Food banks in southeast benefit from bountiful crops

Gardeners and farmers in southeast New Brunswick are taking surplus and blemished fruits and vegetables to local food banks to help get nutritious food on the tables of people in need.

Kent Food Security network coordinator Joanne Roy drops off fresh produce to food banks several times a week. Nearby farms donate the food.

"Anything from green beans, yellow beans, beets, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, whatever the producers are producing locally we have access to."

Roy has delivered 1,400 pounds of fresh vegetables and another 50 pounds of strawberries and raspberries to food banks.

When a family can't make it to the food bank, Roy makes home deliveries because she understands the importance of getting a little extra help.

"In my younger years, [I've] had to depend on a food bank time to time. I know that when you get something above and beyond what you normally can have at home. It's exhilarating to see that people are appreciative."

According to Anita LeBlanc, manager at Vestiaire St-Jean Baptiste food bank in Bouctouche, people welcome the fresh additions to their share of food.

"It's overwhelming. They appreciate it so much. Some of them they cry."

It's not just local farmers donating part of their harvests. Gardeners at the Shediac Cape Community Garden, where George Welling has a plot, are growing extra produce specifically to give away.

"We put in bags of a pound or two pounds and take it over to the food bank. We've taken hundreds of pounds of produce," said Welling.

He and his other community gardeners give to the Vestiaire St. Joseph in Shediac, where Welling says the veggies always find a new home.

"We took zucchinis over yesterday, before they were even in the building we saw them coming out the other door."