Grow and Gather Second Bloom moves to new venue
Chris Abbott
Editor
Grow and Gather – Second Bloom is coming to Simcoe, Sept. 19, at the Norfolk County Fairgrounds.
It’s a one-day ‘giveaway’ event, organized through a team partnership that includes Church Out Serving, Second Harvest and local farms. It aims to improve food security in Norfolk County and reduce food waste.
Bring your own bag and load up with fresh vegetables and fruit donated by many Norfolk County farms and farmers from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the building next to the curling club. Most food will be indoors, and some tents/skids outdoors.
“It’s the second year this has been done, and it’s going to become an annual event,” said Virginia Lucas, a director at Church Out Serving, and part of the Grow and Gather organizing team. “It’s a collaboration hosted by local farmers, in partnership with Church Out Serving and Second Harvest, to gather produce from local farmers and give it away to the general public – people living with food insecurity, but also others… anybody actually. Anybody can come, it’s open to everyone.
“It’s a free event. And it will probably be bigger than last year… it’s a growing event, literally,” she added with a laugh.
Last year’s inaugural event in Delhi gave away bins of apples, pumpkins, squash, onions, cabbage, sweet and russet potatoes, zucchini, eggplant, sweet corn, and multiple varieties of tomatoes and peppers… and more.
All donations go through Church Out Serving (designated to Grow and Gather) - they can give charitable receipts. Church Out Serving has a very large volunteer pool, but they are also accepting volunteers who register through their Grow and Gather website (growandgather.ca).
“We’ve had some experience promoting through other not-for-profit and service agencies that help people with food insecurities, so we are sort of tapping into different groups of people that could benefit. We’re really trying to promote it through a lot of the agencies and organizations that help with food security… and also offering them an opportunity to set up a booth on the day of, so that we can connect people to service providers.
“I think the beauty of this event is that it’s ‘community caring for community.’ It’s local area farmers giving back to their own community, and helping to support where there’s an area of need, and just to be generous. That’s what Norfolk is about actually, it’s beautiful.”
Grow and Gather is providing free transportation to the event through Ride Norfolk. There will be three routes in Simcoe, and one loop to Delhi. See the website for route times and locations.
“So there is, hopefully, more opportunity to help people get to the event if they don’t have a vehicle.”
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