On a hot day in early July, Anna Purtell and a team of four volunteers took to the fields at Diggers’ Mirth Collective Farm in Burlington’s Intervale. The gleaners found flourishing rows of greens — so many, in fact, that the farm couldn’t harvest and sell them all. Purtell and her crew spent two hours cutting surplus mustard greens and arugula to donate to food shelves around Chittenden County.
Purtell is the gleaning and food access coordinator at Feeding Champlain Valley, a local anti-hunger organization that has long supported food-insecure households in northwestern Vermont. After a change of leadership in April, her employer took over gleaning in Chittenden County from the Vermont Foodbank. Feeding Champlain Valley now provides fresh produce to organizations such as Spectrum Youth & Family Services, Rally Cat’s Cupboard on the University of Vermont campus, and the Janet S. Munt Family Room in Burlington’s Old North End.
The Intervale Center helps Feeding Champlain Valley organize the gleaning volunteers while funneling gleaned produce into its own free CSA program, Fair Share. Though the two organizations distribute to different food outlets, their gleaning teams share their harvests, depending on which location has the greatest need.
At Feeding Champlain Valley’s food shelf in Burlington’s Old North End, supervisor Morgan Heyl said the gleaned vegetables are particularly appreciated this year. Many new people are coming for help because the current federal administration has tightened eligibility standards for government food assistance, she said. The food shelf now helps about 500 people each week, distributing 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of food every day.
Thanks in part to gleaning during local farms’ peak season, Heyl said, there has been no shortage of produce. Her participants appreciate the farm-to-table aspect of gleaned food and are excited to learn that some of the produce comes from just down the street at the Intervale, she added.
This week, as a 76-year-old client picked up local cucumbers at the food shelf, she said she depends on the organization and appreciates the fresh produce for her home companion, a tortoise, as well as for herself.
Heyl sometimes gets a taste of the food shelf’s vegetables when recipients share homemade dishes from their cultures. Recently, she’s received meals from Iranian and Nigerian clients.
“In America, cooking for people isn’t that big of a thing, but in so many other universal cultures, that’s a sign of love and appreciation,” she said. “It always really warms my heart and fills my belly.”
Not only is food a basic human right, but it’s “sustenance, it’s love,” Heyl said. “It’s the way to show up for each other.”
Gleaning works because of the people — nearly 100 between the two gleaning programs — who regularly show up and put in the physical labor to harvest vegetables, Purtell said.
“Volunteers are so incredibly vital to what we do,” she said. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Gleaners’ Gift | Now under the auspices of Feeding Champlain Valley, volunteers continue to supply local food shelves”
This article appears in July 29 • 2026.
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