Hi, it's Kristen here with LDS Charities, and today we're in Ogden, Utah, at one of the Church-owned peach orchards. And I'm here with Bruce Liston, who is the manager of the orchard. What a lot of people don't know is that the Church grows all of our own food, and it goes to help people all over the world, whether it's in an emergency or in some of our bishops' storehouses. And today we're here to just talk about peaches. So Bruce, talk to me a little bit about your orchard here. How many trees do you guys have? We have 7,000 trees. We started with around 2,000, and then we went to 4,000. And now we're at 7,000, but that's also increased our production. The production was around 200,000 pounds, and in the last 10 years we've gone from that to 850,000 pounds. And how old are some of these trees? These trees are old. I remember when they planted them, when I was a kid. The ones at the top of the orchard are 45 years old. And our common tree in here is right around 35 years old, which makes them some of the oldest trees in the state. And so what kind of--how many varieties of peaches do you guys grow here? Well, we grow about five different varieties of peaches. But a lot of those can be classified as Elbertas, and then Red Globes is our main varieties. So there's a lot that goes into this kind of a business, and it's a pretty labor-intensive thing to run. So who picks all the peaches? We have volunteers come from all over the community and pick these peaches. Every year we have between 20,000 and 30,000 hours of volunteerism. It's incredible. And these people are just wonderful, willing people. And what motivates them to come out here and do this? You mentioned before, they come in on their breaks. They're coming after work. I mean, it's not a convenient thing to come and spend several hours of your time picking peaches. It's not. And the wonderful thing is that they love community service. They love serving their fellowman. They love giving service back to the community, and they--they're just wonderful people. And as you can imagine, it takes lots and lots of people to do this process. That's a lot of hours, and even for as small a farm as this is, 30,000 hours is a lot of hours. That's a lot of time. It's a lot of time. So tell me, how do you pick the perfect peach? What goes into--what are you looking for here? Well, we've got two rings here. And the cannery wants this size right here, whereas the bishops--and whereas the community wants that size right there. I mean, isn't that the kind of peach you'd like to eat? I know. So this is the one you're going to eat fresh. These are going to go straight to community partners, right, you mentioned? Right. So you're sending these out to Catholic Community Services, to Salvation Army, to bishops' storehouses. We are. So these are the ones getting eaten fresh, and then these are the ones going to the cannery. That's right. And where is the cannery located? Where do you guys ship to? We ship them all the way up to Garden City, Idaho, which is up in Boise, Idaho. And so they get shipped quite a ways. And they can them all up there. It's volunteers up there that spend hundreds of hours canning peaches. And so from the cannery, then where do they go? Because I know there's a couple of different places. They do. They get stored in a central location down in Salt Lake, and then they get distributed through our 138 different distributions throughout the United States. And then for disaster relief and those kinds of things, they go all over the world. I think that's really neat. So I mean, when there is a disaster, we have a store of food. Not just peaches, but everything, right? So that the humanitarian department can make an order, and it can get shipped to wherever it's needed for all kinds of different natural disasters. And one of the cool things I like about coming out here is, you learn a lot about the trees themselves. It's not just the peaches, but it's like the health of the tree. And you mentioned earlier, the volunteers don't just pick the peaches; they prune the trees, too. They prune them, they thin them, they plant new trees. Every day I have a group of men and women that are out here early in the morning, and they work for hours and hours, doing everything that's got to be done out here--the weeds, the mowing.

We prune almost all year long. So there's always work to be done. I think that's the part that's just a little mind-blowing, is you have this farm with all these trees, and it's all volunteers. It's all volunteers. And all of the labor is done by people who are not getting paid, which is really kind of amazing. And this is really just a small piece of the puzzle, right? Because I mean, we have Church-owned farms and orchards all over the United States. They're all run by volunteers. And you mentioned, too, the canning is all done by volunteers. So every step of the way, we have unpaid people doing this amazing labor that is servicing hundreds and thousands of people all over the globe who are receiving this food. It's amazing that we take it from the farm to the cannery to the end user, which is those that need help. And when they're in need of help, it's good that there's people out there that are doing this kind of thing. It's really commendable that society has these kinds of people. It says we're still a wonderful place. And what do you love doing about this? What do you love about your job? I just love all the volunteers that come out here. They put in all this time. They put in all this effort. They come out here and put up with the flies and the dust and everything else because they love serving their fellowman. They love giving back to the community. They're just wonderful, wonderful people. And they're just wonderful. And it's so awesome to see them come out here from all walks of life. You go to their houses, and there's somebody else doing this kind of work. But they're willing to come out here and do this for--to help people. Well, you guys are doing some amazing work here. And this is one of our smaller orchards, but you guys are producing tons of peaches, which is amazing. And it's going to help all kinds of people in need. I think, honestly, you have a pretty dang cool job. Yeah. It's cool. This is pretty fun. So we have so enjoyed coming out here. Thank you for giving us a tour of your-- Thank you. --little orchard, and we just loved it. And thanks for doing what you guys do. It's really kind of amazing. And thanks to all the volunteers who come out and make it happen, too. It's really an amazing part of what we do. You're welcome. Do you guys want to know more about our emergency response program or any of our other programs, or even how you can find a volunteer opportunity near you? Go ahead and visit our website, LDSCharities.org.