Market Farming

["Heirloom Grower" <heirloomgrower AT gmail.com>]

Carla,

 

From my perspective at our food pantry, storage at the facility is an issue with perishable items.

 

I expect that processing is probably an issue with shelters. It does take more time to prepare fresh vegetables. When you are speaking of serving meals to hundreds of homeless, the prep time may prove prohibitive. It's hard to get volunteers to do these things sometimes. I would suggest drafting the folks who will be eating the food to help, but there again, state regulation may prohibit the involvement of anyone in food prep who has not been tested and cleared of communicable diseases. Since a lot of these folks are transient, it is unlikely that they would be reliably involved once testing is done. And this is an expensive process.

 

Elise

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 10:00 AM, cjmaness AT juno.com <cjmaness AT juno.com> wrote:

I don't want to see anyone go hungry, or have to eat junk because that is all they can afford. We have tried for many years to give away our seconds, or what we have left at the end of market. We've called the shelters, churches, anyone we could think of. The only thing we ask is that they come to the market and pick up what is left at the end of the day. All of the vendors were more than happy to contribute.But, these groups will come to market once or twice and seem very grateful for the free food, and then they don't come back. Why?
We've come to the conclusion that because fresh food has to be prepped in some way, even if it's just rinsing, and the volunteers at the shelters don't want to mess with it. It's easier to open a can I guess.
It doesn't make sense to me. The homeless shelters here are constantly asking the community for more money to keep the shelters open, yet when they could have all the fresh produce they could use, they won't show up.
Carla
Oklahoma
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