Gardening for Donation: What's the Point?

(Before I begin this posting, I'd like to let our neighbors to the north of us, in Norborne, MO, know that our heart-felt prayers are with you for a speedy recovery after the storm damage you incurred this week. God bless you!)




I assume that if you read this blog you must, at the very least, be the tiniest bit interested in the subject of gardening. Whether you are a novice or an expert gardener, whether you grow enough food to keep your family fed for the winter or whether you garden no more than sticking a geranium in a flower pot, you still know the effort it takes to make things grow. Now, whether you've been forced to skip a meal due to various forms of fasting or whether you've been down on your luck and couldn't afford a meal, you know hunger. Could someone please tell me how the hell to get the garden produce into the hands of the people who truly need and deserve it???

After that outburst, I owe you an explanation. Last year, I was talking to a friend of mine who raises organic produce for a living. We talked about the excess and I told her how I was donating mine to food pantries. At first I was appalled when she told me that she'd given up on food pantries. Her chief complaint was she didn't think her beautiful produce was ending up in the hands of the people to whom she was donating it. New to food pantry donating, I found it hard to understand when she said it gave her more joy to watch all the excess of her hard work being eaten by the chickens she raises on her farm. Well, I've climbed up on that cynical wagon with her this afternoon.

I don't know about you but I take my gardening very seriously. In the early spring when the first seedlings are going into the garden, I fret and worry endlessly with the wax and wane of frost warnings. Once I can get the garden past being frozen, there's a whole new gamut of things to stew about. Insects. Fungus. Weather. It's what we do as gardeners. The other thing we do is take pride in how well it all turns out. This I know for sure: my cabbages are more tightly layered, my tomatoes are redder and juicier, my green beans are more tender than any mass produced crap picked green and chemically altered to ripen from a corporate farm. Corporate farm, what an oxymoron!

Here's another oxymoron, volunteer pay. I looked up the word volunteer in the dictionary just to verify that it still means: one who enters into any service without the expectation of monetary consideration. So imagine my dismay, as I watched the volunteers rifle through and bag up, for themselves, the food I'd just donated for the needy. When I voiced my displeasure, I was told
there wasn't enough of my good produce to go around so it was best if the volunteers took it and besides, it's the only pay they got for all their hard work. Really?

Furthermore, I discovered that this food pantry had no income requirement for recipients to meet. I could back my Cadillac DeVille Concourse right up to the door, get out in my designer clothes, and fill my trunk with food meant for the needy---no questions asked! Of course I couldn't expect to get any currently donated fresh produce, but, what the heck.

I'm sure you're thinking that's just one food pantry out of hundreds. I'm batting five for five. If you ask me, that's a lousy average.