Summertime isn’t just about the heat — it’s also about the incredible bounty you may be getting out of your garden (did you know food grows on trees, or that you can often just find it lying around on/in the ground?). After you’ve eaten all you’re going to eat, and canned and jammed, and stewed and baked, and given away to co-workers and neighbors for the umpteenth time, what else is there to do with your agricultural rewards, other than composting them?

So every year I let whatever I’m not going to eat, rot on the vine or on the compost heap and wince at my mother’s voice in my head — the one telling me about all the starving children. Then this year, I called Hopelink to find out what kind of hoops I would have to jump through to get rid of my food, which, while being perfectly edible and gorgeous, is still coming at me from all sides.

The answer? None. No hoops — well, except for them not being open on the weekends. But any time Monday to Friday between 8:30AM and 5PM. They’ll take your extra produce, and even give you a receipt (I’m just happy I won’t have to pay them). They’ll even take APPLES — and here in Washington apple trees grow wild by the roadside.

So please: consider giving your neighbors and co-workers a rest this year, and google up your local foodbank for an alternative solution to the sudden rain of food.