Mid-November usually means the end of the harvest season in New Hampshire. Strawberries and peaches are a distant summer memory. Pumpkins’ Halloween moment has come and gone.
But at Brookdale Farm in Hollis on one late fall day, people were still busy at work. On a bright and sunny morning, with mist blanketing the fields, a gaggle of volunteers stood among a ring of open trunks. They stuffed hatchbacks and SUVs full of boxes teeming with fresh produce, a rainbow of apple and squash varieties.
They were all with the Hillsborough County Gleaners, an organization that connects excess produce with people in the region who may otherwise struggle to get locally grown food. It is part of the larger state-wide network NH Gleans, which promotes similar efforts across the state.
“[Gleaning] is biblical,” said Kathy Parker, one of the group’s assistant coordinators. “Gleaning is the act of going to a farmer's field and gathering the excess that's left behind that's still edible.”
The group works with 11 farms across Hillsborough County and provides food to more than 100 recipient organizations, including food pantries, soup kitchens and schools. They estimated that they serve about over 6,000 families each week.
This mid-November day was a routine one for the group. The farmers at Brookdale had already put aside bushels of produce, ready for the gleaners to divvy up and deliver. Sometimes, the gleaners pick the fruit out in the fields themselves, but normally farmers gather up their produce prior to the group’s arrival.
Brookdale Farm, one of the largest farms in the state, sells its produce directly from its farm stand and at supermarkets around the region. Sometimes, they may have too much produce or it may not meet the retailer’s cosmetic standards.
“Being able to give it to somebody who is in need of food is really a nice feeling,” said Madison Hardy, who is an owner of the farm. Typically, she said, excess produce would end up in the compost bin or trash. This year alone, the farm donated 160,000 pounds of food to the group.
The gleaners group say their work has grown dramatically since it started in 2013. There’s one full-time employee and two part-time employees, with the rest of the work carried out by volunteers.
“We also doubled or tripled our volunteer base this year through outreach and word of mouth and roping friends in to help,” said Celeste Barr, another assistant coordinator.
Once the food is sorted, another group of volunteers sets out to get it to the people who need it. Cap Siddle has been volunteering with the group for years, after a chance encounter when she solidified her participation.
“I set [down] a box of produce in a low-income senior citizen housing, and I went back out to get another box. And there was this tiny little lady with a green pepper in her hand,” she said. “And I said, ‘Boy, that's a beauty you got there.’ And she said, ‘It's lovely, isn't it? It's been years since I could afford a green pepper.’ ”
After that Siddle had one thought: “‘I'm in, I'm in,’” she said.
On this day in November, Siddle was taking food to three stops in Nashua. Her car was packed with produce in repurposed vodka boxes, which she gets from the liquor store for free. She says they’re easier for her to carry than the larger boxes the group uses.
The first stop was another low-income senior living house. As Siddle brought in the boxes of produce, a resident named Mike Frank helped keep the door propped open.
“We love your produce,” he told Siddle. “These things disappear each week,” he said, gesturing towards the boxes.
Next, Siddle drove a few blocks to Corpus Christi Food Pantry, which serves up to 150 families a week. There she ran into Steve and Rosemary Peukonis, who help run the pantry. They helped grab boxes from Siddle to carry in.
“Fresh produce is the number one thing people ask for when they come in, whether it's fruits or vegetables,” Steve said. “And to have this available, people come in and just rave about having the ability to cook [something] better than just processed foods.”
The couple said they saw a sharp uptick in demand when SNAP benefits were paused during the government shutdown in November.
“We were just overwhelmed with calls. We couldn't even take them all,” Rosemary said.
“And we still are,” Steve said.
More than 76,000 people in New Hampshire rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as food stamps, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Gleaners and other advocates across the state said hunger reached a fever pitch when benefits were paused during the first week in November.
“We suddenly started getting all the food pantries calling us,” Barr said, back at Brookdale farm earlier that morning.
New Hampshire distributed those benefits in full in early November, about a week late. But even prior to the pause, demand has been growing sharply in the state. While still below the national average, New Hampshire saw its highest food insecurity rate since 2015-2017 in the period between 2022-2024, according to data from the most recent US Department of Agriculture Household Food Security Report. The report, which aggregates data over three year periods, found 9.1% of households in the state – or about 52,600 families – struggled to put enough food on the table. Experts have attributed these rising figures to the rollback on pandemic-era aid and the stubbornly high cost of living.
“Fresh produce has become so much more expensive that it's just really a blessing for these people,” Rosemary from Corpus Christi said.
Despite these concerns, the federal government has slashed food aid recently. In September, the USDA under President Trump ended the annual food security report, which Laura Milliken, who leads New Hampshire Hunger Solutions, described as “is the gold standard of health reporting.” She said the data it collects is crucial for fighting hunger.
Plus, the federal reconciliation bill passed last summer, Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, made the largest cuts to SNAP in its history by narrowing access to the program and changing how benefits are calculated. Individual states will have to take on more of the cost for the program, starting this October. In New Hampshire, there is currently a bill that would have the state fund 75% of the program’s administrative costs, as is now required under federal law. This used to be split equally between the state and federal governments.
The Hillsborough County Gleaners said their work made them more acutely aware of their own community’s reality.
“You see the incredible need that's out there that I don't think any of us ever realized,” Celeste Barr said.
But Barr underscored that food insecurity is just one of the food problems that gleaning helps combat. Proponents say it also offers an attractive solution to food waste.
In 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated annual food waste amounts to 170 million metric tons of C02. That's about equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants. It said that food waste is the single most common waste material in municipal landfills, making up 24% of all solid waste.
It’s an issue on the mind of regulators in New Hampshire. The Department of Environmental Services has underscored the importance of keeping food out of landfills.
“[Gleaning] is a step in the ladder of preventing food waste,” Barr said.
Laurie Beyranevand, who leads the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, said many gleaning organizations across the country need stronger and more formalized support. She said in order to bolster the practice, groups need access to things like vehicles, cold storage and food safety certifications, all of which cost time and money.
“So I would say to see things scale up, you would just need a significant and tremendous amount of investment,” she said. “Either from philanthropists, which is challenging but not impossible, or the state to recognize that there's significant benefits provided by gleaning.”
Working throughout the year means working with the local seasons, not against them. Now, Barr said she and her fellow volunteers have learned the ebbs and flow of local growing seasons and how to think creatively, no matter what a farmer hands them.
“When we get some funky shaped squashes and like warty pumpkins and we're thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, nobody's gonna cook these,’ we take them home, we cook them, we make some pumpkin soup out of them, and we go, ‘Oh my God, these are delicious,’ ” she said. She said she is working with other volunteers to pass along some simple recipes for the more unconventional produce they distribute.
She said it’s made her more connected to the people and land of her little corner of the world.
“The program is great because when you volunteer with it or work with it, you get to see what's going on seasonally in your local area. I mean, I had no concept of what were the lead crops in Hillsborough County before,” Barr said, laughing. “[Now] we know firsthand what are the main crops.”
