We completed the pea teepees and did great work on our herb garden. Currently corn, cucumbers, and squash are germinating and we have successfully on-boarded AmSpirit as a partner in the garden as well! The concept of food-banking may seem strait forward. You store food to give to those who need it. However, at the food bank we are continually redefining what it means to have “need” and instilling in our volunteers and staff that no need is put above another persons, even if they need less than another. This may seem unjust but think about it this way. How complicated would it be to try to service only the people in chronic poverty and hunger versus just episodic? How could you even go about defining who fits into which category of need and then adjusting their priority to be fed accordingly? So we avoid this conundrum and in my opinion justly categorize any form and severity of need as the same need across the board.

The above photo is of a tomato plant and a drip line for irrigation. These hoses are porous so they spray a mist when water runs through them and we have the nozzle on a solar powered timer to let water through early in the morning, the afternoon, and later at night on the days that we do not have a garden shift.

Just to give an idea of literally our mission is realized. Our garden produce gets weighed and goes directly into the pantry where our clients shop, just 10 yards away. Sometimes clients even pick the veggies from the vine as they enter or leave the pantry.

I attached garden yarn to our gazebo with a staple gun so that the morning glory vine can crawl up the side and form a natural wall of greenery. This is just an artsy shot of a bench inside the gazebo and vine beginning its ascent.

This is our onion bed with three different varieties of onions. You have to wait until the green shoots almost look like they are dead before you can harvest the onion bulb from the earth.

These are our pea teepees for the pole pea plants to climb up. A mother and her daughter volunteered the other day and this is what we did together.