George Leppla wrote:
>
> That jarred my memory. When I was a kid living on a dairy farm, a local
> church would organize "gleaning parties". The farmer would call and
> tell what he was harvesting and when he was done in the fields, the
> gleaners would come and gather up what was missed. It was distrubuted
> to the poor and among the gleaners. Apples, tomatoes, corn....
> whatever. Most of the local farm families planted "extra" and left
> those areas to be harvested by the gleaners.
>
> Leaving extra for the gleaners has it's roots in the Old Testament book
> of Ruth.

It's not just for the poor, either. Livestock can be used to glean the
fields. An additional long term benefit is selective breeding for a
uniform maturity date - The grain left behind are the seeds that matured
earlier or later than the others. Because the seed planted next year is
from the seeds that all matured together it gradually pushes evolution
to favor a grain harvest coming in all together.

Selective breeding techniques to drive evolution. No way the ancient
authors could have thought of it in those terms but they may have known
it in the simpler form "like parent, like child, for plants or animals".

So how southern is the food we're talking about? I've never heard of
anyone eating fried penguin. Being a predator it's likely to taste
nasty.