June 18, 2024 • 18 mins
Food is Free Washington community gardens have become increasingly popular in recent years, as more and more people recognize the numerous benefits they offer. Not only do community gardens provide fresh, locally grown produce, but they also contribute to the overall well-being of the community. From promoting healthy eating habits to strengthening community bonds, community gardens have a positive impact on both individuals and neighborhoods. On this podcast, we will explore the many benefits of community gardens and how they can help build a stronger and greener community.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
Well, hi everybody, welcome toCommunity Heros. Today we have with us
David from Fuddhist Free Washington, andhe's going to share with us what he
does and why he does it.Before we get started, I just want
(00:25):
to introduce Candice Thompson of Wild ChildGroup and Bill Lee of Kiba Agency.
Well that sounded good. Show everybody. This is great. Yeah, it's
nice to know you guys are stillworking. I seldom hear from you.
Well you know Bill, when youknow you've major millions. Yeah right,
(00:47):
okay, yeah, so there yougo something to aspire to. Okay,
your millions and change the world.Let's move on with the show. We've
lost track and focus. Yeah,uh huh. This is how it rolls
around your day. But first ofall, what is Food is Free?
Well, Food is Free is anonprofit organization that I started in twenty fifteen.
(01:10):
The idea was to give away fresh, homegrown produce to my neighbors and
get to know my neighbors and buildcommunity that way. It's evolved since then
to where we have food distributions threetimes a week and we have forty gardens
or garden beds that we have locatedaround the city. Now, did with
(01:30):
those garden beds around the city.Now do the residents do they maintain that
or is that something that you guysmaintain or volunteers take care of? Tell
me how that works. Well,what we do is is my wife and
I've come up with a crop planand we have a plan for what we're
going to plant and all these beds. We work it like one big large
farm, even though it's spread outaround the city. The homeowners are responsible
(01:53):
for water. Again, we comeby and pull the weeds and tend it
and when it comes time to harvest, harvest. But they watered on a
daily basis or every three days withour deep watering schedule. So we water,
that's all the homeowner does to it. We take care of the rest
of it. We harvest and thenwe give them a CSA box so once
(02:15):
a month they'll get they'll get likea variety of different fruits and vegetables that
we've grown into different beds and thatwe've collected off of our gleating efforts.
How neat is that? So youguys literally like maintained them. So if
somebody wanted to donate there some landfor a raised bid, do you guys
(02:35):
bring out the dirt in or Well, I got it. I got a
grant from AARP two years ago andit built the gardens it built. They
paid for the wood and they paidfor the for the soil for the beds
we give. Everybody that we builtthe gardens for was fifty five and over
because you know it's a ARP,sure, so we we built the beds
for them. And since then wehaven't had funding to build any more,
(03:00):
so we're kind of working with whatwe have right now. So that would
be in need, so our listenershave extra raised beds or hey, if
anybody's putting around in their tool shopor in their wood shop, they could
actually put some beds together for you. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely awesome.
Do you have a certain size thatyou prefer or any cyclone? Well,
(03:23):
I found twelve foot by four footworks the best. Okay that that's
in the most parkways because we putthem up by the we'd like to get
them up by the front of thestreet so all the other neighbors could see
them. So they're up in theparkway, up in the front, and
with most parkways in the city atTakoma, four feet is about the max
that you could have and still bewithin code. Are you looking for well,
(03:46):
obviously homeowners and individuals that are wantingto change the world, impact their
community in a positive way with food, what other avenues would they have to
maybe volunteer if not giving funds?Could you give us your webs site?
Yes, it's www. Food isFree Washington. That's Washington all spelled out
(04:06):
dot org. Okay, repeat thatagain just in case that they were trying
to write food is Free Washington dotorg. So and I'm sure that they've
got to donate button and all ofthat too. Yes, it's a donate
button there. There's a volunteer now, so you could sign up as a
volunteer and put down what you're whatyou'd like to do, because we have
(04:29):
a number of different volunteer opportunities,so there's uh they could put down what
they like to do, and thenwhen we have that opportunity to come up,
we send them an email and tryand mobilize them. You know,
while you're talking, I was justthinking, have you thought about networking like
with the University of Washington for theirwith their master gardener program that they have,
(04:51):
Well, actually I am a mastergardener. What cut you started?
Where did you start, uh thismovement that you you are gardening and what
kind of what kind of interest doyou have in the future. Well,
I would say that ten years fromnow that hopefully we'll have the whole gleaning
(05:13):
project. I'll be much more organizedand we'll be able to produce amount of
food that I've been I've been lookingto do. Let's see what I got
started. Was, well, whenI moved into my rental house i'm in
now, that was fifteen years ago, there was a small little garden in
the back. It was just twohundred square feet and it was all overgrown.
(05:34):
And I started gardening there that firstseason and cleaned it all up and
started planting a few vegetables, andI found that I really liked it and
I enjoy it, so I getthe gardener. I made it bigger and
bigger until it was two thousand squarefeet because everything I do, I always
go overboard. So that's a cougar. Yeah, yeah, jured over a
(05:58):
chie or draw them. Hey andwhat's your wife say? My wife is
Ursula Erstla. Okay, wonderful,David and Ursula, Oh gosh, that's
cute. Okay, finish your story. I just remember you mentioned your wife,
So I didn't want to say,hey wife. Uh. Yeah.
Well, I started with the UHwith two hundred square foot garden to get
(06:20):
the two thousand square feet. Andwhen you have a garden that size,
you have a lot of vegetables thatyou're producing, and there was I was
having a hard time getting rid ofthem. I would I would take them
over to the neighbors houses and Iwould try and get my family to come
pick them up. And I couldget anybody to come pick them up very
much. And so I had awhole lot of extra produce. Contacted a
(06:42):
local UH through Justice Organization, andUH, I wanted to donate a bunch
of tomatoes to them. I had, oh, maybe fifty sixty pounds of
tomatoes that I want to donate,and I found that they didn't want them,
and then uh, and then therewas no place to actually donate this
these vegetables from. It was foodbanks. It's too small of a quantity
(07:04):
to really be able to pass outto all of their customers. So a
lot of times what happens to thatis is it gets donated to the food
bank and then somebody who works atthe food bank goes, hey, look
tomatoes and they take all over afew boxers, right right. So I
kind of looked for an avenue wherepeople could donate small quantities of homegrown produce
(07:28):
in ways to get rid of it. So I started with a little table
out in front of the house andwas putting it out there for years.
And when was it that you wereactually on the news? Twenty eighteen Alison
Morrow from King five came and didShe was an environmental reporter for King five
and she came and did a littlestory on me and did a little and
they did a little like a littleblurb on Facebook. It was a heart
(07:54):
threads video and it went viral.Right now, it's two million views,
I believe, three hundred thousand shares. Especially when we're all talking about gardening.
I mean, gardening is I thinkthat that's only going to continue to
explode as all of our local places, I mean even Watson's, which was
a little bit surprising, they wereshort on vegetable starts. And I mean,
(08:18):
you know, some of these vegetablesand fruits that you get in you
know, ever get them at thegrocery store. So what an incredible treat
it would be to me? Tome, that would be an incredible treat
to find, let's say, gooseberries, so that you wouldn't You can't rent
to the store and get a gooseberry, but people grow them in the front
yards all the time, and whata delicious treat. Yeah, we do
(08:41):
a lot of that with figs actually, because figs are figs are hard to
get into the store because they don'tstore well, they don't travel well at
all. So we picked the figtrees usually before our Sunday giveaways, and
we'll do it beforehand, and thenthe figs are just fresh right off the
tree, so there are only afew hours old, and give them away
that way, you know, youare absolutely right, And there's a fig
(09:05):
tree that I know where some figsare going this year, so you're Because
you're right, I try to givethem, give all of our figs away,
and it's always so I freeze thembecause I like to cook with sometimes
in typhood when I'm cooking type food, because I like that little extra sweet
that those figs add and you're right, I have to freeze them. And
(09:26):
at the end, by the endof the season, I'm begging people,
no, please take the figs orright right, that's why you know,
we give them away right away.People get a chance to try things.
You know. I've introduced a numberof people the figs that never had a
fig before. Oh my gosh.And see I've done that with gooseberries because
(09:48):
my gooseberris are like, no,I don't want a gooseberry and I said,
no, the they're sweet like agreat And then when they try them,
like oh, I want that plant? Where do you eat that pet?
And you know, so you're like, oh, this is tasty,
good stuff and that's where the goodstuff lives. So I love that.
Now, what do you guys doany type of or do you have any
way of preserving any of the foodthat you are bringing in? Well,
(10:13):
we did the Cannying series last yearwith Centers for Food Preservation Arts Helming.
There is a master master canner.We did a video uh segment of six
videos on how to preserve your foodand to can it and how to pickle.
There was a there were six videosin that series and I we we
(10:35):
push a lot of stuff to hellduring the during the season because he has
his own nonprofit that he works thatuh that does canning and stuff d does
he do things like drying and likemaybe freestrying as well, or is it
strictly just canning. No, he'smostly a master canner, but he does
(10:56):
I think he does that's around usfreestrying, but it doesn't do it like
like a lot of it. Okay, I was just curious. Now I'm
now we're talking about a different nonprofitthat you're working with. I think people
are focusing too on more minimalistic gardening. In other words, I've got a
certain amount of space and I wantto grow something, and I'm not sure
(11:18):
what I can put You what doyou what would that look like for someone
that is like in an apartment oris renting it, like even a condo.
You know, you only have somuch space available, but they're still
gardening options for them, right David. Oh, absolutely, you can use
pots. I've seen some amazing thingsdone on people's balconies, which is pots.
(11:41):
It's it's amazing. You know,you could grow one vegetable plant and
in a little two gallon pot andit'll, uh, it'll produce quite a
bit of food for you. Thesethese are things that are very interesting because
we have more and more of those, you know, condos and apartments living
and I know it's really fun togrow them. I was in Federal Way
(12:03):
in an apartment and we had alittle deck outside the door, and I
was growing plants like corn in abucket, which I thought would be unique,
you know, tomato plants, thingsof that nature. Of course you
did. But it's a lot offun and it's a very interesting subject for
a lot of the older generation thatare locked into small I call them chicken
(12:26):
hutches, but they're actually apartments withthese cute little balconies and most of them
can grow stuff out there if theyonly knew how. And I think this
would be a great series, youknow, Bill, And even with young
people, Sorry, sure go ahead, we'll let that slide. They'll always
charge to tell he's like older thanthe thosle, but we know the truth.
(12:50):
But you know, you have thoseprices so high for homes. A
lot of young people, even likemyself, are you know, renting from
an apartment or a condo, oreven only able to purchase a condo that
doesn't have property. And so thisis good information even for the younger crowd
(13:11):
to learn like what to do.So that would definitely be a benefit for
us to have that information from mastergardners. Yes, it would, It
really would. So David, howmuch food are you actually producing? Do
you have any idea how much perseason you're producing in produce? Well,
last year we gleaned four tons andwe grew two tons. This year I
(13:35):
expect a lot more than probably willprobably grow three to four tons this year
in the gleaning because this is athis is a much better fruit season than
what we had last year. Iexpect that number to be considerably higher.
And how do people get a holdof the I know through the website.
Is there different other activities and advancesyou're holding to shore? We say,
(14:00):
get the food distributed amongst those thatneeded. Yeah, well, we have
a program called Food into Pennant's Gardens. It was in a playoff of the
name of the Victory Gardens, butmaking them food into Pennant's Gardens. So
we call everything fig. So wehave a Fig Share Days that we do
(14:20):
twice a week on Wednesday nights andon Sunday afternoons where we go to local
parks and we bring all the homegrownproduce that we've grown and we've collected from
other home gardeners. We have apartner that we your work with called Fresh
Food Connect where you could donate yourproduce through that app there, and we
(14:41):
come and get the produce and dropit off at our fig Share events and
then we give everything away on theWednesday nights and on the Sunday afternoons.
That way, we tried to doit so there was people that might be
working that couldn't get to it ona Sunday event, and so we did
the Wednesday night ones as well.Absolutely amazing, David, Absolutely amazing.
(15:03):
It's always wonderful to hear how thecommunity and somebody always is a hero in
a community is doing such an outstandingjob for the rest of us. We
really do appreciate it. Candice,do you have anything else before we let
Hannah out of the bucket there?I mean, let Hannah speak. You
know, actually, David, doyou mind if I just acknowledge you?
(15:26):
True? That's awesome, And David, I just want to, really,
sincerely, with my full heart acknowledgeyou. I want to acknowledge you for
being love and motion, for havingcompassion for all of us and seeing a
need and not looking to the rightor left to fulfill the need, saying
(15:50):
I'm the one that can do this. I want to acknowledge you for your
courage and to a degree bravery,because if you've got to dream or a
vision, I had gravery encourage thisstuff out and make it happen. And
I just I want to acknowledge youand your wife for being an incredible,
beautiful example of really how all ofus can have compassion and grace and mercy
(16:15):
for one another and we can alldo something to help change our world.
So, David, I want tojust completely thank you for being a light
in our community and really bringing hopeto often people who have hopelessness. So
I want to thank you for creatingthat and allowing people to come and be
(16:42):
a part of that space. AndI'm putting a plea out now for our
listeners, for listener, for allof our listeners, especially in this area.
And you know what, if there'snot food is free facility in your
area, start with be it,David, change your world those thoh that
(17:03):
are in our own community. Listen, get on that website, help this
nonprofit go beyond its borders. Let'schange the world in a positive good way.
Let's be a light really for thenation, because we could do that,
so we could be that community.Right, I just think we could
change the world like this, Ido. David, thank you so much
(17:26):
for joining us today. It wasa pleasure. And make sure guys,
our listeners you check out the websiteFood is Free Washington dot org. All
right, food is free Washington dotorg. If you have a space in
front that we can have some plants, or if you want to donate yourself
and hit that donate now button,they can definitely use your health. Thanks
(17:51):
so much David again for joining uswith the Disruptor's network of community heroes.
Thank you to Candice and Bill andwe'll see next time.
Well, hi everybody, welcome toCommunity Heros. Today we have with us
David from Fuddhist Free Washington, andhe's going to share with us what he
does and why he does it.Before we get started, I just want
(00:25):
to introduce Candice Thompson of Wild ChildGroup and Bill Lee of Kiba Agency.
Well that sounded good. Show everybody. This is great. Yeah, it's
nice to know you guys are stillworking. I seldom hear from you.
Well you know Bill, when youknow you've major millions. Yeah right,
(00:47):
okay, yeah, so there yougo something to aspire to. Okay,
your millions and change the world.Let's move on with the show. We've
lost track and focus. Yeah,uh huh. This is how it rolls
around your day. But first ofall, what is Food is Free?
Well, Food is Free is anonprofit organization that I started in twenty fifteen.
(01:10):
The idea was to give away fresh, homegrown produce to my neighbors and
get to know my neighbors and buildcommunity that way. It's evolved since then
to where we have food distributions threetimes a week and we have forty gardens
or garden beds that we have locatedaround the city. Now, did with
(01:30):
those garden beds around the city.Now do the residents do they maintain that
or is that something that you guysmaintain or volunteers take care of? Tell
me how that works. Well,what we do is is my wife and
I've come up with a crop planand we have a plan for what we're
going to plant and all these beds. We work it like one big large
farm, even though it's spread outaround the city. The homeowners are responsible
(01:53):
for water. Again, we comeby and pull the weeds and tend it
and when it comes time to harvest, harvest. But they watered on a
daily basis or every three days withour deep watering schedule. So we water,
that's all the homeowner does to it. We take care of the rest
of it. We harvest and thenwe give them a CSA box so once
(02:15):
a month they'll get they'll get likea variety of different fruits and vegetables that
we've grown into different beds and thatwe've collected off of our gleating efforts.
How neat is that? So youguys literally like maintained them. So if
somebody wanted to donate there some landfor a raised bid, do you guys
(02:35):
bring out the dirt in or Well, I got it. I got a
grant from AARP two years ago andit built the gardens it built. They
paid for the wood and they paidfor the for the soil for the beds
we give. Everybody that we builtthe gardens for was fifty five and over
because you know it's a ARP,sure, so we we built the beds
for them. And since then wehaven't had funding to build any more,
(03:00):
so we're kind of working with whatwe have right now. So that would
be in need, so our listenershave extra raised beds or hey, if
anybody's putting around in their tool shopor in their wood shop, they could
actually put some beds together for you. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely awesome.
Do you have a certain size thatyou prefer or any cyclone? Well,
(03:23):
I found twelve foot by four footworks the best. Okay that that's
in the most parkways because we putthem up by the we'd like to get
them up by the front of thestreet so all the other neighbors could see
them. So they're up in theparkway, up in the front, and
with most parkways in the city atTakoma, four feet is about the max
that you could have and still bewithin code. Are you looking for well,
(03:46):
obviously homeowners and individuals that are wantingto change the world, impact their
community in a positive way with food, what other avenues would they have to
maybe volunteer if not giving funds?Could you give us your webs site?
Yes, it's www. Food isFree Washington. That's Washington all spelled out
(04:06):
dot org. Okay, repeat thatagain just in case that they were trying
to write food is Free Washington dotorg. So and I'm sure that they've
got to donate button and all ofthat too. Yes, it's a donate
button there. There's a volunteer now, so you could sign up as a
volunteer and put down what you're whatyou'd like to do, because we have
(04:29):
a number of different volunteer opportunities,so there's uh they could put down what
they like to do, and thenwhen we have that opportunity to come up,
we send them an email and tryand mobilize them. You know,
while you're talking, I was justthinking, have you thought about networking like
with the University of Washington for theirwith their master gardener program that they have,
(04:51):
Well, actually I am a mastergardener. What cut you started?
Where did you start, uh thismovement that you you are gardening and what
kind of what kind of interest doyou have in the future. Well,
I would say that ten years fromnow that hopefully we'll have the whole gleaning
(05:13):
project. I'll be much more organizedand we'll be able to produce amount of
food that I've been I've been lookingto do. Let's see what I got
started. Was, well, whenI moved into my rental house i'm in
now, that was fifteen years ago, there was a small little garden in
the back. It was just twohundred square feet and it was all overgrown.
(05:34):
And I started gardening there that firstseason and cleaned it all up and
started planting a few vegetables, andI found that I really liked it and
I enjoy it, so I getthe gardener. I made it bigger and
bigger until it was two thousand squarefeet because everything I do, I always
go overboard. So that's a cougar. Yeah, yeah, jured over a
(05:58):
chie or draw them. Hey andwhat's your wife say? My wife is
Ursula Erstla. Okay, wonderful,David and Ursula, Oh gosh, that's
cute. Okay, finish your story. I just remember you mentioned your wife,
So I didn't want to say,hey wife. Uh. Yeah.
Well, I started with the UHwith two hundred square foot garden to get
(06:20):
the two thousand square feet. Andwhen you have a garden that size,
you have a lot of vegetables thatyou're producing, and there was I was
having a hard time getting rid ofthem. I would I would take them
over to the neighbors houses and Iwould try and get my family to come
pick them up. And I couldget anybody to come pick them up very
much. And so I had awhole lot of extra produce. Contacted a
(06:42):
local UH through Justice Organization, andUH, I wanted to donate a bunch
of tomatoes to them. I had, oh, maybe fifty sixty pounds of
tomatoes that I want to donate,and I found that they didn't want them,
and then uh, and then therewas no place to actually donate this
these vegetables from. It was foodbanks. It's too small of a quantity
(07:04):
to really be able to pass outto all of their customers. So a
lot of times what happens to thatis is it gets donated to the food
bank and then somebody who works atthe food bank goes, hey, look
tomatoes and they take all over afew boxers, right right. So I
kind of looked for an avenue wherepeople could donate small quantities of homegrown produce
(07:28):
in ways to get rid of it. So I started with a little table
out in front of the house andwas putting it out there for years.
And when was it that you wereactually on the news? Twenty eighteen Alison
Morrow from King five came and didShe was an environmental reporter for King five
and she came and did a littlestory on me and did a little and
they did a little like a littleblurb on Facebook. It was a heart
(07:54):
threads video and it went viral.Right now, it's two million views,
I believe, three hundred thousand shares. Especially when we're all talking about gardening.
I mean, gardening is I thinkthat that's only going to continue to
explode as all of our local places, I mean even Watson's, which was
a little bit surprising, they wereshort on vegetable starts. And I mean,
(08:18):
you know, some of these vegetablesand fruits that you get in you
know, ever get them at thegrocery store. So what an incredible treat
it would be to me? Tome, that would be an incredible treat
to find, let's say, gooseberries, so that you wouldn't You can't rent
to the store and get a gooseberry, but people grow them in the front
yards all the time, and whata delicious treat. Yeah, we do
(08:41):
a lot of that with figs actually, because figs are figs are hard to
get into the store because they don'tstore well, they don't travel well at
all. So we picked the figtrees usually before our Sunday giveaways, and
we'll do it beforehand, and thenthe figs are just fresh right off the
tree, so there are only afew hours old, and give them away
that way, you know, youare absolutely right, And there's a fig
(09:05):
tree that I know where some figsare going this year, so you're Because
you're right, I try to givethem, give all of our figs away,
and it's always so I freeze thembecause I like to cook with sometimes
in typhood when I'm cooking type food, because I like that little extra sweet
that those figs add and you're right, I have to freeze them. And
(09:26):
at the end, by the endof the season, I'm begging people,
no, please take the figs orright right, that's why you know,
we give them away right away.People get a chance to try things.
You know. I've introduced a numberof people the figs that never had a
fig before. Oh my gosh.And see I've done that with gooseberries because
(09:48):
my gooseberris are like, no,I don't want a gooseberry and I said,
no, the they're sweet like agreat And then when they try them,
like oh, I want that plant? Where do you eat that pet?
And you know, so you're like, oh, this is tasty,
good stuff and that's where the goodstuff lives. So I love that.
Now, what do you guys doany type of or do you have any
way of preserving any of the foodthat you are bringing in? Well,
(10:13):
we did the Cannying series last yearwith Centers for Food Preservation Arts Helming.
There is a master master canner.We did a video uh segment of six
videos on how to preserve your foodand to can it and how to pickle.
There was a there were six videosin that series and I we we
(10:35):
push a lot of stuff to hellduring the during the season because he has
his own nonprofit that he works thatuh that does canning and stuff d does
he do things like drying and likemaybe freestrying as well, or is it
strictly just canning. No, he'smostly a master canner, but he does
(10:56):
I think he does that's around usfreestrying, but it doesn't do it like
like a lot of it. Okay, I was just curious. Now I'm
now we're talking about a different nonprofitthat you're working with. I think people
are focusing too on more minimalistic gardening. In other words, I've got a
certain amount of space and I wantto grow something, and I'm not sure
(11:18):
what I can put You what doyou what would that look like for someone
that is like in an apartment oris renting it, like even a condo.
You know, you only have somuch space available, but they're still
gardening options for them, right David. Oh, absolutely, you can use
pots. I've seen some amazing thingsdone on people's balconies, which is pots.
(11:41):
It's it's amazing. You know,you could grow one vegetable plant and
in a little two gallon pot andit'll, uh, it'll produce quite a
bit of food for you. Thesethese are things that are very interesting because
we have more and more of those, you know, condos and apartments living
and I know it's really fun togrow them. I was in Federal Way
(12:03):
in an apartment and we had alittle deck outside the door, and I
was growing plants like corn in abucket, which I thought would be unique,
you know, tomato plants, thingsof that nature. Of course you
did. But it's a lot offun and it's a very interesting subject for
a lot of the older generation thatare locked into small I call them chicken
(12:26):
hutches, but they're actually apartments withthese cute little balconies and most of them
can grow stuff out there if theyonly knew how. And I think this
would be a great series, youknow, Bill, And even with young
people, Sorry, sure go ahead, we'll let that slide. They'll always
charge to tell he's like older thanthe thosle, but we know the truth.
(12:50):
But you know, you have thoseprices so high for homes. A
lot of young people, even likemyself, are you know, renting from
an apartment or a condo, oreven only able to purchase a condo that
doesn't have property. And so thisis good information even for the younger crowd
(13:11):
to learn like what to do.So that would definitely be a benefit for
us to have that information from mastergardners. Yes, it would, It
really would. So David, howmuch food are you actually producing? Do
you have any idea how much perseason you're producing in produce? Well,
last year we gleaned four tons andwe grew two tons. This year I
(13:35):
expect a lot more than probably willprobably grow three to four tons this year
in the gleaning because this is athis is a much better fruit season than
what we had last year. Iexpect that number to be considerably higher.
And how do people get a holdof the I know through the website.
Is there different other activities and advancesyou're holding to shore? We say,
(14:00):
get the food distributed amongst those thatneeded. Yeah, well, we have
a program called Food into Pennant's Gardens. It was in a playoff of the
name of the Victory Gardens, butmaking them food into Pennant's Gardens. So
we call everything fig. So wehave a Fig Share Days that we do
(14:20):
twice a week on Wednesday nights andon Sunday afternoons where we go to local
parks and we bring all the homegrownproduce that we've grown and we've collected from
other home gardeners. We have apartner that we your work with called Fresh
Food Connect where you could donate yourproduce through that app there, and we
(14:41):
come and get the produce and dropit off at our fig Share events and
then we give everything away on theWednesday nights and on the Sunday afternoons.
That way, we tried to doit so there was people that might be
working that couldn't get to it ona Sunday event, and so we did
the Wednesday night ones as well.Absolutely amazing, David, Absolutely amazing.
(15:03):
It's always wonderful to hear how thecommunity and somebody always is a hero in
a community is doing such an outstandingjob for the rest of us. We
really do appreciate it. Candice,do you have anything else before we let
Hannah out of the bucket there?I mean, let Hannah speak. You
know, actually, David, doyou mind if I just acknowledge you?
(15:26):
True? That's awesome, And David, I just want to, really,
sincerely, with my full heart acknowledgeyou. I want to acknowledge you for
being love and motion, for havingcompassion for all of us and seeing a
need and not looking to the rightor left to fulfill the need, saying
(15:50):
I'm the one that can do this. I want to acknowledge you for your
courage and to a degree bravery,because if you've got to dream or a
vision, I had gravery encourage thisstuff out and make it happen. And
I just I want to acknowledge youand your wife for being an incredible,
beautiful example of really how all ofus can have compassion and grace and mercy
(16:15):
for one another and we can alldo something to help change our world.
So, David, I want tojust completely thank you for being a light
in our community and really bringing hopeto often people who have hopelessness. So
I want to thank you for creatingthat and allowing people to come and be
(16:42):
a part of that space. AndI'm putting a plea out now for our
listeners, for listener, for allof our listeners, especially in this area.
And you know what, if there'snot food is free facility in your
area, start with be it,David, change your world those thoh that
(17:03):
are in our own community. Listen, get on that website, help this
nonprofit go beyond its borders. Let'schange the world in a positive good way.
Let's be a light really for thenation, because we could do that,
so we could be that community.Right, I just think we could
change the world like this, Ido. David, thank you so much
(17:26):
for joining us today. It wasa pleasure. And make sure guys,
our listeners you check out the websiteFood is Free Washington dot org. All
right, food is free Washington dotorg. If you have a space in
front that we can have some plants, or if you want to donate yourself
and hit that donate now button,they can definitely use your health. Thanks
(17:51):
so much David again for joining uswith the Disruptor's network of community heroes.
Thank you to Candice and Bill andwe'll see next time.
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