By Andrea Dujardin-Flexhaug

YVES Primeau wakes up to his alarm at 1:30 am almost every night in his Oliver home, and heads over to the nearby Okanagan Gleaners plant to perform a regular chore.

In the quiet of the building, he takes dried fruit out of a well-used heavy duty oven. He puts it in a cooler, and pops in several more trays of fruit to dry, then heads back home to bed.

It is a small task, but one that needs to be done until the volunteer Christian-based Gleaners get bigger, more efficient dryers to alleviate this routine.

“I don’t mind at all,” said a cheery Primeau about the nighttime chore. In the mornings, Primeau also helps prepare the fruit and vegetables during the morning shift with the other volunteer workers at the plant.

Primeau may not have to perform his nightly task much longer, though, now that the Okanagan Gleaners has recently overcome a huge hurdle of governmental red tape and zoning issues with the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) and local Regional District – one that has dogged them for the last five years.

Through the generosity of  Oliver orchardist Martin Rothe, the Gleaners Society has been generously allowed the use of four of his 14 acres of land, on which to run the plant.

In November, they were finally given the government’s go-ahead to buy and subdivide these same four acres, and to make the site their permanent home. “And that will happen, we hope, within a few weeks," said Gleaners president Stephen Hetherington.

The group will then be able to construct new and more spacious buildings, up to a maximum of 5,000 square feet, according to legislation from the ALC and Regional District.

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New buildings would go a long way to providing space for the dryers, as well as for additional coolers, extra storage and for the 24 or so volunteers.

Hetherington noted that “Our biggest single expense is the natural gas for the dryers; so if they can work more efficiently and less often, then of course we’ll cut back on a big expense.” This, in turn, will alleviate Primeau’s nighttime shift.

The land decision gave them “a sense of relief in one way; but also now we have a new challenge,” commented Hetherington.

The Gleaners must move on to the next step, which is to make up a site plan for the new buildings, and explore the feasibility of renovating part of the present building. “However we do that will be decided over the next few weeks or months. We would like to have a plan to present to our annual general meeting in May,” said Hetherington.

The  Okanagan Gleaners, run solely by volunteers, has been faithfully feeding the needy overseas for the past 14 years, taking in less than perfect (unmarketable) donated  vegetables from farmers, preparing and drying them at their plant and packaging the results for transport overseas on a regular basis.  

This year alone, they hope to have prepared up to 1,000 drums of soup in total – which amounts to seven million cups of soup, sent through relief agencies such as World Vision.

In an additional mission during the winter months, locally made quilts, socks and other knitted items are sent to orphanages in eastern Europe.

Hetherington described Primeau as “a very fine person” for performing his nightly chore at the plant. But with the Gleaners’ plans closer to being a reality in the near future, as Hetherington said,  Primeau “can avoid that getting up early in the morning.”

December 2010