It is a little bit of work with a lot of impact and they call it the Pierce County Gleaning Project.

The project combines the Emergency Food Network and St. Leo’s Food Connection. The goal is to fight hunger by recruiting volunteers to harvest local produce that would otherwise go to waste and donate it to local food banks and hot-meal sites.

The effort was borne of St. Leo’s and EFN wanting to get more fresh produce into food banks – and seeing too much being wasted on all levels, from grocery stores to residential neighborhoods.

“They felt there were a lot of bridges that could be built between food banks and grocery stores, farmers, home gardeners and people who own fruit trees,” said Charlie Vogelheim, the coordinator for Tacoma-based St. Leo’s.

Ellen Mickle, an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer who works at EFN in Lakewood, is one of the bridge builders. Her job is part of a statewide gleaning effort through Rotary First Harvest, a Seattle nonprofit.

“They work on a large volume, like EFN, and a couple of years ago, (decided to) try to capture the smaller levels of waste around the state,” she said. “So they started gleaning projects.”

In Pierce County, the project kicked off last year on a small scale, but volunteers were still able to glean 1,000 pounds of fruit from about 30 homeowners, as well as 7,500 pounds of produce from farmers markets – they call it produce rescue – between May and October.

“It was pretty good for our first year,” Vogelheim said.

Now, they are hoping to expand even further.

“There’s so much fruit potential here in the county – there’s so much good fruit being grown that falls on the ground,” he said.

Because EFN and St. Leo’s receive produce from Rotary First Harvest and other groups – and EFN grows its own at Mother Earth Farms – they do distribute fresh fruit and vegetables, but it is usually what Vogelheim called mass-scale: potatoes, apples and onions. It is a lot harder to transport broccoli or greens, he said.

That is where the people of Pierce County come in.

The project’s Community Fruit Tree Harvest calls on homeowners to register their fruit trees on their website, and once they are ready to harvest, give them a call. A group of volunteers will come pick the fruit and donate it to local food banks.

For those wanting to pick their own fruit, they are encouraged to take it directly to their neighborhood food bank.

“We want to make it a community building event as much as possible, and if they’re bringing it (to EFN headquarters), it’s a little bit distant,” Vogelheim said. “We want them to connect with the food banks themselves.”

Organizers hope people will register their trees in advance, rather than have 50 people call in a week saying that their apples are ready to be picked.

The project is concentrating its efforts in Tacoma and University Place this year, but already has added trees in Lakewood and plans to expand its outreach there. Crews may not be able to get to every tree, but it is still worth calling.

“People are realizing that their neighbors are hungry and trying to do something about it,” Vogelheim said.

The general rule is that if you wouldn’t eat it, don’t try to donate it. Fruit that is rotting or full of pests will not be accepted.

“A lot of people look at the food bank like Goodwill,” Vogelheim said. “It’s like oh, it’s just my leftovers, but you know, people aren’t going to take it if it doesn’t look good.”

On the other side of the spectrum, the project needs volunteers to go pick the fruit. Those interested can also sign up online.

“It’s nice for the homeowner because they don’t have to deal with fruit rotting on the ground,” Vogelheim said.

Gleaning, which is mentioned as far back as the Old Testament of the Bible, is the collection of produce leftover in fields after the main harvest for the poor.

“We are hoping to get more traditional gleaning, as we call it, going,” Vogelheim said, adding that they hope to establish relationships with a couple of farms in the Puyallup Valley. “We are starting outreach to farmers who are on the actual farms.”

Project organizers handed out plant starts and more than 500 seed packets – each containing enough to plant an extra row of vegetables – at Pierce County Libraries earlier this spring.

“It will be exciting when we start hearing about those kinds of acts,” Mickle said of when the crops start coming in. “We want to know what kind of impact it may have made.”

However much definitely means a lot, both said.

“We hear a lot of people appreciate it – getting fresh vegetables,” Vogelheim said.

Mickle said that a bounty of Brussels sprouts and purple kale garnered excitement at the Salvation Army food bank this winter.

“The next time we talked to the director, on a different topic, she brought up how excited the clients were to come in that week and break them off and were wanting to know how to cook them,” she said.

Some food banks have had success offering samples – “this is what kale tastes like when you sauté it with garlic” – and others plan to follow suit with cooking demonstrations and recipes. They also want to offer classes on fruit preservation.

Last year, Vogelheim said, they gleaned from some trees with apple maggots, and while the fruit had holes, it was great for making applesauce – and the clients were excited.

“People were taking them,” he said.

Mickle said that it is important to communicate to the food banks what kind of fruit a person plans to donate because each location has a different clientele. A food bank that primarily caters to the homeless, for example, is unlikely to have many people interested in making homemade applesauce.

With fruit ripening every day, both said that they are excited to see what happens this year.

“It’s a very community based project, and pretty much anybody can help in some way,” Mickle said. “Harvesting, registering a fruit tree – we’re just trying to make sure that we’re true to our community.”

Vogelheim nodded in agreement.

“If you look at where it was a year ago, and where it is now, it’s gone really far,” he said. “I’m really proud of it.”