Audrey Moore, supervisor on May 12 for the Friends of Urban Agriculture (FOUA) food bagging collection Photo by Shirley Ruhe.
Spring gardening season is here, and donations of fresh vegetables crowd the table at Rock Spring United Church of Christ on Monday, May 12 as the produce bagging session gets underway.
Radishes as large as golf balls, fresh lettuces, kale and a number of herbs as well as a package of broccolini and cherry tomato plants have been donated by Arlington gardeners as part of the Friends of Urban Agriculture (FOUA) program to provide fresh produce to local food pantries.
Every Monday during the growing season from 12:30-2:30 p.m., donations can be dropped off at the Rock Spring UCC location at 5010 Little Falls Road in Arlington.
Volunteers repackage the produce into family-size portions which are delivered to local food pantries. Starting in August the center will be open Mondays and Thursdays.
On Monday, May 12, volunteers from Woodmont Community Integration Center are sitting at tables ready to go to work. Some of the volunteers such as Phelan Robertson, Christian Madlansacay and Erica Sanchez have volunteered in the past for the food bagging while others such as Eric Aintson and Will Waddell say this is their first year. However, Waddell says he has done volunteer work before for the National Honor Society. Sanchez says she does it to help people in the community.
Dahlia Camacho, the Community Integration Coordinator, says they take the program participants in their day program to a lot of different places like museums, field trips, and Waddell volunteers “out to lunch on Fridays—I like Popeyes.”
Woodmont Community Integration Center is a non-profit community-based program for individuals with intellectual, developmental and physical disabilities. “It involves them in activities that promote social function and allows them to communicate with peers and learn life skills.”
Audrey Moore, the supervisor of the FOUA bagging effort on Monday says they have had a surprisingly large contribution for the first day of the program. She points to a table filled with bags of lettuces, kale, a few strawberries, enormous radishes, and an assortment of thyme, rosemary and basil.
Moore said when they have finished today she will deliver the produce to local food pantries.
“I’m sure we’ll go to Our Lady Queen of Peace; they’re serving 900 now every week,” Moore said. “And gardeners can also take their contributions directly to other sites that are listed on the FOUA website.”
In 2024, Arlington gardners donated 15,000 pounds of produce, and the goal is to break 20,000 pounds in 2025.