Volunteers Put In Tons of Effort to Honor King

Though tomatoes from Michael Osumi’s 25-acre field in Tustin had been harvested, thousands of plants were still weighed down with edible produce.

Normally the tomatoes would rot, leftovers destined to be plowed under. But this year, thanks to the backbreaking labor of hundreds of volunteers, they will make it to the dinner tables of Orange County’s most needy.

In observance of Martin Luther King Day, about 600 volunteers, most of them teenagers, spread out Monday across the vast field at the former Tustin Marine base and stripped tomatoes from row after row of vines. The pickers could have found other ways to spend the holiday, but many said it was worthwhile to honor the great civil rights leader’s spirit of giving.

“If I had stayed home I wouldn’t be doing anything,” said Samon Mel, a 17-year-old junior at Santa Ana’s Century High School. “I think I’m better off for helping. We’re acting on what [King] said and actually doing something.”

The event, organized by the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County, yielded about five tons of tomatoes for needy families, food bank officials said. The produce will be distributed next week to some of the 300 or so agencies the food bank serves across the county, from church groups to senior citizen centers.

“Every pound helps four people,” said Sam Caruthers, the program coordinator. “Next week there’ll be plenty on people’s tables.”

The practice of picking crop remnants after an initial harvest and giving them to the poor is called gleaning. In recent years, officials said, gleaning has proved to be one of the most popular forms of volunteerism in the county. Gleanings are held weekly, and an increasing number of farmers such as Osumi allow pickers to take food that for various reasons never made it to market.

Monday’s event was the first time Osumi’s tomato patch had been gleaned in the 17 years he has leased the land from the U.S. Navy. He said a freeze late last year left much of his remaining crop damaged or slow to mature, so harvesting it for market would not have been economical.

“It would have been forgotten about,” he said.

Most of the pickers were students from local high schools. Carrying plastic sacks, they trudged through mud to bend over vines and pick the ripe tomatoes, then haul their harvest to sorting tables.

Many expressed surprise at how strenuous the work was--a valuable lesson, they said, for a generation raised on fast food and the ease of remote control.

“It hurts bending over, and the bags are heavy, especially when you have two or three,” 15-year-old Angie Baron said. “But it’s worth it.”

For African Americans, the gleaning took on special significance because of the holiday. Mission Viejo resident Michelle Beauchamp picked tomatoes with her two sons, Evan, 13, and Alex, 7. She said she thought it important for her sons to experience, albeit in a limited way, the experiences of their slave ancestors.

“It’s a good lesson. It takes us back to our roots,” she said. “Our ancestors picked cotton. It’s not going to hurt our fingers to pick tomatoes.”

Son Evan agreed. “It feels good doing it. We’re helping feed people who can’t afford to feed themselves.”