Gleaning

[6] It has roots in Middle English (glenen), Anglo-French (glener), and Late Latin (glen(n)ō (“make a collection).

[11] These verses additionally command that olive trees should not be beaten on multiple occasions, and whatever remains from the first set of beatings should be left.

[13] In classical rabbinic literature, it was argued that the biblical regulations concerning left-overs only applied to grain fields, orchards, and vineyards.

In a small village the sexton would often ring a church bell at eight o'clock in the morning and again at seven in the evening to tell the gleaners when to begin and end work.

[28] Nevertheless, in modern Israel, rabbis of Orthodox Judaism insist that Jews allow gleanings to be consumed by the poor and by strangers during Sabbatical years.

There are a number of organizations that practice gleaning to resolve issues of societal hunger; the Society of St. Andrew and the Boston Area Gleaners, for example.

[34] Vincent van Gogh's sketch of a Peasant Woman Gleaning in Nuenen, The Netherlands (1885) is in the Charles Clore collection.

The meandering perambulations of a woolgatherer give rise to the idiomatic sense of the word as meaning aimless wandering of the mind.

[36] Along marine coastlines, gleaning has been defined as "fishing with basic gear, including bare hands, in shallow water not deeper than that one can stand".

For example, in Australia pardalotes (small songbirds) are renowned for their feeding on lerps, scale insects on Eucalyptus sp.