even a tiny bit more than what was offered, Wollner said. Back in those early backyard days, Love would bring a vintage red-and-black metal scale that once belonged to her mother to weigh every glean. Now everything is weighed digitally and recorded.

That high level of accountability and attention to detail has given the organization the credibility and stability to thrive. Farm to Pantry has grown from only three volunteers on its first glean in 2008 to a powerhouse nonprofit with a $250,000 annual budget, a passionate and influential board of directors and three full-time employees. Collectively over the years, they have recouped 250 tons of surplus nuts, fruits and vegetables to support the health and well-being of the community.

“The amazing thing about Melita is that when she puts her mind to something, she’s incredibly focused and incredibly disciplined. She did all kinds of research on social entrepreneurship and figured out how to make it happen,” said Michael Dimock, a Farm to Pantry board member. A longtime friend of Love’s from their grad school days in New York, he heads Roots for Change, which aims to make food and farming systems in California healthier, safer and more profitable.

Love has kept her organization lean by going light on overhead. There is no office. The volunteers work from home and out of a donated van tricked out with tarps, buckets, pickers, ladders and now sanitizer.

Food waste amid need

Gleaning may be altruistic, but it’s also common sense. Some 30-40% of the nation’s food supply is wasted, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While not all that food is agricultural waste, tons of fresh edibles wind up in landfills and compost.

The county’s most recent hunger index, from before the pandemic, found at least one third of Sonoma County residents couldn’t afford three healthy meals a day.

“Our economy is taking a brutal hit,” Estes said, referring to the multiple disasters of wildfires and the pandemic. “I just feel so lucky I get to be the Robin Hood who gets to deliver food from farmers who have been so generous with their bounty to those who need it. ... Melita created that.”

Love learned on the job how to properly pick. Windfalls, the fruit that drop on the ground, are left because they might contain harmful bacteria. Estes is experimenting with a second level of gleaning that grabs the rejects for farm animals.

Each apple is carefully inspected and handled because one bad apple really can spoil the bunch. Love holds for her gleaning customers the same high standards she holds for herself at the market.

“Our rule of thumb is ‘Would you eat it?’” said Love on a recent glean at Doug Lipton and Cindy Daniels’ HomeFarm in Dry Creek Valley. On this warm day under smoky skies, the group fanned out in masks to pick apples and other produce from the fields.

Love still occasionally dons her gloves and hat to glean. But her primary work is more strategic. She stepped down from running Farm to Pantry but still serves on the board, building up a network that includes the Sonoma County Food Recovery Coalition, the Sonoma County Food System Alliance and the Sonoma County Community Organizations Active in Disasters.

The pandemic has been hard on the local food chain, jolting crop farmers, restaurateurs and chefs. The gleaners have been out in force recouping what can’t be sold for a growing number of recipients that go well beyond food banks. School programs; Burbank Housing; Corazon Healdsburg, which supports the Latinx community, and the Alliance Medical Center are among the beneficiaries.

Lipton foresaw in March how food markets for farmers would be disrupted. He opted to plant crops specifically for Farm to Pantry this year, knowing they were competent to pick them when ripe.

“If it wasn’t for Farm to Pantry, it would be too much work to harvest it. They provide an amazing service,” said Lipton, an environmental scientist and the former owner of Healdburg SHED.

The Healdsburg Food Pantry receives a quarter of its fresh produce from Farm to Pantry. Many of the pantry’s clients are awestruck when they see what they’re getting, sometimes even taking pictures.

“My clients can’t afford to buy that stuff. So if they weren’t getting it from us, they just wouldn’t get it,” said Roger Dormire, head of the food pantry. “And when they do they go, ‘Oh my gosh! I get all this?’”

The volunteers are ready even with little notice. With farming, it’s all a matter of timing. Sometimes that works in the gleaners’ favor. Certain crops have to be picked or they will pass their prime, and sometimes farmers can’t harvest them in time. They call the gleaners, who come and take the goodies at their peak of perfection.

“Sometimes we get farmers who call and say, ‘We have to plow this tomorrow. And you have to glean by tomorrow if you want the vegetables or fruit,’” Love said. “One time a farmer told me, ‘You have to get it by 11 o’clock because the tractor is coming.’”

Sure enough, right at 11 a.m., a tractor started down the row where Love and her team were gleaning. “He started plowing because that was their schedule. And we had to hurry to finish pulling onions.” They did.

Unexpected turn

Love was not born to farm. She grew up in suburban Maryland outside Washington, D.C. After attending William and Mary College in Virginia, she became an elementary school teacher. That wasn’t the right fit. She moved to New York City, where she studied business and worked in banking until her first child, her son Cameron, was born.

In New York, Love may not have farmed, but she appreciated good food, Dimock recalled. The friends would frequently cook together or meet in Manhattan for a restaurant meal and pithy conversations about the economy and world events.

“She’s a person who in many ways was self-made. She had a bigger vision for what her life could become,” Dimock said. “She’s very aware of her privilege, but I think she feels this deep desire for the meaning that comes from doing something for your community.“

Love spent many years in San Francisco, where she focused on raising Cameron, 33, and Flannery, 30. She threw herself into volunteering with the advocacy group Children Now, which showed her how nonprofits work. She drew on that experience when she moved to Healdsburg in 2008 and founded Farm to Pantry.

“I’m so thankful this has had resonance with so many people in our community,” Love said. “The growers, those who come and glean with us and those who now support us. We couldn’t do it without every one of them. To say it takes a village is so trite but it’s so true.”

To contact Farm to Pantry visit farmtopantry.org. Email gleaning@farmtopantry.org or call 707-955-9898. Donations can be sent to P.O. Box 191, Healdsburg, 95448.

Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com. OnTwitter @megmcconahey.