Connecting Gardening and Food, and Fighting Hunger

Womanswork hosted another evening meal at The Lunch Box in Poughkeepsie last week. On a typical evening The Lunch Box serves 150 people who need a hot meal. They also serve lunch on week days but this has expanded to include dinners whenever they can get volunteers like us to do it. The numbers of people in need of services like this have been growing here in Dutchess County, NY, like everywhere else. 

Nora Madonick, a new friend in town, has volunteered to help us whenever we do these evenings. She recommends that we recruit others to help us in the future and that we split the responsibilities of cooking the meal.  I agree!  I wanted to see what it felt like to cook for such a big group and now I know!

There is a strong connection between gardening and food, and Womanswork has made a commitment as a company to help fight hunger, starting locally. We will keep building our network of friends who want to volunteer with us so we can continue to volunteer at The Lunch Box.  We are more than a garden glove company.

Time allowing, there is a dynamic group called The Poughkeepsie Food Project, that I want us to get involved with also.  PFP has a community garden and farmers market, and has programs aimed at teaching the value of “growing your own” to teens and others. They make large food contributions to people in need as well. Tom and I spent a recent Saturday brainstorming with them on ideas for the coming season.