A grant-funded collaboration gets fresh produce on the tables of families in need – and benefits the Shenandoah Valley farmers who grow it. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
[bird song, people walking on gravel]
On a warm morning in early May, Dave and Lee O'Neill are giving a tour of Radical Roots – their certified organic vegetable farm in Keezletown. We start with the high tunnels, where open-ended, arched frames covered in white plastic protect 130-foot rows of vibrant salad greens.
DAVE O'NEILL: When it's really on, we can get two pounds per bed foot, so from one bed we can get up to 260 pounds of cut leaf lettuce here. … Let's check out bed number three! Watch your step here.
Radical Roots is one of the growers for the 'Fresh Veggie Series.' This program, coordinated by the Harrisonburg-based organization Vine and Fig, buys high quality, local produce and distributes it to schools, food pantries, health clinics, and other partners. It's funded by grants from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. VDACS Commissioner Joseph Guthrie was one of the tour guests.
JOSEPH GUTHRIE: You do not have perfectly level land here.
LEE O'NEILL: Yes!
GUTHRIE: And you just took what you had, I think this is impressive. … Rockingham County geography, topography, [everyone laughs] and made it into very productive indoor agriculture.
LEE O'NEILL: … And this area, before there were tunnels here, was not very productive.
DAVE O'NEILL : … Yeah, this was our heavier clay soil on this slope, so we've come in and we've made permanent, deep compost raised beds. So we have four inches of compost here and the crops have totally responded.
In another tunnel, a thigh-high forest of curly kale grows under a cloth that lets sunlight in while keeping bugs out.
LEE O'NEILL: As long as we can keep the pests out, we will be harvesting it in September. It actually went to the schools last year!
DAVE O'NEILL: … We say, "kale yeah." [laughter]
The program grew out of a COVID-era initiative, when Radical Roots and Vine and Fig handed out produce to elementary school families while public school buildings – and thus, cafeterias – were closed. In 2022, they got their first VDACS grant and started adding nonprofit partners who pass on the veggies to the community.
KATHY YODER: Vine and Fig is purchasing all this food from the farmers. It's not donated.
Kathy Yoder is the director of Vine and Fig's Educational Outreach Program.
YODER: And so we choose farms that are aware of environmental sustainability. They're building the soil health, therefore – more research is showing that – if you have healthy soil, then your vegetables will be able to absorb those nutrients and use those nutrients to grow a healthier plant!
The grant funding has allowed the O'Neills to move away from the time-intensive process of packaging and selling to retail stores and farmer's markets.
LEE O'NEILL: With the grant, we can sort of pick the things that we know are the most productive, that people want, that are going to do the best, to make those dollars of the grant go as far as possible. And so by having that control, it allows us to do the best that we can, and therefore it's super efficient. The grant has been amazing, just watching all the food go into our local community.
The education piece comes in with Vine and Fig's weekly recipes and videos in English and Spanish, like this one narrated by Sammy Joy Whitaker.
[music playing in video]
SAMMY JOY WHITAKER: So, cilantro is typically used as a garnish, but I eat it with pretty much everything! I'm Mexican American so I put it in almost all of my food. … But something about storing cilantro is that it does wilt really easily, so I'm going to show you a great way to store it, so that way you can just pull it out and use it on any dish that you want to!
Another farm partner is the St. Isidore Homestead & Permaculture in Grottoes, a family farm started by Pedro Aponte, who also teaches musicology at James Madison University.
PEDRO APONTE: We came up with a mission early on, which was to produce food for our family and our community using sustainable methods and agricultural practices in accordance with Catholic social teachings. So the care for the common good is very important. So we're really interested in serving those around us. We have an obligation to love our neighbor, and that's why this program is so incredibly important for us.
One of the veggie recipients is Our Community Place, a community center that regularly serves around 100 people at breakfast and lunch. Full disclosure, the kitchen there is my old stomping ground.
[music, hood vents running in the background]
BRANDON PATTERSON: Radical Roots has been a great help to us, too, in getting us veggies and stuff. A lot of the time we wouldn't have as many fresh veggies, and it really gets us away from eating the canned stuff.
Brandon Patterson is OCP's kitchen manager.
PATTERSON: We'll do a lot of mixes, like green beans one day, and then we'll have corn and salad the next day. And then usually we have a lot of chicken or turkey-based proteins. But yeah, we usually try to focus a lot on eating healthier.
Kathy Yoder said they currently have funding for the Fresh Veggie Series through 2025. They're waiting to hear back on two more VDACS grants, including the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program. Yoder hopes to see funding for this and similar programs in the next 'farm bill' – the package of federal legislation that covers everything from crop insurance to forest conservation.
YODER: You can urge your local congressman to support the inclusion of funds for local food purchases in the next farm bill.
The Fresh Veggie Series is growing, too, hoping to add a nonprofit garden in Staunton this season.
