The Mission Outreach Ministry Team of Desert Garden United Church of Christ announces the completion of a second year of citrus gleaning.

The group’s first year (2020) was interrupted by bad weather and COVID-19. Even then, they were able to complete five weeks of gleaning, resulting in 32 trees gleaned and 6,525 pounds of citrus picked. This year, beginning the last Thursday of January and continuing for eight weeks, Desert Garden’s Gleaning Ministry Team was able to pick and provide much more citrus for St. Mary’s Food Bank.

During this period, 21 volunteers helped with the gleaning, putting in 200 hours of time. Eighty-six trees were gleaned, providing 17,720 pounds of citrus for the food bank, which then distributed the fruit to families in need. St. Mary’s provided all the equipment for this effort.

In addition to the weekly Thursday morning gleaning, each Saturday in February, St. Mary’s used the church parking lot, 18818 N. 128th Ave., as a drop-off site, allowing people to bring their citrus to them. St. Mary’s provided the truck with staff and volunteers to receive the citrus.

“St. Mary’s Food Bank was able to collect about 25,200 pounds of assorted citrus during the month of February from our Desert Garden church location,” stated Timothy Olorunfemi, program manager for gleaning and food sourcing at St. Mary’s. “This amounts to about 21,000 meals. These were added to the regular meals provided to the residents of Arizona. This helps the homeowners find homes for their citrus that would have gone to the landfill. We are very grateful to Desert Garden UCC for partnering with us to make this happen. We hope to continue this project next year.”

Volunteers who helped glean over the eight weeks include: Lynn Bowers, Jerry Cowdrey, John Gnagy, Sue Gnagy, Sandy Hauth, John Houlette, James Iliff, Bill Johnston, Sally Koffman, Gail Mattson, Doug Nordahl, Patty Nordahl, Penny Rasala, John Riddle, Judy Riddle, Mary Sersland, Deanna Shafer, Patsy Taylor, Karen Turgeon and Les Turgeon.