At The Sharing Farm one of our main donations to the Richmond Food Bank is leafy greens. Last year we donated 1533 lbs, which, considering how light they are, is a lot of leaves!
We love greens for a number of reasons, not least because they are fast-growing. Arugula takes only 28 days until it is ready to harvest, unlike cucumbers that take 90 days or tomatoes that take 120 days. Even better, you can harvest all the leaves from the plant, and then in a week or two, they have regrown and you can harvest again! If you’re lucky you can harvest them up to three or four times.
This speedy maturity means we can get produce to the food bank earlier on in the year and keep supplying them in regular donations throughout the growing season. Thanks to a grant this year from the Sage Foundation, our greenhouses are currently packed with tatsoi, spinach, arugula and kale, and we’ll be harvesting them for donation in the next couple of weeks.
As well as speed and yield we also love greens because they are highly nutritious and enjoyed by most people, regardless of cultural background. Also, (and I can tell you from personal experience) they taste incredible; beating any supermarket greens hands down for flavour.
However, there is one major drawback: leafy greens don’t stay fresh for long. This was presenting us with a problem. The food bank had to distribute all the greens immediately after they picked them up from the farm. This meant that clients who were coming at different times of the week were not receiving The Sharing Farm’s leafy greens - ever.
Thanks to the Richmond Community Foundation this is a thing of the past. The solution was simple, but highly effective. All we needed were totes with lids, and lots of them! The Richmond Community Foundation bought us 100 totes and now our greens can last a whole week in the cooler, making them available to people all week long.
Sometimes, simple is best!
