Sean C. Morgan
Sweet Home’s two Gleaners groups are staying busy helping supply food to low-income families through the COVID-19 outbreak.
“We’re here for the community, and we’re staying here for the community, no matter what,” said Tracy Rowe, coordinator for Fair Share Gleaners.
Fair Share is setting up in the doorway to deliver food to members, Rowe said. “We bag everything up. We fill the bags and put them outside.”
Board members are the only ones working, Rowe said, and while working, they’re maintaining social distancing requirements.
“Thus far, it’s worked pretty darn good,” Rowe said. Her group is distributing twice a week.
At Sweet Home Gleaners, Coordinator Lisa Pye said the organization is “having to do distribution. But we’re doing it, basically, through our front doors. We’re using our entryway as a barrier.”
Members wait in cars until their appointment, Pye said. The Gleaners have a table inside the entrance to the building and two couples are handling all of the distribution. They put the box of food on the table and then step back through the inside doors, essentially making the entryway an airlock.
Members pick up the box, and then the volunteers sanitize the table prior to the next distribution, Pye said.
Sweet Home Gleaners is doing distribution between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Gleaning groups are membership organizations that exchange food for work. Families work in the gleaners facilities or glean farms throughout the course of the year, working at least eight hours per month.
For Fair Share Gleaners, the board is handling the work, Rowe said. Members do not need to work at this point.
“We’re been here just about every single day,” she said.
The gleaning groups sustain their programs by gleaning fields and accepting donations from individuals, grocery stores and the Linn-Benton Food Share food bank. Members typically volunteer time to collect and sort food for distribution or perform other services.
Pye said she is asking members to do projects, such as researching grants, that they can do at home.
“We’re just going to have them make up the hours,” Pye said. “I have some I can call and say, hey, can you make these calls.”
The Sweet Home Gleaners have a total of 20 gleaning families. The remaining members are what are called “adoptees,” people who cannot work but need food.
“If anybody wants to become a member, they’ll just have to download our application online or call,” Pye said. The staff will fill out the application to avoid using paper and potentially transmitting COVID-19.
Pye and Rowe said that donations from grocery stores are low or non-existent.
WinCo is continuing to donate to Sweet Home Gleaners right now, but the donation has been lighter than usual, Pye said. Costco has yet to discontinue donations, but it’s on a two-week cycle.
“We won’t know what we’ll get from Costco till this Wednesday,” Pye said.
Pye said they also are not taking donations from people’s homes right now.
“Right now, we’re very low on food,” Pye said. “We pretty much have given out most of the food in our pantry.”
Sweet Home Gleaners does have a lot of seeds for gardens, Pye said, and it has a good stock of rice, beans, lentils, oatmeal and yellow split peas.
Both organizations are primarily relying on Linn-Benton Food Share at this point. Rowe said Fair Share is still supplying local church food programs with some items.
Businesses are struggling to pay their bills right now, Rowe said, and that includes the Gleaners.
With its thrift shop shut down, Pye said, the Sweet Home Gleaners are looking to eBay to sell items to help pay bills. Those can be found at shgleaners2013 on eBay.
Fair Share has stopped grilling burgers, which is one of its fund-raising tools, due to the coronavirus.
For more information, call Fair Share Gleaners at (541) 570-2460 and leave a message or text. Call Sweet Home Gleaners at (541) 367-3190.