Feeding The Hungry - Part 3

The Rural “Shares” Project

At last, we come to our current hunger project, begun some years ago and still going quite strong. It’s not something governmental or bureaucratic, it’s not something designed to guard food against anyone deigned to be “undeserving,” and it gets a lot of help here and there from community groups. All without publicity, without bragging, without self-importance, without insults to the hungry, without too much time and trouble by anyone. It’s just a project people here know about and many of them contribute to in their own quiet ways - a bit like stashing bags of food (then also clothes and toys and blankets) behind the dumpsters in a sneaky sort of way so the Dumpster People were taken care of and nobody talked about it at all. It just happened, because…

“This Is America. No One Should Go Hungry.”

We call it “Shares.” Because sharing is really what it’s all about. Our personal end of it only works in growing/harvest season, the off-season stuff is handled by actual community groups (Chamber, Ruritan and a few church-lady groups), but still quite informally. They took that over all on their own, and I’m just fine with that. Heck, I never told them not to make it formal, they figured that out on their own too. They just wanted to keep it going through the winter and spring, so did.

The way it was conceived to work was to simply enlist the aid of the people in our area who always grow a nice veggie garden in their ample yards. Here along the slow end of the Blue Ridge it seems like everybody gardens, some more than others, in or outside of town.

At first I approached my immediate neighbors, nice folks who live this far out in the woods as I do on purpose. The leave us alone, but are always on hand in emergencies (blizzards, forest fires), and not stingy on good advice about what to do for apple blight, what’s eating the grape vines, the best heirloom tomato seeds, etc., etc. After the county locked up the dumpsters I approached 4 neighbors the following spring and asked if they’d add a row to their normal garden, seed it with any extra seed they had after planting their usual rows, and donate the produce to my “shares” project.

I told them I’d collect the food, bag or box it, and get it to those I knew in town (at that little grocery store) who could get it out to poor families. I wasn’t really surprised when they enthusiastically said ‘yes!’ but I was quite encouraged that this might work. The really amazing part is that I didn’t actually have to do the organizational work at all, even in the first year! Before spring was over those neighbors had convinced more neighbors, who convinced more neighbors, who got the word out in town, which started the little old church-ladies going, which got the Chamber involved, and the extension service jumped right in with both feet and started donating seeds - just pick ‘em up, free to all. It sort of just made so much sense that it took on a life of its own.

By July there was more food than anyone had figured on, just from those extra rows in yard gardens all over the county. That little grocery store donated boxes, the church-ladies divvied it all up so every box had some of this and some of that - whatever was coming in that week - and I got to do my job. Being as we belonged to the Chamber back then and I’d been in the publishing business for twenty years, I did volunteer for the project.

I’d purchased Marian Morash’s Victory Garden Cookbook, a wonderful resource for everything veggie. They’re alphabetically listed, info on growing, storing, preservation and such is provided, then there are dozens of recipes for each thing. What do you do with a basket full of eggplant that all comes in at once? She gives many different dishes. And for artichokes and for zucchini and for every other garden veggie you’re ever likely to encounter!

So I typed out the storage, prep and preserving info and 4 or 5 basic recipes (some hers, some mine). I copied these at the copy shop (for free, the owner donated that!) on regular size paper, 2-up so they could be cut in half. If we had okra, eggplant, tomatoes, summer squash and new potatoes that week, I stapled the half-sheets together and that was loaded into the boxes by the church-ladies along with the food. Pretty soon I’d gone through the book (everything except the exotics), and the copy shop had the originals on file so they could get them printed up on their own.

The boxes and bags of food get distributed by people involved and people who know about it. Anyone who wants or needs the food (or knows someone who does) can just pick it up, no questions asked and nothing to sign. Not much hangs around long enough to be composted. No doubt many people could afford to buy their own, but who really cares? It’s all food, somebody needs to eat it, and most all people who can afford to purchase their food will still purchase food. It doesn’t dent the grocery store’s business.

The project is still informally going, it’ll probably keep going as long as people here have gardens and good hearts - forever, I figure. I grow my row, that’s pretty much all I have to do. And drop it off at the train station once a week or so. Nobody gets paid, nobody works too hard, nobody cares to “means test” the people who get the food. Whatever doesn’t get distributed gets taken to the food bank in the county seat. Given the sheer amount of food that is thrown away in this country every single day, why shouldn’t it go to people who will eat it?

I’d sure love to hear from readers about any hunger projects they’ve been involved with, maybe how their network of friends and homesteaders - urban or rural - is helping to make this world just a little bit better (and healthier). If you’ve a tale to tell, please do! You can post in the comments or just comment that you’ve a project and I’ll respond with an email contact for a guest post opportunity. Because…

“This Is America. No One Should Go Hungry.”

Posts to This Series:

Feeding the Hungry - Part 1
Feeding the Hungry - Part 2
Feeding the Hungry - Part 3

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Filed under Activities, Community, Food Production, Garden, Harvest, Hunger, Nutritition |