It has now been six weeks of doing deliveries - on Thursday and Saturday afternoons and Fresh Food Weekly is continuing to grow. This week, we got a new produce donor; Dominion Farms in Bradford, Ontario and they donated 1,100lbs of carrots and 1,100lbs of onions! Wow! What an incredible donation. We don’t have the capacity to transport or store this amount of produce but thanks to the Barrie Food Bank and their lovely volunteer driver, Tom, we were able to pickup this donation no problem. On top of that, they also have gave Fresh Food Weekly tons of frozen bread items and baked goods.
Simcoe Harvest also gave again this week; tons of bread, buns and lots of fresh produce! And Jillian Jiggs Baking also gave an array of her delicious berry scones. Together, Dominion Farms, the Barrie Food Bank, Simcoe Harvest and Jillian Jiggs Baking created the Thursday food orders this week.
On Friday morning, Cookstown Greens donated another 400lbs of 100 percent certified organic root vegetables as well. Myself and a new volunteer, Jennifer, organized this food into individual bags in preparation for Saturdays’ deliveries and we have our extra produce to the Barrie Food Bank and the Barrie Community Fridge.
On Saturday this week, we also setup coolers and bins at the both the Barrie and Orillia Fairgrounds Farmer’ Markets and received tons of amazing produce.
I want to give a special thank you to Harris Farms in Springwater, Ontario because they’ve been giving very generously ever since we started having a presence at the Barrie Farmers’ Market. They’ve been a huge support to our program each week and they’re having a big impact on improving the food security within the City of Barrie.
This week I also reached out to and met with Lance at Lance Supply Co. here in Barrie. They supply restaurants with food packaging, equipment, and cleaning supplies. I asked if they could sell me some items at cost and when I got there, he gathered a bunch of things I needed and donated all of it! I was blown away. And so when I had the Barrie Health Inspection Unit come to inspect the facility in which we are now operating out of, they were quite impressed because we already had everything we needed! It is so encouraging to see so many people coming together and helping Fresh Food Weekly get off the ground and become a real food charity.
Admittedly, I didn’t expect this amount of support and kindness - at least not this quickly and certainly not at this scale. Our community is filled with leaders and it’s because of them that real change is happening and it’s happening at the grassroots level.
I am so proud to be a part of this change and I’m even prouder to live in a TRUE community.
