SHAWANO, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A Shawano County and University of Wisconsin-Extension grant funded a survey to find out what people were eating in the area. The results showed it wasn’t enough fresh food.
While the grant ended three years ago, out of it came a non-profit that continues to bring more local fresh foods to residents. According to the study, just 95 of the areas 1,200 farms offered food to residents.
Boxed and canned foods fill the shelves at the Shawano area food pantry. Florence Withers runs the pantry. She tells FOX 11….
“Can’t live on Ramen noodles. We gotta have something else to eat.”
There are some things that the pantry never gets from a food drive — fresh foods. But Withers says that’s what they need.
“They’ll take all kinds of zucchini squash in the fall or whatever it happens to be.”
Those fresh foods were rarely an option before The Fresh Project.
“They just weren’t getting it or they would get it and it just wasn’t enough,” said Barbara Mendoza, executive director of The Fresh Project.
Mendoza tells FOX 11 healthy and affordable food is hard to find in rural Shawano County.
“In the food deserts people don’t have the transportation to go to their little general store that they have and if they do a lot of times the produce is overpriced. So they have to decide, do I buy canned or fresh? So they very seldom get fresh produce.”
The Fresh Project has grown from a single grant survey to a nonprofit in three years. It buys produce and meat from local farms during the growing season. Mendoza sells it cheaply from a mobile market around Shawano County. The Fresh Project also has eight community gardens.
“The produce that we plant, maintain and harvest is donated to our share the bounty tables, donated to our local food pantries and also to our shelters.”
The community gardens alone grew more than 3,000 pounds of vegetables in 2019.
“We got an additional 2,000 pounds from just gardeners who had more than enough from their garden,” said Mendoza. “So they donated to the share the bounty too. And anyone can pick up from those tables. Anyone can drop off anyone can pick up.
The food on the Share the Bounty tables is free, no questions asked.
While farmers will offer up any food they can in a season, during the winter there is much less to go around.
“The produce isn’t here. We can’t,” said Mendoza. “So what we like to do, in the summertime we like to show them how to can. How to prepare the vegetables and get them ready so they can still have them in the wintertime.”
The Fresh Project also teaches the young and old about nutrition and how to cook healthy meals.
