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On a smoky, sweaty morning in late August, Sarah Hurlburt moves through her backyard garden on the rural southeast edge of Walla Walla. She pauses every few steps, showing off her kale, squash, peppers, zucchinis, tomatoes and other crops.
Hurlburt comes to her small orchard and picks up a plum that fell from her Mirabelle tree. The fruit is still a bit green — almost ripe, just a little give in the flesh. And, as with much of her harvest, the tree is yielding more than she and her husband will need this year.
In about a week, it’ll be time to call in the gleaners.
The gleaners work with the nonprofit Blue Mountain Action Council, or BMAC, which serves low-income clients in Walla Walla, Columbia, Franklin, Garfield and Asotin counties. Among other services, BMAC helps them find housing, pay for utilities and secure food.
But last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture stopped or scaled back programs that helped organizations like BMAC stock their food pantries. The nonprofit lost more than half its food shipments — from 76,772 pounds in April 2025 to 34,354 in April 2026, a 55% drop, according to BMAC figures.
At the same time, food pantry visits rose. The number of households relying on BMAC’s partner pantries increased by more than 1,300 households — almost 7%.
BMAC needed to pivot if it hoped to keep providing food at the same scale, according to Erik Mora, the nonprofit’s food bank director.
The nonprofit hosted a town hall at its food bank warehouse. Scores of people showed up to discuss how to “fundraise and food-raise,” Mora said. One idea that emerged: focus on gleaning — something the nonprofit had long done but not as a concerted effort.
BMAC hired a gleaning coordinator. It got more growers involved and recruited more gleaning volunteers.
Hurlburt said, “I don’t have an easy or an obvious way to get this food to people who need it in the community. I mean, I could stand on the street corner with a box of tomatoes and be like, ‘Tomatoes!,’ you know? That’s not going to work.
“But BMAC can do that for me.”
Gleaners gather surplus fruits and vegetables at personal gardens, like Hurlburt’s, and at commercial farms. They take the produce to BMAC’s food bank, where it is sorted, weighed and packaged. From there, the produce is sent to 13 food pantries in BMAC’s food pantry network.
Last year, gleaners brought in about 15,000 pounds of food, putting a sizable dent in BMAC’s loss of more than 40,000 pounds. That’s about 15 big pickup loads of food that otherwise might’ve rotted away.
BMAC also launched a “Grow a Row” campaign. For aspiring growers who might have trouble getting started, BMAC provided seeds. Next year, the campaign is expected to become an actual harvest.
As a response to food insecurity, gleaning does have limitations. It depends on gleaners’ schedules. It’s tied to harvest season and the growers’ ability to donate; farms also have their own costs to think about.
Amy Dietrich, who co-owns Frog Hollow Farm in Walla Walla with her husband, Jeff, donates food to BMAC and sells other produce to the nonprofit at a discount. The more she would donate, the less BMAC would buy.
“People think, ‘Oh small farms … they have the tomatoes; they should be able to donate everything.’ It doesn’t work that way,” she said.
For gleaning to work well, the organization must nurture its relationship with growers, she said. It must maintain a consistent base of volunteers. And it must do aggressive outreach: The more people that know gleaning is an option, the more gleaning happens.
“There’s so much in this world to distract us from what really matters and what really gives us lasting joy,” Dietrich said, “and I feel that growing things, harvesting, sharing and eating the food together … levels the playing field for humanity.”
