The Villager Newspaper Online Your Community News – Cleveland's Westshore
Near West Low Income Residents Now Have Access To Fresh Local Food
Fresh Fork Market is a local farm buying club. It is built on the traditional CSA model, but works with over 100 area farmers to create shares that offer more variety. In addition, they offer classes, newsletters, recipes and information to help its subscribers make the most out of their shares.
Fresh Fork Market will now be a purveyor of fresh produce to the Redeemer Crisis Center. The crisis center is just one of hundreds in the Cleveland area that provide food assistance to those in need. They recently received a grant to provide fresh produce along side their canned and dry goods. With no logistical support, the task of transporting fresh produce in a timely manner would prove difficult at best. One volunteer, who wrote the grant, had a friend in the Fresh Fork Market subscription service. This led her to contact Trevor Clatterbuck, founder of Fresh Fork Market.
“We get most of our pantry items from the Cleveland Foodbank. Getting produce from them can be difficult,” says Mary O’Rourke, the volunteer who reached out to Fresh Fork Market. “We don’t have a truck. I can’t do it in my car. And we want the best we can get for our clients, who need good food even more than most.”
The Redeemer Crisis Center also provides some cooked meals. When kids are not in school, they often don’t get a meal at all, so the center provides a lunch for kids during the summer. The children will often sneak their portions home for the parents, so the Redeemer invites the parents to come along. They hope to include some of the fresh produce in these meals that they provide.
In addition, Fresh Fork Market hopes to offer a basic cooking class or two and help with a few of the community meals. “These kids are tomorrow’s leaders,” says Parker Bosley, Chef in residence for Fresh Fork. “I am excited to be a part of teaching these kids to make healthier choices. My hope is that they will help teach the parents and everyone benefits.”
Redeemer Crisis Center serves low income families on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
About Fresh Fork Market
In 2009, Fresh Fork Market created its farm-buying club modeled after a trend in direct-market farming known as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Fresh Fork Market has since refined that model and grown their customer base from 40 weekly subscribers in 2009 to just over 2400 weekly subscribers in 2012.
For more information about Fresh Fork Market and the CSA, please visit www.freshforkmarket.com
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