Rocky Mountain Voice

Tag: Food banks

Colorado campaign connects hungry families with local farmers
ScottKJames.com, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado campaign connects hungry families with local farmers

By Scott K. James | Commentary, Scott's Sheet A Colorado campaign aims to connect local producers with families facing hunger, proving that neighborly common sense can still do useful work. There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a kitchen table when the grocery money runs out before the groceries do. Parents know that quiet. It is the sound of someone mentally moving numbers around, stretching one dinner into two and wondering whether the kids will notice that the cereal box is mostly optimism and cardboard dust. A few miles away, a Colorado farmer or rancher may be doing some difficult math of his own. The crop is ready. The cattle have been fed. The work has already been done. The buyer, however, is never guaranteed. You would think connecting ...
Colorado received close to $12M in pandemic-era funding to help food banks buy local produce, but the money is running low
Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado received close to $12M in pandemic-era funding to help food banks buy local produce, but the money is running low

By Parker Yamasaki | The Colorado Sun On Wednesday evenings at the edge of a wide parking lot in Aurora, there is a forest green pop-up tent with five large, scraped-up coolers stacked nearby. The coolers hold 27 bags of fresh produce, harvested that morning at Switch Gears Farm in Longmont.  The arugula gets picked first, Vanita Patel, co-founder and co-owner of Switch Gears explained. The farmers chop the spicy leaves down early in the morning while the air is still cool, soak them in cold water for an hour then spin them dry, rinse again and bag it all up. The potatoes and shallots are pulled straight out of the ground and thrown into the bags — the dirt on their skin helps them keep fresh longer. There are heirloom tomatoes and two shades of beets. There are also a couple of...