Nourishing Bites | Farming with Heart
Part of the Farm to Heart Team | From left: Staci, Chris, Phyllis, April, Brad, Judit.
Out here at the farm, every Wednesday is devoted to our Farm to Heart Initiative.
In just a few short hours, a group of five of us harvest, wash, sort, and pack CSA shares then Brad and Phyllis and I load up the white delivery van and head south to Fruit Valley Elementary School.
There, we are greeted by staff from the Family Resource Center and shortly after, our families start arriving. It’s a whirlwind of a day- we maintain a tight schedule in the morning to make sure our pickup timeframe aligns with the end of the school day in spring and fall. That helps our families save a trip because they are coming to the school to pick up kids anyway. Even though school is not in session all summer, we keep to the same consistent schedule to maintain stability and eliminate scheduling conflicts. This is one example that highlights our goal; everything we do is about eliminating barriers that exist between healthy food and families.
When we roll into the parking lot shortly after lunch, we are greeted by Chris and Staci, who tend their Fruit Valley Elementary School community through the Family Resource Center, and Judit, who serves in a similar capacity at Lincoln Elementary and also volunteers as our translator.
While we set up folding tables, Chris helps two young kids make up signs for all the extra produce we’ve brought to distribute. Together, the three of them are teachers and learners - one knows what Bok Choy looks like, another knows that Papas is spanish for Potatoes. A third knows how to spell Pea Shoots.
Meanwhile, Judit teaches Phyllis and I how to say the phrase ‘next week’ in Spanish and Brad and Staci discuss the state of the hot pepper crop and how her home garden tomatoes are faring in the heat.
As families arrive to pick up their shares, another layer of teaching and learning unfolds. Zoila brings us strawberry rhubarb tamales to taste and explains how she made them. Young Mia shows us photos of the wilted collard greens she cooked and how she used the stems. Miguel shares stories of growing up and how his school was an experiential learning environment in which he was taught how to make cheese from cows that his classmates tended and that all the students ate for school lunch.
Week after week, it is a total joy for me to see the quiet momentum of an unspoken community building, one conversation, one kind action at a time. Bit by bit, we are growing trust, dependability, care, and good health between and amongst ourselves. For that one hour of time, our Farm to Heart team is focused on creating a welcoming, inclusive experience for our families.
They may not be able to see the smiles from behind our masks, so we work twice as hard to make sure they can feel it. This starts with the care we put into the food we grow, and carries through to the presence and intention we bring to the distribution table. Just like our Friday CSA program, our Farm to Heart CSA families get to choose every item in their share, every single week.
As farmers, Brad and I feel this is an absolutely critical aspect of our work. We want all our families to have a sense of agency with respect to what they choose to eat. In this way and many more, we keep showing up, and finding ways to dismantle the barriers between us. If food is life, then good food must be community.
Here’s what our Farm to Heart community has to say:
“Wednesday is my favorite day of the week.”
“I’m going to make organic baby food with this food. My child’s first solid food!”
“It costs $40 just for grocery delivery. I don’t always have access to a car...This is helping me so much and the fresh vegetables make me feel like I am home.”
“I put the garlic scapes in with my kale dish -- it was so good! Now I am putting garlic scapes in everything!”
“My daughter loves making candied (roasted) carrots, and we juice the tops too.”
“The salad mix lasts so much longer.”
“Beyond wonderful.”
“I juice everything for my father.”
“I share with my parents and they love it. Thank you. God bless you!!”
“I taught my daughter to make lettuce wraps. All her friends at the Boys and Girls Club were excited to try them.”
“Oh the kids love this. We sure appreciate you.”
“I am glad I inspired others to cook with rhubarb. It is delicious.”
“Usually I have to eat the leftovers because no one else wants them. But now with the CSA food, there are no leftovers!”
“NOTHING is going to waste. We can’t afford the quality of these vegetables… It is making a huge difference in our lives.”
Thanks to our supporters, our Farm to Heart Initiative is now serving over 100 community members, including 23 families and 50 children. 100% of our families had never before had the opportunity to participate in a CSA program before meeting us.
Access, choice, teaching, learning, love.
That’s a recipe for community health I can get behind any day of the week. ~AJ
CSA Love | Cheyene and Jamison are big fans of April Joy Farm cabbage. We’re big fans of the extraordinary effort CSA parents like her put into providing healthy food choices for their families. (Note, this photo was taken early this summer before the delta variant arrived on the scene.)