On Thu, 05 Feb 2004 10:37:45 -0700, Janice
wrote:



This is not to say that is wouldn't be a good thing to grow a row or
more for the homeless and hungry. Soup kitchens if nothing else would
welcome fresh produce to make soup with, but food banks usually are
not set up to store or distribute fresh foods unless they have a brisk
business every day.

Our local Food Bank meets twice per month. Those are the
days we bring in garden veggies (when we have them, of
course). No storage is involved. We just give the basket
of veggies to the volunteers and they set them on a table
for people to help themselves.

The food distributed is fairly crappy, and there's almost
nothing fresh, so any fresh veggies are *really* *really*
appreciated. The people at the Food Bank are very happy to
get garden veggies.



Years ago they used to have a commodity food program and they gave out
some things that were better than you could buy.. huge pitted prunes
and nice raisins, powdered eggs.. while not something you'd want to
eat as scrambled eggs were great to make baking mixes with.

I can only speak for our local Food Bank (which is not a
commodity food program): most of the food is low quality
(stale doughnuts, stale bagels, and the like). Some is OK.
Occasionally, there will be an item or two of nutritionally
very good food. Rarely.

I know whereof I speak, my husband and I are recipients of
food at this Food Bank (as well as donors of garden veggies
when we have them), by virtue of our present ridiculously
low income.


We had, don't know if they still are in operation, Gleaners who went
out into the fields after mechanical harvesters had cleaned out what
they could from the fields, and they would get all the produce that
the machinery had missed and bring it in for the food banks and soup
kitchens. I'll have to try to find them this year and see if they
want anything that might grow after some are pruned to correct what
someone had done with them... sheared them like a hedge! LOL


This would be nice.

Pat