Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Produce for Charity

The past couple of weeks have been wet and rainy, so I finally got outside to the garden and MAN! Guess who forgot to thin the zucchini and cucumber plants?! I am going to have a ton this year, because there are not one, not two but FIVE zucchini plants out there! And booooyyyyyy do I need to weed!

I was reading an article in Woman's Day recently about a charity called Backyard Harvest. A woman in Idaho started Backyard Harvest when one year, she decided to plant a garden. She let her kids plant lettuce seeds and they planted the entire pack. At harvest time, they had 200 heads of lettuce!! And, as she put it, "nobody has that many friends that want lettuce from your garden." She contacted a local food pantry and asked if they acepted fresh produce, and they did! They did tell her that they don't get a lot of fresh produce to give out to needy families, though. So she recruited friends and neighbors to grow extra in their gardens and to donate the fruits of their labor to hungry families and a charity was born. It's going so well that the idea has expanded with people opening chapters in both Washington and California.

When I read the article, I immediately thought of my poor zucchini and cucumbers and thought about how many of my friends would want some when the plants explode with wholesome goodness next month. I thought it would be cool if there was a Massachusetts chapter. But for now, I'm happy to freeze some of my produce. Maybe someday there will be something like that here.

cross-posted at The Blue Plate Special

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The MA Veterans Shelter somewhere in Worcester gladly accepts food. That's what we're going to do with all of the bake sale leftovers.
If you want the address I can find it out for you.