It’s that time of year when the bounty from the garden abounds! Now that you are eating zucchini three times a day and your neighbors are politely declining any more produce from you, we have the perfect solution to your problem of plethora…
Donate it to us!
At the Capital Area Food Bank we can take donations of fresh produce anytime between 8:30am-4:30pm Monday through Friday. Drive up, dash in, drop off, fill out a 2 minute donation form, and you are off!There is no schedule or advanced notice required. It’s that easy!
Looking for something more sustained? We have a partnership program called Grow A Row that pairs your beautiful garden with a neighborhood non-profit feeding program. You donate directly to them through the end of the growing season.
Visit our Grow A Row webpage or email us for more information about donating fresh produce.
Please join us at the Washington Youth Garden for our annual summer bash – a Friends and Family Fun Day. Come anytime between 12pm and 4pm on Saturday, July 24th. And bring friends! Thanks to our garden manager Chris Turse (and other staff, volunteers, and our youth workers, of course), the garden looks the best [...]
This is the story of a rising D.C. high school senior’s experience volunteering with the D.C. Farm to School Network, a program of the Capital Area Food Bank that works to get more healthy, local foods into D.C. schools. Bella Herold volunteered during a special event – Strawberries & Salad Greens – when the Network [...]
Ecolocity DC, a local community sustainability/food group, is holding a workshop on July 20 that draws on ancient traditions and yet is still socially relevant today. Seed saving is as old as agriculture, and yet large corporations are not allowing farmers both here in the U.S. and in the developing world to save their seeds. [...]
Nick Wiseman, a life-long District resident, is a line cook and food journalist. He recently started Roadside Organics to celebrate local food culture across the globe.
I recently returned from a four-month culinary tour of Southeast Asia. Since stepping off the plane, folks ask about what impressed me most. My answer is always the same: farms, farmers, farming. I can’t count the number of farmers markets I’ve visited in the US. I loved the farm-to-table idea, but the act of farming itself – painstakingly coaxing treasure from dirt – seemed remote and abstract. Until I trekked distant Asian roadsides, far from the reigns of the supermarket.
Kneeling in dusty, sun-baked fields, just a few miles from where I had enjoyed my last meal, I could feel that food wasn’t just a product of rich soil. It grew too on the care and passion of those who grew it – who in turn seemed to find an important piece of themselves in providing for their neighbor’s table. So different from home – where grazing is limited to supermarket aisles, and farms so remote they seem almost a literary fiction.
It needn’t be this way. In fact, in some fortunate parts of our city, it isn’t. Just days after returning from Asia, I read that the Marines might occupy one of the city’s premier growing spots, the Virginia Avenue Community Garden. From the controversy that erupted, you’d have thought the Marines had choppered in, already locked and loaded. After four months walking and talking with farmers half-a-world away, I could understand why.
For years, the land the park now occupies withered with urban decay—an unused city lot at 9th and L Streets SE. But the Barracks Row neighborhood now buzzes with hip new restaurants, bars, and boutiques. Just a few blocks away, the Virginia Avenue Park has undergone a stark transformation too, from derelict lot to fruitful garden.
Over the past six years, a diverse caste of District families banded together to rebuild the Park. When I visited this past weekend, the spirit of the gardeners was intoxicating: a resolute group that believes this space is central to their revitalizing neighborhood. The gardeners represent a broad cross section of the city – old punk rockers, young families, government workers, retired military personnel – each with their own stories. But all their stories share a common theme: how the park with its fertile soil grew and enriched the soul of their community.
Sure, you can spend fifty dollars at the Dupont Circle farmers’ market, and gather ingredients for a special meal. But for fifty dollars a plot per year, the Virginia Avenue Community Garden not only makes fresh, organic food available to a far-broader cross-section of District families. Its beauty, its shared sense of growing something important together, can anchor a community far better than any number of new bistros and bars. We should keep the Garden.
The DC Food For All will host a volunteer workday at Common Good City Farm. The mission of the farm is to grow food, educate, and help low-income DC community members meet their food needs. We’ll get our hands dirty on the farm and have a potluck while sharing thoughts about food systems in DC, with a focus on food justice in communities.
We’ll work on Saturday, July 24, from 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. So bring your enthusiasm, good company, and a dish if the fancy strikes you. We’ll help out with things such as:
mounding potatoes
securing drip tape with hangers
woodchipping
weeding
planting!
securing tomato plants
processing cured garlic
potentially helping dig a rain garden
RSVP to Xi Wang at cele8stial@gmail.com by July 18 if you are interested in helping out and let us know if you can bring some food to share. Let’s get dirty!
Over the past year, Bread for the City has worked to expand our gleaning program to provide fresh, local produce to our clients. We are kicking off this season with a Glean for the City event on Saturday, July 17th and we need your help! We will travel to Parker Farms in Colonial Beach, VA. Join us in the fields, and help collect more than a ton of delicious sweet corn for our food pantry. The event will last from 9am to 2pm, including driving time. For more information, please contact Vince Hill. ————————————————————————
After weeks of unforgettable heat, the day dawned fresh and inviting, just the type of weather we needed for our first ever client gleaning project at Common Good City Farm. Sure enough, the day turned out to be educational, delicious, and fun.
Common Good City Farm, located about a half a mile from BFC’s NW center, is a neighborhood farm dedicated to raising awareness about food and food justice in DC. In addition to selling some of their produce to local restaurants, CGCF runs programs and workshops for low-income volunteers and school-aged children, as well as the curious, casual gardener. Several clients expressed interest in Common Good’s “Green Tomorrows” program, which provides a bag of fresh produce to low-income residents in exchange for two or more hours per week of instructional, hands-on work on the farm. Spencer Ellsworth and the other staff at Common Good City Farm generously took time to share their knowledge of urban gardening, basic plant care and food preparation.
Eating Well on a Budget, a new cookbook from Eating Well magazine and Countryman Press, features an opening essay, ‘Healthier Food, Happier Lives’, about Through The Kitchen Door’s unique training programs. Register early here or follow this link to the detailed invitation: http://ttkdcelebrates.eventbrite.com There will be a limited number of complimentary books in the Eating Well [...]
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