Collecting unsold produce for the hungry

Margaret Gifford makes her rounds on a recent Wednesday evening near closing time at the Carrboro Farmers' Market. With a cardboard box in hand, she reminds farmers that she's there to collect any produce they can't sell and won't keep until the next market day.

"We're collecting as always," Gifford tells Hailey Moses, who works for Cane Creek Farm.

"I have some stuff for you," Moses says, and hands yellow squash and zucchini to Gifford.

At another stall, Bill Brown of Fernrock Farm promises to give Gifford a few bouquets of daisies and phlox. "I could sell it but I'd be glad to give it to you," he says.

For more than two months, Gifford, a 44-year-old stay-at-home mom, has been collecting food from farmers to distribute to the hungry. To date, she has delivered more than 4,500 pounds of food to the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service in Chapel Hill, the Food Bank of Durham and Durham's Urban Ministries Center.

The idea came to Gifford, a market regular and former public relations executive, when she heard farmer Ken Dawson of Maple Spring Gardens talking about composting unsold tomatoes. "I noticed farmers taking some unbelievable produce home," she says. "We need to get the food from the people who have the food to the people who need the food."

The farmers all express sentiments similar to John Soehner's, who along with his wife, Cindy, owns Eco Farm: "I'd like to give it to somebody who can use it."

Gifford also wants her presence to send a message to shoppers. "I want people who shop here to have this on their mind: that's there hunger in this community," she says.

Gifford is a regular sight at the market on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. She can be found near the gazebo with a line of boxes waiting to be filled. Her 3-year-old daughter, Sophie, plays nearby. Her husband, John Whitehead, joins her on occasion, organizing the filled boxes into the back of their Subaru Outback.

UNC volunteers help

Her one-woman effort, which she now calls the Carrboro Farmers' Market Farmer Foodshare, aims to be a year-round effort. The UNC-Chapel Hill student group, Fair Local Organic, has started sending volunteers on Saturdays to help with distribution when the volume is more than Gifford's one vehicle can handle.

On that recent Wednesday night as the farmers start breaking down their stations, the collection begins. John Ferguson of Ferguson Farm donates two large boxes of ripe peaches, which were just selling for $4 to $7 a basket. Alex Hitt of Peregrine Farm brings over a box of tomatoes worth more than $60. Basil comes from Cane Creek Farm. Cucumbers come from Turtle Run farm. Elise Margoles of Elysian Fields Farm drops off a grocery bag filled with eggplant.

"Thanks for taking care of this," Leah Cook of Wild Hare Farm tells Gifford. "It's so nice that someone will take it from here."

What shouldn't go unnoticed is that Triangle shoppers pay a premium for these same fruits and vegetables. These farmers' produce also graces the plates at such fine restaurants as Lantern, Magnolia Grill and Fearrington House.

The majority of farmers at the Carrboro market, the state's oldest farmer-run market, grow organic food and use sustainable farming methods. This is the very food that Alice Waters, the slow-food guru and owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, so desperately wants to see growing in public school yards, served as part of the National School Lunch Program and made available to those most in need. That's happening here.

Farmers at the Durham Farmers' Market, another bastion of organic, sustainable produce, have been donating food to Urban Ministries for at least six years. The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle collects food twice a day from the wholesalers and retail farmers at the State Farmers Market in Raleigh.

Need is growing

These social service agencies are more than happy to use it. With unemployment in North Carolina reaching 11 percent, almost double what it was last summer, there are longer lines for free meals and increased demand at food pantries.

Chris Moran, executive director of the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service, the primary beneficiary of Gifford's organizing donations, says they have seen a 71 percent increase in the number of households that sought membership in their food pantry in the last 12 months. They also have seen a 105 percent increase in the number of meals they have served at the Community House and their women's shelter, HomeStart, during the same time period, Moran says.

The farmers' donations are used for meals in the community kitchen and as part of groceries handed out at the food pantry.

"All of our [fiscal] year-end numbers were up, particularly with food programs," Moran says. "The No. 1 service safety-net program that we provide to this community is food."

The current recession is showing, Moran says, that "there are countless individuals across the state who are food-insecure."

A little after 7 p.m. on that recent Wednesday, Gifford's husband, John, pulls into the Inter-Faith Food Council's parking lot. Two men come out of the building to help load a cart full of the boxes of produce.

"These homegrown? These German Johnsons?" staffer Chris Horton asks, looking inside a box of tomatoes.

Gifford explains that they are all types of organic heirloom tomatoes. "Can you all use these flowers?" she asks. Horton says the church can use them.

The next morning, a group of regulars from St. Joseph Christian Methodist Episcopal Church gather in the food council's community kitchen. Bernice Harrison of Chapel Hill is cutting ham slices from the bone to serve for lunch.

This group of about 10 women started cooking here in 2003. Harrison says she knew they had to become regulars after watching another volunteer ruin a beautiful squash casserole by pouring a can of pork and beans on top.

"You don't serve people that," says a still-indignant Harrison.

On this morning, the ladies are excited about the produce from the farmers' market. The basil from Cane Creek, the tomatoes from Peregrine, Wild Hare and Teikei farms and the cucumbers from Turtle Run are used to make a salad.

Belinda Caldwell of Chapel Hill is cutting up squash from Cane Creek, Teikei and Sunset farms to be topped with onions, salt, pepper, butter and a little sugar. Betty Geer of Chapel Hill is peeling and slicing those peaches from Ferguson Farm to make a fruit salad with grapes, blueberries and blackberries.

To make sure they have enough, they boil up some ears of corn from Brinkley farm.

"We're just old fashioned home cooks," says Joyce Long of Haw River.

Kitchen manager Donna Bradley says the second Thursday of the month, when these women cook, is one of their most popular meals. Today they will serve 148 people for lunch.

Among them are Jeff Davis and Maurye Schuler, both 45.

Davis says: "The fruits and vegetables are always fresh, always generous portions."

"It was fantastic," Schuler says about his lunch. "That was the best squash and corn since my mother cooked it."