(jazzy blues music)
Just 15 miles southwest of Mobile, Alabama, there's a major operation
underway to feed the hungry. Well, we fought our way through the
rainstorm to Theodore, Alabama, to Feeding the Gulf Coast, which is a nonprofit
organization set up to feed needy people along the Gulf Coast.
This is Cindy Bloom, produce strategy manager, and last year alone they gave
away 22 million pounds of food to needy people along the Gulf Coast. So Cindy is
going to show us around the facility and we're going to see the garden that our
friend Pat Smith is in charge of maintaining, right, her whole job, her
whole part-time job is to maintain their produce garden in the back. So we're
gonna check it out so stay with us. Okay? Perfect. Ha, ha, ha.
Well, feeding the Gulf Coast, we have 40 beds devoted solely to production and
then another few beds devoted solely to an education garden. So our production
garden, it just kept growing and growing and so it turned out we needed, and we
had funding, for a part-time staff member, so, of course, that's when Patricia
came on and she has managed the garden for over a year.
We actually own 29,000 square feet back behind this fence and we've contracted
with a permaculture designer and he has written us a plan to develop all of
it into a permaculture design. Wow! We don't have the funding yet. When I came here
the beds was full of cogon grass. It was really invasive. It was really bad,
but I know I can still make stuff grow in it, so I did, and also, I talked to my
vegetables. I talk to them, so they grow for me and I harvest. Last year, I tripled
their production here, yes. That's awesome. Yeah, and it was like, I did it.
They put me on the ad in the newsletter. Yeah, I was like surprised. So Cindy, where do the
fresh vegetables go? The fresh vegetables, our harvests are all grown in an organic
manner, so obviously, they're fresh and very nutritious for our clients, and so
they're distributed to our 400 partners throughout the central Gulf Coast. The
production garden is only one avenue of where we source local produce from, and
it's the highest quality of produce that we can provide to our agencies, but we do
have other sources of our produce. If we get the funding for it we definitely
could expand, so right now, as Patricia said, when she came aboard, we just didn't
have the staff time to devote to the garden, and so being able to have just
even Patricia 20 hours a week that tripled our production just having
somebody who actually cared and who was devoted to that time. So if we were able
to even have her for more time we could produce a whole lot more, I'm sure.
Pat, with your situation, with your son, your children and everything, would you
be even able to work 40 hours a week? No, it's really hard, It's hard now just the 20
hours. Right. Have you ever counted up how many different plants you're growing? I just
grow. Ha, ha, ha. I say about 30. Different things? Yeah. What grows especially well here? I heard
that okra, okra, yes, and black-eyed peas. So where do you get the seeds? Do you
rely on donations? Donations. In the last two months, they've harvested over 400
pounds of produce from the garden. Wow! And so what Patricia and I, we're in the
process of having a little bit more of an intentional garden plan, so that our
production can be at that level as much as possible. Things that aren't
intimidating to people, like things that they see all the time, like carrots and
the leeks and bell peppers and cucumbers, so that there's no hesitation to take
them. It's just been so bad. Only thing to do is just stand out here and look and see
what I can do about pulling weeds. Yeah. So it's not the heat so much that
bothers us, it's the rain down here, because we're one of the rainiest cities
in the country. Would that necessitate at some point having a greenhouse so that you
can control the water? That's on, that's one of our wish list items. We have
part of a greenhouse donated and so we're working through the process of
completing that. And talk to me about your rain capture.
So this is our rain capture tank and it waters only half of our garden, our
education garden, and the rest of the garden is run off of an electric well pump.
Working here changed my life because I'm able to grow food and give to families
that's in need and knowing that it's safe, organic, no
pesticide, and I know when I'm handing to the agencies,
I don't have to worry about nobody getting sick, or wonder if anything's on it like poison
or anything, and I feel better about myself knowing they're eating something that's safe and
healthy. Well, you sound like you have a great partnership, the two of you. We're
growing. Yeah. That's the idea, right? Yes, growing together. Yeah. Growing and growing.
Well, let's go inside and see the warehouse.
(bluesy piano music)
Over half of the food that we receive here at the food bank comes from
grocery stores, so like Walmart, Target, Winn-Dixie, and we go and pick up
every single day. And our staff will pick up, it's nothing to pick up 2500 pounds
just of produce on a Monday, just from one store, near to the end of its life, bakery
items, fresh meats, and dairy that we have the walk-in cooler to store our produce,
but we also have a walk-in freezer, so we can store all of our meats to maintain
as fresh as possible. In our country, they say about 25 to 40%
of all food is wasted, so it's not that we don't have enough food to feed
everyone in America, it's the logistics. And so where we come in, is, we go and pick up
the food and it's donated to us and then we get
it out to the community, so the food is not wasted. We work with 400 partner
agencies, and those are Church pantries, nonprofits in the
community, Salvation Army, Boys and Girls Club, after-school programs for
kids, summer programs for kids, just anyone who's a non-profit, we can
distribute food to, and they give it to the people in need in their area. Soup kitchens,
homeless shelters, you name it. Anyone who's a non-profit is welcome to get
food from here. And they come and pick up from here, in their own trucks? They do, and we also have programs that deliver the food to
their locations, because we have agencies over 100 miles away. We have two
warehouses, we cover Southern Mississippi, Southern Alabama, and Florida, up until
Panama City. Where do you get most of your funding?
All over, wherever we can find it. It's grant. So we're a member of Feeding
America, they secure a lot of contracts for us, and make grant recommendations,
our summer feeding program and our after-school snack program is funded
by the Department of Agriculture USDA, but the rest of it is privately funded.
My life's passion is healthy food distribution. My undergraduate work was
in Social Work, my Masters is in public health and I think both of those skills
led me to where I am today at Feeding the Gulf Coast, and we can feed
people, there's enough food, it just has to be done correctly, and so I'm excited
to do this work. Hi, what's your name? Peggy Lyles. How long have you worked here,
Peggy? 25 years. And what do you do here? Purchase and inventory manager. That's
awesome! Very awesome, love it. You obviously love it, or you wouldn't
have been here 25 years. I do. I love the mission. I love the mission itself. I love what we do,
the people that we help, so that's, you know, once you buy into that mission, once
you know that there are people out there that really are in need, you'll love it.
I hear you like Pat's hibiscus tea. Listen, I don't think she'd do anything
wrong. I like everything that she does, you know, so it's whatever she brings me
that's what I like to do. She introduces me to a lot of things that I don't know
anything about, so, if she says, "here try it," I think I'm her guinea pig. Ha, ha, ha. Well, thank you
so much, Cindy, for showing us around, and it's been an absolute pleasure and my friend Pat
Smith and I are going to keep in touch on Facebook, but you wanted to talk about
a little bit about hunger, right? In our service area, particularly, one in six
people struggle with hunger and one in four children struggle with hunger. It's
so important to feed them healthy food because when you're stressed
financially, the first thing to go is the health and the nutritious quality of
your food. So the garden out back, the work that Patricia does here, is so
essential to the overall health of our community, so we're very thankful to have
Patricia here and all of her expertise. And I think that Patricia needs some
help, so if anybody wants to volunteer, are they welcome to come out? Yes, volunteer, donations..
They could really use volunteers in the garden and what an incredible opportunity to
learn about growing food and to work with somebody that's so inspiring as Pat,
and just get out here and help Pat in the
garden, because the more produce they can produce, the healthier the community will
be. Right? Yes. Thank you so much! Thank you! Thanks for coming!
Thank you Pat. Okay. You're welcome here anytime. BFF Best Friends Forever, ha, ha.
Alright.
(bluesy music ends)
Good job, guys!