Once again the Veggie Stand was a great success! The weeks seem to be flying by. I am always surprised once it’s all wrapped up on Thursday night that distribution is over for the week once again. However, the following Thursday comes just as fast! We certainly have gotten a routine down for the week – between harvesting at the farms, picking up vegetables at community gardens, and creating signs, recipes and surveys for the stand.

Since Alexa still away oIMG_0923n vacation, I tried to remember all of the tasks to be completed throughout the week. It helps to have a fairly standard routine to follow each day that can also be adapted if need be. After speaking with everyone who participated in VIC last year, the model we have created for this summer seems to be more time efficient and more productive than any of the weeks from last season.

With over 600 pounds of produce, the Veggie Stand “sold out” for the first time. All of the vegetables were taken except for some tomatoes and a few cucumbers and patty pan squash. It was exciting to see all of the returning customers as well as new faces. Two different residents were kind enough to make the workers of the stand dishes to share. This was such a kind gesture, maybe we could encourage this kind of sharing at future distribution nights. Alexa and I planned to have a potluck on the last Thursday night of the season; however having impromptu food tastings is a great way to build more community space.

This week the community involvement demo/event was an activity for kids. One of our Lafayette volunteers, Miranda Wilcha, created a sheet mural, which the kids painted with vegetables and flowers. We hope to hang it at future distribution nights. PIMG_0926ainting was great for the kids because they were able to get a little messy and have fun while learning what each vegetable looks like. I must extend a huge thank you to Miranda for making the mural and helping the kids paint. It looked a little chaotic at times, but I think the kids really enjoyed themselves. VIC was happy to see the Mayor of Easton,  Sal Panto, and the president of Lafayette College, Allison Byerly, at the Veggie Stand. We’re truly grateful for all their support of the program and everything that we are trying to accomplish. I thought it was also good for the residents to know that the Mayor is in support of the Veggie Stand.

In addition to Veggie Stand preparations, I continued my research on nutrition and value throughout the past week. One of the goals of VIC and the food movement on a large scale is to provide, not only locally grown food, but nutritious food as well. By providing the residents of the West Ward with fresh vegetables we hope that they will be encouraged to cook with more vegetables. With the amount of variety that we supply, I hope that residents try to make new dishes or experiment with the veggies to find what makes them taste the best, while keeping them nutritious. When valuing vegetables there are many approaches that one can forgo. There is a dollar value, a pound value, and a nutritional value. And while VIC doesn’t so much examine cost and pounds are easy to measure, the nutritional value of a vegetable is a metric that Dr. M and I are continually trying to establish. We aim to find out, as a total with the vegetables we have each week, how many people we could possibly feed based on Recommended Daily Allowances (RDAs) of vitamins and minerals.

In conjunction with the most nutritious vegetable, we also want to know which vegetable residents used most often once they returned home. The only way for us to collect data on this metric would be through surveys asked at the stand. In knowing this information, we could possibly reevaluate certain vegetables that we plant. If they aren’t being used then it seems to not be worth the resources to grow that specific veggie. However, since some of the vegetables come from farms/gardens where we do not have control over what goes in the ground, we can not dictate what is at the stand each week. Some vegetables are high in nutrients – kale, for instance – but some people do not know what it is or how to cook it; which is why the educational aspect of the Veggie Stand is also very important. I hope residents enjoy the veggies they pick up and find that vegetables can be tasty and nutritious. I think the Veggie Stand is doing very well and I hope it continues to grow each and every week.