Climate March

Thank you to volunteers Margaret Harloe and Jennifer Whittaker who represented GardenShare at yesterday's Climate March in Potsdam.

Read more about the event here.

Farmers Market season is arriving - can you help ensure that everybody eats?

Spring is finally arriving in the North Country and we are looking forward to those fresh, tasty, and healthy vegetables and fruits grown by our local farmers.  Bet you are, too!

But we also know how many people here in the North Country struggle to put that kind of nutritious and delicious food on their tables.

And we recognize how many area farmers are also struggling to build a successful business that will support their own families and contribute to the local economy.

Our core programs at GardenShare work to tackle both of those challenges at once! 

By raising money for our Bonus Bucks program which helps lower-income and working families purchase local food, we are also strengthening sales for our local farmers.

Dulli Tengeler of Birdsfoot Farm said it best.  “Last season we had about 45 CSA members and 10 percent of our members were Bonus Bucks recipients.  This year we are looking to increase our CSA memberships to 60 to 80 shares! Bonus Bucks will make it possible for more people to join our community!”

That’s truly a win-win.

Dulli also shared this story, “One of our repeat CSA members who has really become a staple member of our community almost had to give up their share last year because of affordability.  But because of the Bonus Bucks program provided by GardenShare they were able to keep their share and we were able to keep our community together strong.”

Will you consider a donation to support this work?  You can donate here.

Thank you so much.

One father’s story… I just wanted to say that the Farmers Market SNAP incentive program has been a godsend thus far.  Normally, I wouldn't be spending my SNAP/EBT funds at a farmers market (because most of the produce is from slightly to much more expensive than the stuff you can get at the store), but with the grants it's been an excellent resource.  My daughter and I have greatly enjoyed the higher quality produce and local meats (heirloom strawberries and tomatoes = so much better flavor than the supermarket), as well as the fresh baked goods on offer.  The value has been excellent, the staff extremely friendly, and it's been a pleasure supporting local farmers and producers. Thank you all, from me and my daughter, Andrea.  -Jason

You can make a difference for families like Jason’s!

·         $250 helps a family of five have healthy food by paying for half of their CSA share

·         $100 doubles the buying power at the farmers market for a young mother who relies on SNAP and helps her provide fresh local produce to her children

·         $50 helps a working family who makes a little too much to receive SNAP benefits get $100 worth of farmers market produce

·         $25 helps a senior citizen double the value when they shop at the farmers market

And your gift of any amount or your commitment of volunteer time helps GardenShare reach our vision for our community…

Healthy Food s Healthy Farms s Everybody Eats

NEW TOOLS TO COMBAT FOOD WASTE

ReFED, a data-driven guide for businesses, government, funders, and nonprofits to collectively reduce food waste at scale, has launched two tools to aid businesses and governments in exploring best practices in turning the food waste problem into an opportunity for impact. Policy Finder enables users to better navigate federal, state, and municipal laws and policies on liability protection, tax incentives, animal feed, and waste bans. Additionally, the tool will help users discover recommendations for policy improvements to encourage greater food waste prevention, recovery, and recycling efforts.  The Innovator Database enables users to explore the food waste innovation sector. It categorizes innovators by solution type, organizational status, and geography. ReFED will use new data gleaned from the database to identify trends, growth areas, and gaps in food waste innovation, ultimately helping drive development of more efficient, scalable solutions.

Source: ReFed, 4/17/17, Food Waste

April is National Gardening Month

Gardening season does start a bit later here in the North County, so we've waited until the end of the month to post something!  Here are some resources for engaging kids in gardening!

Grow It, Try It, Like It! Nutrition Education Kit
Introduce preschool children to fruits and vegetables with fun activities at your child care center or child care home. Modified kit for child care homes coming this summer!


Planting the Seeds for Healthier Eating
Help kindergarten students to learn how seeds grow into plants with this lesson from Discover MyPlate.


The Great Garden Detective Adventure
Engage in a series of investigations and fun experiences to discover what fruits and vegetables are sweetest, crunchiest, and juiciest. Use this eleven-lesson curriculum for 3rd and 4th grades. Only available online.


Dig In!
Explore a world of possibilities in the garden and on your plate using ten inquiry-based lessons that engage 5th and 6th graders in growing, harvesting, tasting, and learning about fruits and vegetables.


Dig In! Poster Set
Order these six posters to display in your classroom, the school cafeteria, and throughout the school to motivate students to choose more fruits and vegetables at meals and as snacks.


Plant It, Grow It, Eat It! Healthy Habits Take Root
Get tips from the Team Nutrition Popular Events Idea Booklet on how to start a school garden. School gardens can help increase students’ awareness of where foods come from and increase their preferences for fruits and vegetables.

An intern reflects on her experience

As our interns wrap up their semester with us, Eliza Gillilan reflects on her time with us...

Although my time was limited here at GardenShare, I came away with a deeper insight into food insecurity in the North Country and the creative programs that this great organization utilizes to try and eliminate it. Something I learned in a sociology course this semester is that poverty and hunger systemic problems and utilizing psychological reductionism, which is to blame the victim, is as useless as it is absurd in fixing the problem. Instead, programs like GardenShare are taking initiative in promoting their belief that everyone deserves access to healthy food. 

Something really important that GardenShare does to put hunger issues in perspective is Hunger 101. This is a role-playing activity that allows participants to see the challenge faced by many people to provide healthy food for their families and can help dispel some of the stereotypes and assumptions that some people harbor when it comes to hunger. In addition to this, I learned through GardenShare how many government organizations provide some sort of food benefits for eligible citizens such as Farmers' Market Nutrition Program and SNAP. As important as it is for GardenShare to spread the word about these, they go a step further to provide their own programs such as bonus bucks through the ongoing support of donors and grants that help to supplement government aid and encourage local eating. 

The fact that the programs encourage people to eat locally is equally as important to me. It is one thing to be able to afford the fruits and vegetables available in the grocery store, but local produce can sometimes come with a much steeper price tag. Helping make the farmers market accessible to everyone is a key step in helping local farmers continue their work of providing communities with the freshest food possible. This local food movement is just a byproduct of the mission of tackling hunger that GardenShare harbors, but it can also have positive impacts on the environment because the food does not have to travel as far, and helps keep money in the local economy. What GardenShare is doing is a win for everybody, the citizens of St. Lawrence County, the local economy, and the environment and I hope to see organizations that follow GardenShare’s example become a more widespread presence across the country in the future.

-Eliza

GardenShare open house this afternoon - hope you can stop by!

Economic inequality as a cause of hunger

Chronic hunger persists across the U.S. The number of food insecure Americans has risen—from 10% in 2002 to 13%.  While anti-hunger leaders have been effective at maintaining funding for SNAP and increasing the number of food banks, and federal food programs have remained intact while other anti-poverty programs have been eliminated or slashed, Andy Fisher argues that anti-hunger advocates are missing an essential point: That hunger is not an isolated problem, but the product of much larger economic inequality driven by low wages. Fisher is the author of a new book,  Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups, which contends that because anti-hunger organizations are heavily reliant on corporate donations of food and money, they have often failed to hold businesses accountable for offshoring jobs, cutting benefits, exploiting workers and rural communities, and resisting wage increases.

Source: Civil Eats, 4/20/17, Solve Poverty