Here’s John Galbraith’s idea of a good time: He's standing on a mountainside in Southwest Virginia, soaking up the fall sunshine, picking apples in an orchard heavy with the smell of ripe fruit. 

Except Galbraith, professor of soil science in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, never eats the apples he picks. In fact, of all the salvageable fruits and vegetables that Galbraith and his wife, Marilyn, spend hours planting, tending, harvesting, and sorting, none ever grace their dinner table.

Galbraith is a co-founder of the Glean Team, a volunteer group that grows fresh produce to alleviate food insecurity in the New River Valley. Instead of eating the fruits of their labor, volunteers donate them to local food banks — about 150,000 pounds worth of produce every year. How about them apples?

“Just knowing that we helped make this a better place to live for those in need around us — that's enough of a reward,” said Galbraith.

John Galbraith, wearing a red rain jacket, bends over with a tool in a garden, cutting a squash from the vine. The field is surrounded by trees with autumn foliage, it is cold and raining,, and another volunteer works in the background. A scarecrow stands in the middle of the field.
With a freeze in the forecast, John Galbraith (at right) and other volunteers rush to harvest squash from the Glean Team's garden plot at Smithfield Plantation, one of several gardens the group maintains around Blacksburg. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.
A wide view of a the historic Smithfield Gardens, wet with cold rain and surrounded by tall trees with autumn leaves. Two white vehicles are parked nearby, and two volunteers are seen working in the field as another loads freshly harvested vegetables into the back of one the the vehicles.
Close-up of a volunteer grabbing and piling up freshly harvested squash and gourds, including butternut squash and green-striped varieties, lying on the ground among dried vines. The volunteer is wearing gardening gloves, the squash is wet with rain.
John Galbraith, wearing a red jacket and damp with the cold rain, carries a cardboard box filled with squash near a wooden garden sign reading 'Historic Smithfield Garden.' Another volunteer works in the background.
To increase yield, John Galbraith gets growing advice from his expert colleagues in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences. In return, he lets faculty from multiple departments, including Assistant Professors Huijie Gan and Ashley Jernigan, run research trials on Glean Team garden plots. They put different fertilizer treatments out, and we got the extra help growing and harvesting the vegetables, so everybody benefited from this. Photos by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.

In 2012, Galbraith and some fellow parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Blacksburg envisioned a world where people in need had access to more than the preservative-packed, shelf-stable boxes and cans that food banks stockpile. Something healthy and fresh and delicious. 

They formed the Glean Team to gather whatever crops were left over after harvest at area farms and orchards to prevent the last neglected sweet corn or apples or turnips or squash from going to waste. “It's almost like an Easter egg hunt,” said Galbraith. “When you go out to the field, you don’t know if there’s going to be a single ear of corn or two truckloads.”

Master Gardener David McEwen and John Galbraith stand at the back of a pickup truck filled with boxes of fresh produce. John smiles while holding a box, and trees and greenery surround the scene. They are both wearing raincoats damp with cold rain.
John Galbraith (at right) talks with David McEwen, Master Gardener at Smithfield Plantation, over a pickup truck full of produce and supplies. Historically, the garden plot at Smithfield Plantation that the Glean Team cares for belonged to enslaved individuals. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.

The Glean Team now relies on volunteers from many different groups — and they didn’t stop with gleaning. To diversify the variety of produce available to donate, volunteers planted over an acre’s worth of vegetable gardens scattered around Blacksburg, at Historic Smithfield, Northside Presbyterian Church, Hale Community Garden, and St. Mary’s. 

With grant funding and donations, the team even buys produce from local growers. A couple times a year, a semi truck rolls into town for a “potato drop”: 42,000 pounds of potatoes that volunteers sort, bag, and redistribute to roughly 40 food banks in Virginia and West Virginia.

A pile of colorful pumpkins and other winter squash sits on a driveway surrounded by fallen leaves, with a brick house and bushes in the background.
Marilyn Galbraith, holding a cardboard box and looking away from the camera, stands among stacks of boxes filled with fresh produce, including apples and vegetables in their driveway. Two white cars are parked in the background.
Much of the produce the Glean Team harvests, including a haul of squash and apples, are temporarily stored at John and Marilyn Galbraith's home in Blacksburg. A 49-cubic-foot refrigerator on the property keeps fruits and vegetables fresh till they're needed by local food pantries. Photos by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.
Several volunteers load freshly gleaned produce into the back of a white pickup truck parked in the driveway of John Galbraith's house. The driveway is surrounded by stacks of boxes filled with fruits and vegetables, and the house serves as a storage site for the donations.
At the Galbraiths' home, volunteers load a truck with produce that they'll deliver to food security programs in Giles County. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.

Winter squash checks all the boxes for the ideal Glean Team vegetable: easy to grow, easy to transport, extremely nutritious, and stores well — not to mention it’s perfectly Appalachian. Sweet peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, green beans, okra, and summer squash earn their spots in the garden too. 

Galbraith insists he’s not an expert gardener. But he is an expert on soil. He coached the Virginia Tech Soil Judging Team that earned first place in the 2024 National Soil Judging Contest in Ames, Iowa. Before planting a single seed, you can bet he ensured that soil conditions for the Glean Team’s garden plots were practically perfect.

No surprise, the veggies planted there have grown like, well, weeds. Volunteers ignore the weeds. They cover plots with black landscape fabric, water plants with drip irrigation, and keep out ravenous rabbits and groundhogs with electric fencing. They grow smarter, not harder.

Marilyn Galbraith and Izzy Largen in a food pantry pass a cardboard box filled with winter squash, smiling at each other. Shelves with supplies and kitchen equipment line the background.
Izzy Largen (at right), assistant director for food access initiatives with VT Engage, gratefully receives Glean Team-grown produce at the Market of Virginia Tech. Our goal is to help Hokies access healthy food, so any sort of fresh produce, especially local produce, is like gold to us, Largen said. A lot of students aren't familiar with the types of foods that are grown around here, or they haven't been able to buy it because it's cost prohibitive, so for them to be able to access local organic produce is exciting. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.
The oval sign for the Blacksburg Interfaith Food Pantry is visible on a beige metal building, framed by vibrant red autumn leaves in the foreground.
John Galbraith carries a box of gleaned produce into the Interfaith Food Pantry through an open door. Boxes of produce are stacked on a nearby table.
John Galbraith (at right) and other Glean Team volunteers make regular deliveries to the Blacksburg Interfaith Food Pantry. The first season of growing with the Glean Team, the tomatoes got so big they split. By the time the boxes got to the food bank, they were mostly tomato sauce. So they switched to smaller, firmer, disease-resistant varieties. We've learned by making mistakes, Galbraith said. Photos by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.

Whatever knowledge he’s gained along the way, he happily passes along. According to Izzy Largen, assistant director for food access initiatives with VT Engage, “John is so willing to educate people so that they can learn how to do the great work that he's doing, which in our world is called 'capacity building.' If you called him up and asked him, ‘Can you show me how you do your irrigation?’ he would set up a tour for you in a second. He is passionate about sharing information and sharing food."

John Galbraith weighs a bag of fresh produce on a scale at the Interfaith Food Pantry while his son observes nearby. Donation guidelines are posted on the wall in the background.
John and Marilyn Galbraith's son, Charles (at left), watches as his father weighs donated vegetables at the Blacksburg Interfaith Food Pantry. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.

Galbraith considers himself a vegetable middleman, rarely seeing the end result of his efforts. He’s not in a food bank patron’s apartment on a cold November night, when a hearty winter squash is cooked into a nourishing soup.

Yet he can imagine the potential cascade of benefits. Families eat better quality food, so they’re healthier. They make fewer trips to the doctor. They miss work less often. Kids perform better in school. With the money the family saves on groceries, they might pay their heating bill.

The idea of such benefits motivates the volunteers who show up for a potato drop or a gleaning. In a community pervaded by the spirit of Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Galbraith finds that “the whole area is just full of people that serve others. They do it because they should do it, and it makes a better place to live because they do.

Maybe, he said, that's a more apt version of Ut Prosim. "That I should serve."

A close up of John Galbraith's hands as he holds a bumpy orange pumpkin, checking it for soft spots. Other green and orange squashes in the background sit inside cardboard boxes in the back of a pickup truck.
John Galbraith, wearing a maroon shirt, and his son, in a black sweatshirt, sort small pumpkins and squashes into boxes at the Interfaith Food Pantry in Blacksburg, surrounded by shelves stocked with food supplies.
John Galbraith (at right) and his son, Charles, check squash at the Blacksburg Interfaith food pantry for signs of spoilage. Even partly damaged squash will be salvaged, with rotten bits cut off and the rest cooked down into an easy-to-use puree. Photos by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.

“We don't do it because of the thank you’s,” Galbraith said. “We do it because we know that it's needed, and because it's the right thing to do.”

Every once in a while, however, as Galbraith drops off a truckful of donated fresh veggies at the Blacksburg Interfaith Food Pantry, he sees a patron with a big winter squash in their shopping cart. “It definitely makes me smile,” he said. “Whenever I know that people are benefiting from our food, that’s enough for me.”

Volunteers are welcome with the Glean Team. No prior gardening experience is needed. Email ttcf@vt.edu or text 540-392-1184 to be added to their mailing list of potential volunteers.

A portrait of John Galbraith, smiling at the camera and wearing a maroon 'Run in Remembrance' shirt, stands outside surrounded by trees with autumn leaves.
John Galbraith. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.

Contact:

Tags

Share this story