Healthy Food - Healthy Community!

When asked for updates and information about UShare to include in this newsletter, David Bradford offered the following “additional highlights” of the program...

• Delivering produce to Potsdam for two special distributions for families with school kids not receiving subsidized breakfasts and lunches during the summer.

• Providing fresh produce for a nutrition/ cooking class put on by Cornell Cooperative Extension in Massena.

• Hosting migrant tutoring teen clients for a work party at the Cecilie Garden.

And these are additional highlights!!

It has been an amazing summer for our first-year UShare program. Many many church members and friends have joined the effort to grow and harvest fresh, organic produce for distribution to food pantries and neighborhood centers in our region.

From the Priest Field Garden in Canton and the Cecilie Garden in Potsdam (now in it’s third year) we have harvested more than 50 pounds of produce a week:
bush beans, broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, head lettuce, leaf lettuce, beets, carrots, onions, eggplant, crooked neck squash, summer squash, zucchini, green peppers, Swiss chard, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

The beans are still coming (pole beans yet to come), a second planting of broccoli is producing beautiful heads (with a third yet to come), a lot of little eggplants are growing, the peppers continue to produce, and tomatoes at Priest field have just started (Cecilie is ahead). Down the road we’re looking at potatoes, Hubbard squash, pumpkins, and watermelons. The Cecilie Garden in Potsdam is well on its way to meeting the 1000-pound goal Jess Pletcher set for this summer.

Thanks to terrific coordination by David Bradford, produce has been distributed to 17 locations (food pantries and neighborhood centers) in 14 different townships from Hammond and Dickinson Center, and Massena down to Russell.

We’ve had good outreach about the program, with feature articles in the Plaindealer, the Watertown Daily Times, the Courier Observer, and the Advance News. We’ve also had pictures in many local papers and we were even the “Photo of the Day” on the NCPR website twice!