When Morgan Duncan first heard about Willing Hands, she was immediately drawn to the idea of gleaning produce from local farms to feed food-insecure community members. But she was nervous to get involved.
With some gentle encouragement from her manager at King Arthur Baking Company, she took the leap and attended her first volunteer session. The rest, as they say, is history.Â
“I just kept going,” Morgan says. Since then, she’s become a regular at the Tuesday morning Crossroad Farm glean and the reliable Saturday bread pickup volunteer. “I get to be a part-time farmer on Tuesday morning before I go to work. I always have a better day at work after I’ve been volunteering,” she says.
Food has always been an important part of Morgan’s life. While attending culinary school in upstate New York, she realized that despite the abundance of farms in the Hudson Valley, there were a lot of people living in food deserts who didn’t get to enjoy that local produce. When she moved to the Upper Valley, she saw the opportunity to connect the dots with Willing Hands.
One of Morgan’s favorite things about gleaning is the quiet, peaceful work in the fields. “It’s not a big, crowded event,” she says, which suits her unassuming personality. She loves meeting other people who care about food, and learning agricultural techniques that she can use in her home garden.
Thank you Morgan for all you do for Willing Hands!
