Gleaning the Story Behind the Veggie Rescue Cover

About a month ago I enjoyed the surprise of having my photo on the cover of the Montecito Journal (May 14-21, 2026). The feature article highlighted an important, but perhaps little-known nonprofit in our community called Veggie Rescue. I had no business being the face of the article.

In case you didn’t read the article, Veggie Rescue’s mission is to rescue good food (surplus produce, dairy, meats, canned and packaged foods) and redirect it toward hope, health, and community. Veggie Rescue picks up overstock food from local farms, stores and restaurants that would be headed for the landfill. Then, within 24 hours of being collected, the food is transported in refrigerated trucks to local nonprofits that use these ingredients to make meals for food insecure community members. The Rescue Mission, Unity Shoppe, Organic Soup Kitchen and Mental Wellness Center are but a few of the places that receive the bounty. 

What the article didn’t mention is that Veggie Rescue recently resurrected their gleaning (collecting unharvested food) program which employs volunteers to harvest any extra fruits and vegetables people in our community may have. 

All I did was send an email to some family, friends and neighbors to see if they had any extra produce; I then coordinated with Veggie Rescue’s staff to glean it! Of course, some of the people I contacted didn’t have anything to offer, others picked and bagged the fruit themselves to be picked up, while still others opened their backyards to the gleaning team. In barely two hours we had gathered 456 pounds of fruit that was subsequently turned into food for people in our community.

If you have extra fruits and vegetables available to harvest, or want to coordinate with your friends and neighbors willing to share their backyard abundance, I encourage you to reach out to Veggie Rescue and share your good fortune. Then take a selfie with the group and you, too, may end up on the cover of the Montecito Journal!

Email Eryn at [email protected] to find out more, arrange a food pick up or become a harvest volunteer.  

Laura Wyatt