Bouncing down conveyor belts like thousands of sorbet-colored tennis balls, the peaches at Pearson Farm are just beginning a special journey. Although they come from trees in a Fort Valley orchard and are sold to stores as far west as Texas and as far north as Canada, some of them will be whisked away to metro Atlanta by volunteers on a tasty mission.
From mid-May to early August, Pearson Farm harvests about 200,000 pounds of peaches a day. But up to 10 percent of the peaches don’t meet the strict standards for grocery store sales, mostly due to minor blemishes. Some of those aren’t usable at all, but most are perfectly edible. A local winery that used to take some has since shut down. So now several truckloads a day of less-than-perfect peaches get dumped in a field to naturally compost, and feed some lucky birds.
But about seven years ago, Janet Lester, a member of Fayette County’s Plant a Row for the Hungry program, met Pearson while visiting his farm. PAR is an offshoot of the Fayette Master Gardeners, whose members volunteer to distribute fresh produce to charitable organizations such as children’s homes, churches and food banks. Lester told Pearson about the program, and a plan soon grew.
“We had plenty of good peaches we couldn’t sell,” Pearson says, and not having a market for them frustrated him. Peaches are highly perishable, and they have to get where they’re going within about 48 hours after picking. Large food banks can’t accept huge numbers of them because they spoil quickly.
So Pearson worked with volunteers from PAR and Fayetteville’s New Hope Baptist Church and arranged for them to come to the farm every Tuesday and load 144 25-pound boxes of Grade 3 peaches onto several trucks and vans back to Fayette.
From there, the peaches are taken to small food banks and other outreach organizations in Fayette, Clayton, Spalding and Fulton counties, including five churches that provide free lunches to needy children.
On the day I visited the farm, 86-year-old master gardener Lester Bray was among the volunteers there for peach pickup duty. He and Pearson took turns praising each other’s generosity, but both focus on the practical.
“You’ve got to have distribution,” Bray says, “and it ain’t rocket science.”
Maybe not, but the recipients are quite appreciative.
“Our clients are absolutely amazed that they can get fresh peaches from us,” says Lena Slaughter of Fayette Samaritans.
The Real Life Center receives about 35 boxes of the peaches for its food pantry each week. Cathy Berggren, its executive director, says fresh and healthy food is greatly needed. “Food is more than just food,” she says, “it’s a gift of hope.”
Pearson says he could give away hundreds of peaches every day if he had more groups able to do what PAR does. “I would love for it be expanded,” he says.
The concept of farm-to-table isn’t new, but when the fruits of the farm come to tables where plates aren’t always full, the taste is all the sweeter.
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