Society Notebook: Farms for Food Equity helps turn surplus into sustenance

Farms for Food Equity raised $9,000 at a winter relief campaign kickoff party held at the Rosemont Market & Wine Bar in Thompson’s Point on December 8th. The event included raffles and silent auctions of handcrafted items such as textile art, jewelry, quilts and pottery, attended by over 50 people.

Penny Jordan, fourth-generation farmer and founder of Farms for Food Equity, said: “This year, the Sewell Foundation and private donations helped us serve her 70,000 meals in Cumberland and York counties.”

Don Morrison, Operations Manager for the Wayside Food Program, brought in shrink-wrapped, labeled produce and said that Bowd-Inham’s Six River Farm had more than 200 surplus cauliflowers earlier in the day. explained. The farm emailed Jordan, Jordan emailed Morrison, and 12 Unim volunteers processed that afternoon.

“These relationships are really important,” Morrison said.

Jordan sells produce from across the state at his farm shop in Cape Elizabeth, so he had a ready-made network to build a nonprofit.

Doug Clopp, Development Consultant at Scarborough, said: “That’s Farms for Food Equity.”

Board member John Naylor, co-owner of Rosemont Market, gave another example. After Thanksgiving, Bernstein said he had more than 300 live turkeys, but it was prohibitively expensive to keep feeding them. Farms for Food Equity immediately launched a fundraiser so he could get Barnstein to get the considerable work needed to process these birds for charity.

Kelsey Herrington of Two Farmers Farm in Scarborough said: I’m talking single digit margins. If you have more surplus than planned, it is important to make sure you are able to pay at least part of the surplus. Enough to cover the cost to pay. And we can feed more people. ”

For more information, visit farmsforfoodequity.org.

Amy Paradysz is a freelance writer and photographer based in Scarborough.she can be reached at [email protected]