Gleaners Harvest From Leftovers : Volunteers: Workers reap from picked-over fields. Their bounty is used for Food Share, an emergency food bank.

David Lee would have been drenched in a sea of broccoli leaves if not for the hip-length waders he had purchased 35 years ago for his son to study the La Jolla tide pools.

In the mud-spattered fields of a Camarillo farm, Lee lifted two buckets filled with the green treasure he had hunted for all morning.

“This is what we call a good pick,” Lee said, triumphantly holding the large buckets full of broccoli stalks.

Lee and 19 others were working through damp rows of the bluish-colored vegetable like Easter egg hunters searching for a prize. Although the field had already been picked once, there were plenty of leftovers for the gleaners.

As Carl Santangelo, 73, worked in the fields, breath collected on his handlebar mustache, his red sweater catching dew left from the previous evening’s showers.

“I was amazed to see so much food going to waste when there’s a lot of people who don’t have anything,” Santangelo said. “It makes me feel good to be out here. It also gives me a good start for the day.”

Twelve years after the first group of gleaners began recovering food from the fields for the hungry, about 4 million pounds of fresh fruit and vegetables are recovered each year from local fields by gleaners with Food Share, an emergency food-relief organization based in Oxnard.

On this recent morning, the gray-haired seniors had given up warm beds to brave the cold and wet. Although the field had left their clothes dampened, their spirits were not. Many, like Lee, have been taking to the fields for years, all in the name of volunteerism.

Lee, 73, has been at this for more than a decade, working fields in Ventura County to rescue from rot lettuce, beets and corn in the summer, and broccoli and cauliflower in the winter after growers have finished picking.

Gleaners supply the group’s food banks with two-thirds of its supplies, Food Share Executive Director Jewel Pedi said. The anti-hunger group, she added, is one of the leaders in the state in providing emergency food to the needy and the homeless, reaching 160 agencies throughout the county.

Volunteers are the driving force of the gleaners, harvest gypsies who move from field to field picking crops five days a week.

Most say they are motivated by a need to help the hungry, spurred by the Depression-era value that waste is wrong.

But Jeanne Etchechoury wouldn’t have made it to the fields unless it was fun as well. Two months ago she decided to volunteer at Food Share.

Shielded from the damp by a pair of hip-length fishing waders, the 61-year-old retired computer programmer preferred to stand in the cold, thigh-deep in a field of broccoli than in an warm office.

“I decided I had done it for 30 years, and I’d rather be out here,” she said. “We have a ball.”

The volunteers have become a dedicated group, finding friends and getting early morning exercise.

It is a perfect example of what President George Bush would call one of his “thousand points of light,” but its basis is more biblical than presidential, said co-founder Virgil Nelson.

Nelson said the notion is a carry-over from biblical times, when farmers were urged to leave part of their crops for strangers and wayfarers.

Nelson’s family came to Ventura County from Iowa, where farming was common. Nelson, 47, gleaned since childhood in the country, and his family developed informal networks among growers that he later used in setting up Food Share.

“Some of us had been doing it as individual families and knew what the problems were with the farmers,” Nelson said. “We were saying, ‘We know all this food is going to waste, and we want to save it.’ ”

Gleaners pick almost anything that can be eaten, from the standard carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and oranges, to the more exotic cherimoya and kiwi fruit.

After a dozen years of harvests, the ranks of gleaners have grown from a small band of 15 to a corps of 248. The program has outgrown the two-car garage it was first housed in to the 12,000-square-foot warehouse it has today.

It is also seen as a model in food bank management by other anti-hunger organizations. Groups come to help out and learn from the gleaning program. Food Bank of Santa Barbara recently sent a team of volunteers to Oxnard to learn from Food Share’s efforts, Pedi said.

There are also volunteer gleaners from out of state, students who take to the fields for a few days in order to learn, Pedi said. One group comes from as far away as Salt Lake City each summer to participate in the harvest.

But the harvest gypsies of summer are different from the dedicated volunteers who pick year-round in Ventura County fields, lugging muddy pails on wintry mornings to a truck that brings them to the group’s warehouse on South Bank Road in Oxnard.

Produce is stored in the group’s warehouse, then distributed along with other packaged goods to nearly 26,000 needy families and seniors around the county.

In Food Share’s warehouse, volunteers also keep busy with an inventory of donated dry goods destined for Ventura County and other food banks in California.

But the mainstay of the food comes directly from the fields. Food Share depends on gleaners to supply most of the nearly 6 million pounds of food distributed to the hungry.

To keep the supply coming, Food Share volunteers say they sometimes must delicately urge farmers to keep track of what crops are marketable and which can be given away.

Growers leave crops in the field for a number of reasons, said Al Hall, who negotiates with growers on when gleaning can be done. Some products are still edible, but are rejected because of cosmetic flaws. Carrots with yellowing tops, small stocks of broccoli or imperfect oranges are often left to rot by growers who don’t want to spend money picking them, Hall said.

“The grower doesn’t want his produce in the market with yellow tops,” Hall said. “Sometimes it doesn’t look marketable.”

Farmers can claim a tax write-off based on the pounds of produce rescued from their fields.

A former car salesman, Hall says he tries to sell farmers on the social and financial benefits of gleaning. Although most are open to the idea, he said, four have rejected Food Share’s request during the past year and a half.

“You don’t get too pushy, you just show them the benefits and why it’s needed,” Hall said.

Growers only began trusting the gleaners after the group developed a good track record of feeding the hungry, and other growers assured them that gleaners respected their rules about picking, Nelson said.

Twenty-six Ventura County growers allow gleaners to pick regularly from their fields, but the group will also pick from a lone fruit tree or a small vegetable garden.

The gleaners get a windfall for being volunteers as well. They are allowed to bring home a fourth of what they pick, although most actually take home a much smaller amount.

Stephen Zbin, 73, said he had never seen crops growing until he volunteered to go into the fields with the gleaners. At first, he said, he sometimes ate the harvest in the field.

“Even when you take it home and put it in the refrigerator, it lasts two weeks,” Zbin said. “When you can get broccoli and cauliflower and pick it yourself, there’s no comparison.”