I had an insightful tête-à-tête with my good friend and executive coach, Dr. Curt Buermeyer recently.
I've known Curt for almost 2 decades, and right from the beginning, I realized that he was a forward-thinker, one who had a kind of prescience and ability to easily grasp the big-picture of things. Curt and I discussed how we might take Harvest Stewards from being a nice, clever idea to being a substantial and influential movement; something that leads people, something not only with purpose but also with a magnified impact. Much of our conversation circled around defining and segmenting Harvest Stewards' customer base. “Customers?”, you might ask; “How can you have customers when you GIVE stuff away for free?” Yeah, I thought the same things. But as we talked, it became ever clearer that apart from serving the needs of hungry folks, Harvest Stewards can also serve the needs of donors -of those who have money to put towards a charitable cause. Considering this customer segment, I see Harvest Stewards occupying a special niche. Harvest Stewards brings a unique value set to the table. First, all of our efforts are concentrated right here in the Greater Cincinnati area. Donations don't have to travel very far at all to be put to good work; donations help our very own neighbors and neighborhoods. Moreover, the type of food aid Harvest Stewards offers is uniquely life-changing not only for the recipient but also for the gardeners who contribute. We know that the people who receive food aid from Harvest Stewards generally do not make fresh produce a part of their regular fare. Produce, after all, is expensive, compared to so many other processed pre-packaged foods. Some of our recipients live in what we now call “food deserts”- those areas in which proper grocery stores are nowhere to be found. Whatever the case, and for whatever reasons, Harvest Stewards introduces folks to fresh, locally-grown (and most often, organically-grown) food. Part of our aim in this respect is to get folks to stay in the habit of eating healthful foods, eschewing junk foods. I also said that the food aid Harvest Stewards provides can be life-changing for the gardeners who so kindly and generously sacrifice their hard-won garden treasures. The connection between the gardener and the recipient is so very direct- from my hands to your mouth, essentially. This is intimately compassionate. To get more and more people involved in this kind of thoughtful, compassionate giving? That would be a profoundly positive, deeply transformational turn in the world. How could one not want to be a part of such a thing?
Many thanks to Dr. Curt Buermeyer for a good skull-session and the clarity that it has engendered (with more to come, for sure!).

A friend just recommended Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community. I haven't read it, but it seems like the sort of thing that should interest me. The title is more or less exactly what I would like to see churches (in particular) doing as a rule rather than as the exception. More on this later, after I finish reading it.

NKU Press Release, 7 December 2012

Here's a nice little press release about Harvest Stewards and the work we did last Summer with a group of community gardens around NKU. Many thanks to Maggie Gough for writing this!

Community Gardeners Share Bountythrough Partnership with Harvest Stewards
HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. – The Northern Kentucky Community Gardens has partnered with the newly established local nonprofit Harvest Stewards, LLC, to get produce into local food pantries. Each week Shan Bentz, director of Harvest Stewards, sets out and collects a bin at each garden site for gardeners to voluntarily share any excess vegetables they might have.

During the first growing season with the partnership in place, Harvest Stewards collected over 115 pounds of produce. The food that Harvest Stewards collected has gone to Action Ministries, Fairhaven Rescue Mission and Be Concerned.

“Most gardeners reach a point where they have more tomatoes or zucchinis than they know what to do with and we are glad to have provided them with a meaningful place to send such nutritious food,” said Rachel Wirrig, a gardener and member of the Northern Kentucky Community Garden Committee and associate pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church.

Bentz said the new partnership helps spread the Harvest Stewards narrative of “growing a little, giving a little.” He said it is not only the recipients of the produce who benefit through this type of program; it also helps create a greater sense of community, interdependence and responsibility for the care of others.

The Northern Kentucky Community Gardens will continue to partner with Harvest Stewards and Wirrig encourages other community garden sites to do so as well. “All we had to do was agree to let [Harvest Stewards] place the bins and let the gardeners know the option to share was available. Shan did the rest. It was so easy,” she said.

Harvest Stewards, LLC is working toward becoming a 501c3 charitable giving organization and Bentz said the organization hopes to expand its garden partnerships.

A different take on “junk food”

What a clever idea! I just finished reading a short piece in The Economist about a program in Mexico City that allows residents to “barter” their recyclables for fresh produce. I am seriously considering how Harvest Stewards might incorporate such an element of exchange in our food ministry. It seems like a great idea. Just to be clear, there's virtually no way at all that the market prices for recyclable materials could cover the cost of the foods delivered. But right now we're just giving them away anyway, so it certainly couldn't cost more.

100+

Here we are at the end of the growing season. It's been a good one, and I am grateful to the many community gardeners who have so generously donated from their gardens to the cause of feeding hungry folks. This year we grew, collected and donated over one hundred pounds of fresh produce. Those squash I mentioned in the previous post: they weighed in at around nine pounds, so we're now at 108.5 pounds for the year.

Late season update

In the last few weeks we've taken in and delivered quite a handy load of fresh vegetables (well fruits really, if you want to be perfectly accurate). One of our Northern Kentucky Community Gardeners, Terri Turner, generously ceded her plot for Harvest Stewards to glean a couple of weeks ago. “There may be a few tomatoes there, so take whatever you can find”, she told me in an email. In fact, there was well over 8 pounds of premium quality romas, yellow pears, beefsteaks and cherries to be had! Thanks so much, Terri! The folks at Be Concerned were so pleased to get them. With collections like that, plus some late-season harvest from the LBC Garden, our season total is just shy of 100 pounds! (99.52, to be precise.) I know we'll break the hundred pound mark, because there are at least two or three healthy butternut squash that will be donated once they ripen. Many thanks to all the gardeners who have so thoughtfully dropped a little bit here and a little bit there to help us feed hungry folks!

A great haul

The Northern KY Community Gardeners have really been great.  This morning I collected and delivered over fifteen pounds of produce -beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, melons and peppers- from the donation baskets at the gardens!  So far we're a few ounces shy of fifty pounds of donated produce this year.  I'm looking forward to passing along another fifty or so pounds by the end of the season.  This morning's produce went to the Fairhaven Rescue Mission in Covington.