The Community FREEdge: A Pilot Project
This past summer the Kearsarge Food Hub put out some feelers in the community for a donation of a refrigerator. We wanted to experiment with having a community fridge on the porch here at the Sweet Beet, to stock with fresh local foods for neighbors to access any time.
This idea was originally recommended to us by long time volunteer and food hub friend Kaylin. There has been a growing movement around the country to set up these sites, sometimes referred to as FREEdge’s - FREE fridge - for folks to grab what they need any time, no questions asked.
The FREEdge on the porch at Sweet Beet
Many people answered the call of donating a refrigerator, and we ended up getting one from our friends at Colby-Sawyer College. We reached out to our partner Laura at the Bradford Food Pantry to strategize how best to implement this new community resource given all her experience serving folks in town. She was so excited about the idea, having had a similar idea herself. The pantry is open on Wednesdays from 5:30-7:30, and though Laura and other volunteers commonly help folks access food outside those hours, there is a lot of room to grow in terms of increasing food availability.
We’ve been working closely with Laura and the Bradford Food Pantry for years, donating fresh fruits and vegetables sourced from local farms, and building and maintaining a small community garden on site at the pantry.
Laura remarks, “The Bradford food pantry has been working with Sweet Beets [the Kearsarge Food Hub] for several years to provide fresh fruit and vegetables to the residents of Bradford who are in need of a helping hand. As a non profit food pantry run mainly by donations, without the assistance of Sweet Beets we would not be able to provide healthy alternatives to these families. We depend monthly on their generous and kind donations.”
The FREEdge is very much an extension of our support to the pantry and their clients. To start, rather than broadcasting this service widely, Laura suggested that she connect directly with the families she serves to let them know about the FREEdge. Starting slow, we wanted to test the capacity of this resource and ensure it would help families right here in our own town, first and foremost. We also reached out to other groups in town like the local police station to let them know that there may be some activity on the porch, as folks are welcome to access the fridge any time they needed, 24/7.
Our role here at the hub is to stock the FREEdge regularly with locally sourced produce, meat and bread. Laura also comes by to stock from time to time. Together, we’ve made sure the FREEge is cleaned and stocked, and we send photos of what’s inside each week to Laura so she can pass if on to her clients.
Over these past couple months, we’ve noticed that this resource is absolutely being utilized. We’ve heard from Laura and folks stopping by that people are finding it incredibly helpful and supportive to be able to come by anytime and grab what they need.The next step is to build a winterized enclosure to keep the FREEdge through all the New Hampshire seasons!
We still consider this a pilot project and are learning what capacity this resource has to serve more folks in the Kearsarge area. While we do hope that it can grow to serve more neighbors, we are prioritizing our relationship with Laura and the Bradford Food Pantry to connect directly with local families experiencing food insecurity before we publish this resource more widely.
The Future of Food Security at the Kearsarge Food Hub
Jake, first KFH Farmer Apprentice and now Food Security Manager
As of October 2021, the Kearsarge Food Hub created a brand new position designed to take food access initiatives like this to the next level. Our new Food Security Manager, Jake, is responsible for ordering weekly from hyper-local farms to stock Sweet Beet Market, supplying local food pantries, and caring for the FREEdge.
Jake was our first Farmer Apprentice, which was an immersive program into regenerative farming to feed the community. When that program ended, KFH created this Food Security Manager Position for Jake. We were lucky enough that he wanted to stick around and join the food hub team long term, and he’s been doing an amazing job! While we’ve been growing our food access initiative and donation program steadily over the past 6 years, we’ve never had a job specifically focusing on hyper-local ordering and food donations in this way. This represents beautiful, sustainable growth for our nonprofit efforts!
Another exciting program related to the FREEdge is the shared FEED (Food Expansion, education and distribution) Kearsarge initiative, of which Kearsarge Food Hub is a founding member.
FEED Kearsarge partners, and specifically food hub friend and community partner Andy Jeffrey, have recently taken on gleaning projects in the Kearsarge area this fall to rescue food from local fields. Folks have reached out with an abundance of produce that they simply cannot manage to harvest and Andy has led the way in mobilizing Kearsarge Neighborhood partners volunteers and Colby-Sawyer College students to get out here and harvest hundreds of pounds of food that then make their way to Kearsarge Food Hub for storage and distribution. This process is called gleaning - gathering leftover grain or produce after a harvest.
So far, 600 pounds of potatoes and 800 pounds of carrots have made their way to Jake, who then ensures their proper storage and distribution to food access sites including the FREEdge.
There is a lot of impact emanating from these food security efforts and community partnerships. Our number one hope here at the Kearsarge Food Hub is not only to support small farms and get more fresh foods into local homes, but to show all neighbors that they are supported and cared for. That is the heart of community resilience.