At dinner the other night, someone suggested I look up a film called “The Gleaners and I” about some crazy French law that says after harvest farmers must let peasants onto their land to pick through leftover produce. There are some famous French paintings of the activity and the film evidently delves deeper into the issue and carries us all the way up to present day society. It’s at the top of my Netflix queue, but I couldn’t wait to post this here and to share this informative link on the topic. I’m kind of shocked I’d never heard of gleaning or the film before. They sound kind of like early freegans. Pictured here, François Millet‘s “The Gleaners” Update: A friend just emailed the following: “The concept of gleaning is actually much older than an obscure French law – according to Jewish biblical teachings, farmers were required to not reap all the way to the edges of their fields and not to pick up anything they dropped along the way so as to leave some for the poor and for strangers.” Thanks, friend!