Barbara Wheeler with some hopelessly ripe plums the deer will enjoy
By Madie Murray
Barbara Wheeler had four plum trees (two golden and two red) heavily laden with ripe organically-grown plums. She put a call out to a friend who passed the information along to the Farm to Cafeteria Committee, and a small band of volunteers arrived Thursday morning to efficiently and swiftly relieve the trees of their succulent burden and deliver them to the public school cafeteria.
In a very short period of time, eight boxes of plums were filled to the brim and soon will be pitted, processed and frozen so they can be used in school lunches this coming school year. Also, Paula Towne will be “borrowing” a few to use in her culinary class. A win-win all around.
A huge, huge thanks to Barbara for letting Farm to Cafeteria benefit from her delicious bounty of plums; and another huge thank you to Rick Markov, Addy Newcombe, Chelsea Cates, Evan Allred, April Pollock and Paula Towne for showing up on short notice to pluck and pack. Their generosity of time was rewarded with a nice bag of some of the best plums you’ll find anywhere.
Why not organize an official “clearing house” for other produce for the school(s), collect a group of ad hoc volunteers, and do as Barbara did??
Thanks very much for this suggestion. I think something like this could be in the offing some time in the near future as more and more small farms and orchards let us know of their desire to donate produce to the program – something for which we are very grateful!
Madie Murray,
Farm to Cafeteria Chair
This exact topic came up at a recent Sustainable Orcas Island meeting, where a couple of the attendees expressed interest in working on this.
Dear Madie, Thanks for the nice article but you gave me too
much credit. Steve Garrison, my neighbor, called and asked
me if I would participate in this program and, of course, I
readily agreed. Steve is the one to thank for getting the ball
rolling and he and Pat Diviney have Golden Eye Farm with
wonderful apple orchards which they share.