St. Mary’s Food Bank Needs Your Citrus Donations this Winter!!!!

Today is the official kickoff of gleaning season here at St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance. We need your excess grapefruits and oranges and lemons from your backyard trees to help feed the hungry of Arizona.

We would appreciate you gleaning the trees yourself and delivering the citrus to our food bank locations in Phoenix (2831 N. 31st Avenue) or Surprise (13050 W. Elm Street). But we also have a special citrus hotline (602) 343-5658 where homeowners can call and schedule a date for volunteers to come glean your trees (volunteers will pick grapefruit and oranges trees only) and there is a tax-deductable $15 charge per tree to cover the cost of materials and transportation to the Food Bank. Volunteers will glean from January until early March, so made your reservations now.

St. Mary’s also needs your helping hands! The Food Bank does not have enough volunteers to meet the expected number of homes and areas requesting to be gleaned. If you have a few hours, a day or a weekend when yourself or your church, organization or club would like to help St. Mary’s fill their bins this winter, call the same citrus hotline number above and leave all the pertinent information.
St. Mary’s not only distributes the gleaned citrus to Arizona’s hungry, but shares the bounty with food banks in others states – in the form or frozen juice. In return, states share their surplus fruits and vegetables with St. Mary’s to help provide a variety of nutritious items for all.