In The News
Instructor Mark Hunsiker spotted in photo of Sandhills Farm to Table Co-Op Volunteers in The Pilot Newspaper
Neighbors Feeding Neighbors
11jul10
By Jennifer Kirby
Every week, in hundreds of Moore County, N.C., kitchens, countertops and refrigerators brim with farm-fresh local produce.
Much of the credit belongs to Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative, a movement that, still in its infancy, has exceeded even the grandest expectations. In a recent week nearly four tons of produce was distributed to about 980 households.
“And we really have only scratched the surface,” says general manager Fenton Wilkinson, a former attorney who found his niche in sustainable community development nearly 20 years ago. “The challenge now is, we’re maxed out for physical capacity. … It’s a wonderful conundrum.”
Eight years ago, when Wilkinson was new to the Sandhills of North Carolina, he first floated the idea of a food cooperative. He didn’t get much response, but every couple of years he tried again. In this case, the fourth time was the charm.
“It was a matter of patient persistence,” he says. “Finally it was the right time, and the ember really caught on and took off.”
A survey by local nonprofit Sustainable Sandhills last summer drew about 650 responses and indicated interest in a food cooperative was strong. Tim Emmert, Moore County’s community development coordinator, jumped on board early on; exploratory panels were formed; word spread, and the community response was enthusiastic. The movement seemed to be taking on a life of its own.
In September, self-described “foodie” Jan Leitschuh was in her yard, weeding her strawberries. “Fenton came over and started weeding with me, which is always a good sign,” she says. “He said, ‘I don’t want to do this alone. Would you do this with me?’ He knew he caught me in my weak spot, which is local food. We set to work, applied for some grants and the rest is history.”
Wilkinson started a similar program in Washington state in the late ’90s, so he had some idea what he was getting into. But the robust response here surprised even him.
“We knew the demand was there, but we didn’t anticipate really what that meant,” says Wilkinson. “It’s easy to sit down and on paper say, ‘Yeah, we’ll deliver 500 boxes a week.’”
He soon saw for himself that 500 boxes is “a huge mountain of boxes” – seven large pallets’ worth. “That,” he says, “was my first hint of, my goodness, what have we gotten ourselves into.”
In the earliest stages, organizers traveled the state talking with leaders of other food co-ops and studying various models. “The people were just very generous; they talked to us frankly about what worked and what didn’t, and that helped us start somewhere,” says Leitschuh, whose title is director of communication and farmer relations. “We’ve since had to tweak; the learning curve is steep. It’s different handling produce in your garden than in bulk in a box on a hot day, still being accountable for the quality. It’s tricky.”
Sandhills Farm to Table is the only food cooperative in the United States in which the consumers, the growers and the staff are equal owners with equal voices – a model that creates what Leitschuh calls a “dynamic accommodation.”
“People aren’t demanding cheap food, and the farmers are knocking themselves out to provide the best they can to their neighbors,” she says. “We’re trying to be a cooperative in the literal sense of the world: to grow, distribute and eat delicious food.”
The hope, adds Ann McAllister, who oversees distribution at one of two Pinehurst locations, is to create a win-win situation in which “every Moore County resident has secure access to sufficient local farm and food products.”
The co-op is not in competition with farmers markets, organizers emphasize. “What this does is guarantee the farmers purchase of their produce,” McAllister says. “Farmers markets are kind of iffy. It’s hard on the farmers to go out into their fields and then sit in the hot sun for several hours to sell their produce. And if it rains or something, people don’t show up.”
One of the co-op’s core values is “Neighbors feeding neighbors,” and the co-op works hard to put a face to the farmers who provide the produce. This spring, growers, staff and several hundred consumers attended a member meeting and potluck dinner. When Leitschuh introduced the farmers, members spontaneously gave them a standing ovation.
“These things just don’t happen,” Wilkinson says. “Our farmers – they get it. They are owning it more and more every week, working with [the staff] and cooperating with each other.
“What really warms my heart are all the connections that are being made. A lot of aspects of the community are getting touched in a positive way,” he adds. “This is about empowering people and the community. If we cooperate and work together, we have an enormous amount of power.”
Another of Sandhills Farm to Table’s guiding principles is “We’re all in this together,” and the food cooperative’s emphasis on community cannot be overstated.
There are canning classes. There are taste testings. There are potluck dinners.
Wilkinson “really wanted to build community into this thing, and I think that’s where he’s really brilliant,” says Leitschuh.
The weekly produce boxes are distributed not at a “pickup site” but at a “gathering site,” and the difference is more than semantics, Leitschuh says.
“People are hungry to reconnect, and [Wilkinson] encouraged the gathering sites to be a place you could meet your neighbor, talk about recipes, use the exchange box. Or, if you need to, run in and pick up your box and go, but the opportunity is there for it to be a pleasant experience,” she says.
Even the weekly newsletters, compiled by Leitschuh, contribute to the sense of community, co-op members say.
“The newsletters are very educational about the struggles of the farmers and how the weather impacts what we receive in our boxes,” says co-op member Sandi Anderson of Southern Pines. “It’s easy to complain about less-than-perfect produce you buy in the grocery store, but when you receive your produce box with very ripe strawberries that need to be eaten in a day, you know that the ripeness is due to the amount of rain we got last week. Because of the sense of ownership you feel, you do not want to waste anything. So you get creative … like making strawberry jam or peach cobbler.”
The newsletters also contain recipes galore. After all, what good is good food if you don’t know what to do with it?
“It’s all well and good to offer these things, but a lot of people don’t know how to cook a lot of it,” says McAllister. In years of volunteering at an Aberdeen food pantry, she’d noticed that the older women tended to know how to cook a lot of what they received, “but the younger ones just know how to open a box. They’ll tell you that a lot of things they write off: ‘I don’t know how to cook that.’”
Although exchange boxes are available at each gathering site (one person might trade his green peppers for another person’s sweet corn, for example), members frequently cite the “forced variety” in their diet as one of their favorite aspects of the co-op.
Sometimes boxes contain unfamiliar foods, such as bok choy, a type of cabbage, which was offered earlier this summer. Other times, members find themselves eating produce they probably would have passed over at the grocery store.
“One week I wanted to exchange beets – I had never tried them – and the man at my location encouraged me to keep them and try them, at least on my 1-year-old daughter,” says Amanda Talbert of Pinebluff. “I ended up pureeing the beets and mixing them with mashed potatoes and she absolutely loved them. It made me really glad I did not trade them out like I wanted to.”
The co-op donates produce to local nonprofits ranging from food pantries to Communities in Schools to Friend to Friend, which serves victims of domestic violence. Many members share the contents of their boxes with friends and neighbors.
And information the co-op provides on canning and freezing produce helps minimize waste. “We get so much food I am able to freeze a ton of it,” Talbert says. “That means we can have sweet corn in December, strawberry cobbler in the dead of winter and onion rings whenever I want.”
“None of the food is wasted,” says McAllister. “It’s getting to people, and this is all part of what we wanted it to do.”
As word spreads about the co-op, interest is building in all segments of the community.
Sandhills Pediatrics is providing an every-other-week box subscription to its 48 employees. “A couple of the doctors got really excited about it and internally decided, wouldn’t this be a great benefit,” says Wilkinson. “This is the kind of thing we would hope other companies could see the benefit of.”
And FirstHealth of the Carolinas’ Happy Kitchens program, a cooking- and nutrition-education program for low-income people, provided co-op produce boxes for its students. When the program ended, many of the students wanted to continue with the box subscriptions, so Sandhills Farm to Table set about qualifying to accept food stamps. (The process continues, but organizers are hopeful it will be completed soon.)
“I absolutely love the program and feel so blessed to play a part in it,” says Anderson. “One of my favorite things about Southern Pines is the feeling of community, and SF2T only strengthens this for me. Being able to support local farmers and their businesses while putting farm-fresh produce on my family’s table is a win-win situation.”
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Hot and Healthy Yoga Studio mentioned on redcrossmoorenc.org. Together students and studio donated nearly $1000 to Haiti Relief.
| Moore County Supports Disaster Relief in Haiti |  |
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As of July, the Moore County Chapter of the American Red Cross, representing Moore and Richmond counties, has received $40,000 in donations directed to the relief efforts in Haiti. Support has been tremendous. Donations have come from so many sources!
We thank each and every one of you who have donated to the American Red Cross for Haiti! |