“Produce to the People” Feeds Those in Need
By Wendy Carlson
Michelle Shipp and Chris Mullins concede they didn’t know much about growing vegetables when they first started farming on a small plot at Lorch Community Garden in Cornwall a few years back.
“YouTube and Google became our good friends,” jokes Michelle, a retired kindergarten teacher who relied on the Internet and a lot of trial and error for the first year.
To their delight, they harvested more beans, carrots, and kale than they needed so they donated the overflow to the Cornwall Food Pantry. When the pandemic hit they learned the number of families relying on the pantry jumped from four families to 40, they had an “a-ha” moment. They launched Produce to the People, a grassroots effort to put fresh surplus produce on the plates of the people who need it most.
Michelle got the word out through social media, calling on backyard gardeners to contact her at [email protected]. Turns out, there are a whole host of backyard gardeners throughout the community with an excess of veggies who are looking for ways to share their bounty. She had a growing list of gardeners and a crew of volunteers who were willing to help with pick up and delivery.
The project couldn’t have come sooner for Barbara and Brent Prindle of Sharon. Brent has had a garden going on 63 years, but with just the two of them at the house they found themselves with a tsunami of veggies. As much as they loved curly kale, it was growing out of control.
”It just kept growing and growing. I was like making kale shakes every other day,” quips Barbara.
That was good news for Michelle and Chris. As they see it, there can never be enough kale, or any vegetables, to fill the community’s growing need. When the Cornwall pantry has enough in stock, the excess produce is delivered to other food banks in the northwest corner.
With the cost of living skyrocketing, fresh, organic, locally-grown produce shouldn’t only be for those who can afford it, says Michelle. At today’s prices, she estimates Produce to the People donated up to $6,000 worth of veggies in 2022 with half of that coming from the couple’s harvest on a one-eighth acre plot.
They’re hoping their idea will take root in other towns. “We want to inspire other communities to do the same thing because there are so many individuals with so much bounty and unfortunately there is such a great need,” says Michelle.
It does require dedicated volunteers. “Produce to the People is not so much a charity as a solidarity,” explains Chris. “Growing vegetables is just one part, you need people willing to pick up and deliver the produce.”
But it is work that can feed your soul. “When you give people real healthy food they start to feel like people really do care about them, and that can be a game changer,” says Michelle.
On a larger scale, the Northwest Connecticut Regional Food Hub is yet another group that collects fresh produce from Litchfield County farms and distributes it to schools, restaurants, grocery stores, and institutions. The hub also has an online ordering and billing system operated by the nonprofit Sustainable Healthy Communities Inc. The hub makes it possible for farmers to work together to meet the growing demand for local, sustainable food in the area, and they benefit from the marketing, selling, packaging and delivering of their produce. When it was launched in 2018, 10 farms sold produce to the hub; that number skyrocketed more than 30 in 2022.
Heather Dinneen, Cornwall’s director of social services, is grateful for the help the pantry receives from local farms and Produce to the People. “Michelle and Chris take care of everything and the food just appears, cleaned and ready to go. It has allowed us to serve so many more people with a wider variety of produce,” she says.
For more info on Produce to the People, email Michelle Shipp: [email protected]
Learn more about the Northwest Connecticut Food Hub at nwctfoodhub.org
