It has finally cooled off here this week, as I (Maria Arnot) write from my office at the Diabetes Coalition. I was having a hard time deciding what to write about this week: I worked all day Friday to get one of our high tunnels ready for fall, and will be working the remaining too this week, but it seemed to be a redundant topic.
So I wanted to take the time to brag on our local food projects for a minute, and share some recent publicity.
Throughout the summer I have mentioned our mobile market in several blogs. The success of the market would not have happened if it wasn’t for the West Virginia Farmers Market Association, WV Food and Farm Coalition (who granted us a $5,000 mini grant to start the project) and finally, CSX and the Conservation Fund.
We partnered with the latter around May, after we had already established the idea for the market. They awarded us $6,000 to distribute to 200 families in Mingo County; at a value of $30 per family. The goal was to increase access to local food in areas of need, and to track the sales of youth at markets. On each voucher there was a “survey” on the back, where kids and parents were asked to mark what fruits and vegetables they purchased.
In June they came and did a documentary on our first Mobile Market event, and just released a press release with the video here!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylHWcX70hWY&feature=youtu.be
Also quite recently, our community garden project was featured by DEP on their Environment Matters series. They came directly to our garden site to do an interview (which, as you can tell in the video, I was not ready for) and captured some of our awesome volunteers in the background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_gPhYHie5I&list=PLLyTaD88wM7gZAZNzrqdopyY1QFpwur6w
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