Today, July 16th, we harvested beets, beans, greens, squash, cilantro, and baby carrots for the Westside Food Bank from the Charity Garden.
Lua, Jasmine, Samantha and I gathered a large basket of produce.
We took them to the kitchen to wash and sort them.
“We should make juice with these carrots.” – Dawson
“These are for the people at the food bank.” – Jasmine
Sam took the basket of produce to morning circle and shared it with the friends. Jasmine introduced what we were doing:
Jasmine: “This food grows in our garden. Then we pick the food and wash it and take it to the Westside Food Bank. They donate to poor people to eat. Then they have to find food for their next meal.
They had some comments:
Griffin: “I think they invite the homeless to stay there and then they eat the food there.”
Arthur: “We can grow more food. And more people can grow food for them to eat.”
Lola: “We can give this food for them to eat. And we can give it to the poor people.”
Sasha: “I was wondering if the Westside Food Bank donates it to the poor people who don’t have houses, or to people who have houses but don’t have anything to eat.”
Rylee: “Or drink.”
We took their questions and the basket of washed and sorted food to the Westside Food Bank on 22nd in Santa Monica where we met with Allison.
Mason: “Beets, beans, and squash.”
Allison: “Thank you very much! We will put the food in a box for the agencies to pick up. Some agencies are feeding a small group, like in a home for mothers and their children, and other agencies, like the Veterans, feed 300 people three times a day. I’ll show you the warehouse and you can pack up your donation.”
Allison: “We buy all this fruit from farmers at a discounted rate. These melons and plums are not cosmetically beautiful enough for markets, so the farmers sell them to us. This way, we’re helping the farmers and the needy.”
Allison gave us our box to pack.
And showed us the walk-in refrigerator to put it in.
Mason: “OOOhhhh, its cold in here.”
We said our goodbyes and came back to school.
While we were there, Allison introduced us to several young men with special needs. They were working to sort the fruit. I left marveling at the fact that this little warehouse was doing so much for so many different walks of life; the needy, the farmers, and the workforce of people with special needs. I hope we can make the children’s predictions of ‘growing more food’ and getting ‘people to grow food for them’ to support this delicate web of lifelines within our community. -Kris