Volunteers collect a mountain of 7000 excess pumpkins for the underprivileged

Charity groups have cleared a mountain of unwanted pumpkins from a Waikato farm to distribute to the needy.

The Meremere farmer's son put a message on the Facebook page of Community Fruit Harvesting asking if they wanted the piles of excess pumpkins.

Auckland co-ordinator Di Celliers said they contacted food rescue groups from around Auckland and the Waikato, and a co-ordinated effort began.

Volunteers spent days loading up cars with around 7000 pumpkins and giving them to food banks, youth groups, refugee centres and underprivileged families.

"A lot of people have gone back numerous times," Celliers said.

"Everybody has collaborated from Auckland right through to Hamilton, and even the local Meremere community have got involved... and laid on coffee and one of the locals baked a cake for us."

The group also enlisted the help of a truck driver who was travelling from Tauranga to Auckland and had offered on social media to bring goods back, she said.

"He actually stopped and loaded up his truck with pumpkins and then delivered them to one of our people."

The Meremere farmer wished to remain anonymous, but the volunteers understood that he had a commercial contract to grow the pumpkins for seed and was not permitted to sell the excess.

"In the past he's used them for stock food but when he heard about Community Fruit Harvesting he decided to donate them," Celliers said.

One of the volunteers was west Auckland woman Eleanor Chamboon-Hunt, who made two trips down to Meremere and collected around 1000 pumpkins.

She first went down on Saturday after harvesting excess kiwifruit from an orchard in Waiuku in the morning.

Then on Sunday "I was sitting at home thinking, man, all those pumpkins", she said.

So she went back down that afternoon.

Volunteers are now helping her to distribute them around charity groups and families in need.

A lot of farmers and orchardists were starting to hear about the charity and were now offering their excess produce, Celliers said.

The charity was currently inundated with kiwifruit, and in two weeks' time would harvest a large persimmon orchard near Hamilton.

The owners were in poor health and unable to do the harvest themselves, and the fruit would otherwise go to waste, she said.

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