- Welcome to the Superbook Show.

Today, as part of our Earth Care series,

we're talking about gleaning.

- Cleaning?

As in cleaning my bedroom?

I don't know if I wanna--

- No, no, gleaning with a G.

- Oh, gleaning, of course.

What's gleaning?

(whooshing)

- Gleaning is gatheringleftovers after a harvest.

- So, after farmers gather their crops.

- Right.

There's always something missed

or left behind in thefields like corn or beans.

- Or grapes or apples.

- Exactly, and the Biblemakes good use of gleaning.

Here read this command thatGod gave the Israelites.

- When you are harvesting your crops

and forget to bring in a bundleof grain from your field,

don't go back to get it.

Leave it for the foreigners,orphans, and widows.

- And God goes on totell them to leave some

olives on the trees andsome grapes on the vines.

- So, he was making sureeveryone was taken care of.

- Right, and also making sure that

none of God's provisionsfrom the land was wasted.

- Creation care for theland and for the people.

Hey, wasn't there gleaning

in the Superbook episode about Ruth.

- Sure was.

Let's take a look.

- The Lord be with you.

May the Lord bless you.

- It seems that Israel's faminehas finally ended, Naton.

- Not everyone has recovered Boaz.

Many people have come toglean from us this year.

- God has blessed us withmore barley than we need.

Should we not share thatblessing with our neighbors?

- Yes, and the wheat is nearly ripe.

We'll be harvesting that soon as well.

Naton, who's that young woman over there?

- I think her name is Ruth.

- So that is Ruth.

- Sweet, but that waswhat, 3000 years ago.

People don't still do that now, do they?

- Actually, they do.

Gleaning is still done all over the world,

and we're going to do it right now.

Come on!

- This looks pretty good,

all the people out there and everything.

- We're in Exmore, Virginia

with the Society of St. Andrew at their

Harvest of Hope gleaning project.

- There are 80 middle schoolkids here this weekend.

- This is Bill Leach--- Hey, everybody.

- [Alitheia] The program director

of the Society of St. Andrew's.

- And this is Rachael, theHarvest of Hope director.

Rachael, what is the Harvest of Hope?

- Harvest of Hope is a non-denominational

education mission tripfor people of all ages.

What I do is I bringpeople out into the fields,

we glean produce,

and then I teach them aboutthe problem of hunger.

- Where does the food goafter it's been harvested?

- So the food's gonna go tosmaller feeding agencies,

so churches, pantries.

Sometimes it goes to a larger food bank.

- And Bill, I was wondering why

gleaning is important to creation care

especially today in America?

- Well, let's take a look.

There's 30 million people thatare hungry here in the U.S.,

and we throw away billionsof pounds of food.

Well, what can we do?

We can go to the fields after the farmers

have been able to go through,

those who are blessed enoughto let us come back in,

and we glean.

It's what the Bible taught us,

and we get to do that too.

And you don't have to be a grownup.

I mean, 80 middle schoolers are gonna get

1000 pounds of fresh corn for people.

Who can beat that?

And we get to be God's hands and feet.

It's awesome.

- One more question.

Can we help with today's gleaning?

- Absolutely!

So here, you take a pairof gloves and then a bag,

and what you do is justgo through the field.

If you see a piece ofcorn that looks good,

pick it up and put it in the bag.

- All right.

- All right, it'll be on tables tonight.

- All right.

- [Alitheia] We found out thatthe Society of St. Andrew's

gleaning network collected and distributed

more than 16 million poundsof fresh produce in 2018.

- And more than 30,600 volunteersof all ages helped them.

- So Julia, why do you thinkgleaning is so important?

- I think it's importantbecause by doing this

we're going one stepcloser to getting food

to everyone around the world.

- Was this fun, and whatwas your favorite part?

- Yeah, this was really fun

'cause we were knowingthat we were making change.

And my favorite partwas looking for the corn

and meeting new people.

- Thank you, Julia.

- Caleb, tell me why you're here.

- I am here because I feellike the world needs a change.

Everyone deserves to have food,

and this is just one stepcloser to making that change

and everyone getting food.

- Yeah, how long are you staying here?

- This entire weekend.

- What was the best part of today?

- I really liked being ableto like actually find the corn

because it was alwaysgreat when you could just

look down and say, hey look,there's a piece of corn,

and then pick it up, andit just felt really good.

- [Alex] Gleaning is so important

because one in three people don't know

where their next meal is coming from.

- [Alitheia] But gleaning in farms

isn't the only way you can glean.

Several people partnerwith grocery stores,

restaurants, and supermarketsto take the produce

and the food thatdoesn't look as beautiful

but is still good enough to eat,

and they give it to those in need.

- This is David Long,

the farmer of the fieldwe've been gleaning today.

- So, Mr. David, why do you allow people

to glean on your farm?

- The Lord has been so grateful to us

by giving us the sunshine, and the water,

and the air, and the thingsthat we need to raise this crop,

it's just nice to be able toshare back with other people.

This crop, if we didn't pickit up today would be lost.

It would go bad.

By y'all spending your timeand hard work out here,

you're actually feeding people

that will be able to get food

that wouldn't be ableto get it any other way.

- Right, and how muchexactly did we glean today?

- So today, you got closeto 2500 ears of corn.

That will be a meal for 2500 people.

- So David, how long have you been

letting people glean on your field?

- I would say for several decades.

The last 20 or 25 yearswe've been allowing people

to come here and workand learn how to pick up

and glean in our fields tohelp others that are in need.

- That's awesome.

Thank you, David.

- Certainly welcome.

Glad y'all were here today.

- So, Alex, what do youthink about gleaning

now that you've done it?

- Well, the first reaction I had

just looking at the corn is, wow,

so much food that wouldof otherwise been wasted

if we didn't come out hereand glean from these fields.

I've been involved insome gleaning before,

but that was the distributing part,

distributing the food that was gleaned

to the apartments that areless fortunate than us,

and it's just great to seewhere that food comes from.

- I just, every time Ipicked up an ear of corn,

I thought, wow, we'redoing the exact same thing

that Ruth was doing in the Bible.

I mean, she may nothave been gleaning corn,

but it's still really powerfulto see how years later

we're still following after the footsteps

of such an importantfemale figure in the Bible.

- I've also leaned that there's

more than one way to do creation care.

- If you'd like to learnmore about gleaning,

the Society of St. Andrew'swebsite is listed below.

- Right, and we'd love to hear from you

about what you're doing tocare for God's creation.

- [All] His word is forever alive!

(whooshing)

- Okay, so Rachael,(laughing)

now that we're out here in the fields,

why don't you tell asecret in a corn field?

- Why Bill?

- There's too many ears.

- Oh gosh.(laughing)

Horrible Dad joke.

- [Bill] I know, well Dadjokes are what Dad's do.

(laughing)