Feeding the Multitudes : Volunteers Pick Beans to Give Food to 10,000 Needy on Thanksgiving

IRVINE —  Beads of sweat had formed on Florinda Osborne’s nose as she stopped to drink a cup of water under a bright sun Tuesday morning.

“Next time,” she said, “I’ll come more prepared.”

For the past hour, the 40-year-old Cypress woman and dozens of other volunteers--homemakers, businessmen, senior citizens and children--had been gleaning a bean field in Irvine just off the San Diego Freeway, hoping to pick 1,500 pounds of green beans that will be used to feed the poor and homeless on Thanksgiving Day.

Despite the sore muscles they were anticipating, the volunteers said they could not think of a better way to give thanks.

“It’s Thanksgiving and this is what it’s all about,” said Huntington Beach resident Keerstin Preijers.

“As you get older, you realize the problems that we have, and (feeding the hungry) is one of them,” said Preijers, 21, who has also signed up to clean tables at the Thanksgiving Day dinner.

The call for help went out last weekend when Frank Garcia, owner of La Casa Garcia restaurant in Anaheim, worried that his free Thanksgiving dinners--expected to feed 10,000 needy people--were threatened because expected donations of turkeys, potatoes and vegetables had not been received.

Hearing of the need for food, the Orange County Harvest volunteer group, which collects vegetables from various fields once a week to feed the poor, asked Western Marketing owner A.G. Kawamura if Thanksgiving dinner volunteers could pick beans from his field.

Kawamura agreed and donated an additional 10 cases of celery, said Charles Brain, 66, a volunteer with Orange County Harvest.

“There’s pretty good pickings here--there’s a lot of beans,” Brain said, noting that the field already had been gleaned twice before.

Help also came from the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Orange County, which has lent support to Garcia’s two previous Thanksgiving Day dinners.

“We thought one of the ways to help Frank bring some happiness to the homeless and low-income Hispanic families was to come out and give him an actual hand and get down on our knees and pick beans for his dinner,” chamber President Al Amezcua said.

And so they gathered early Tuesday morning, just as the heat from the morning sun intensified. Not everyone remembered to bring a hat and work gloves, but they gave each other tips on how to do the job so that it would go a little more quickly and easily.

Instead of stooping, suggested Irvine resident Abby Peterson, 48, the workers could pull out the plant, hold it upside down, and pick off the beans while standing.

“Beans are the worst,” said Brain, who has worked the fields for the needy for more than a year. “You can work, work, work all the time and it’s almost like you don’t have very much. But when you fill a basket of beans, it feeds a lot of people.”

Greg Frock, 37, of Rancho Santa Margarita said that as he passed the fields each day during his commute to work, he often wondered what it was like to labor in the fields.

“Every morning, I saw people doing it, and I thought, ‘Well, at least I can do it for two hours,’ ” Frock said.

“You bend over--that’s the hardest thing--but it’s a labor of love,” added Helga Coover, 61, of Irvine. “I feel you have to help. It’s as simple as that.”

As he wandered through the bean plants with his younger brother, mother and other friends, 4-year-old M.J. Jeffries worked slowly but meticulously.

“We have to wipe (the dirt) off first,” he told his companions.

His mother, Glee Anne Jeffries, 31, of Costa Mesa, said picking beans was an activity that the family could do together.

“We thought it would be great,” added her friend, Darcie McDaniel, 28, also of Costa Mesa. “It’s good for these kids to get their hands dirty.”

As work continued, Garcia smiled with optimism that there would be enough food on Thursday.

Although he had in hand only 60 of the 450 turkeys needed for the dinner, Garcia said he has faith the rest eventually would come in. And they would be ready on time, he added, because the Anaheim Hilton had offered to cook the turkeys in their ovens.

“People are responding and calling the restaurant,” Garcia said. “It’s beautiful.”

And if there is not enough turkey, potatoes and green beans to go around, Garica said, he will use whatever he can find in his Mexican restaurant.

“If we don’t have enough food, I will serve tamales, beans and everything,” he said. “But nobody will be hungry.”