The biggest news for the month of December is that our club made the Rotary magazine after the editors used excerpts of an article with photos that I sent to them about our Farm to Family Program created and led by our super Rotarian Earl Knauss (https://www.hamburgrotaryclub.org/). Earl's picture and my excerpted article appear in the People of Action Around the Globe section.Our Farm to Family program works with over 20 sites and so far in 2023 has delivered over 120,000 pounds of food. The program was started by our member Earl Knauss. He has taken this program from concept to the current state of success. Food donations are continuing through November.
PHOTO: Earl Knauss
- Eileen Hotho
Earl Knauss got a lesson in food waste when he received a neighbor’s gift of three bushels of red peppers that had been cast aside by a farm because they were misshapen. “I discovered that odd-shaped, blemished, and imperfect vegetables were dumped or destroyed,” says Knauss, of the Rotary Club of Hamburg in western New York state. He asked the farm’s owner for more of the unsalable produce and collected 18-gallon totes of vegetables that he sent to food pantries. The Farm to Family project has since expanded to include three farms, and the Hamburg club formally adopted it in 2018. From May to December, Rotary members and friends work alongside Knauss delivering vegetables to about 3,000 families. In 2022, they provided more than 100,000 pounds of vegetables to 23 distribution sites. Among them is the Resurrection Life Food Pantry in Cheektowaga, where pantry director Kim Reynolds says the site would not have many fresh vegetables without the program. “Our clients rely on Farm to Family to fill that gap,” she says.