By Peg Quann ~ Posted to the Intelligencer
April 9, 2020 at 10:10 AM
Rolling Harvest Food Rescue distributes donated dairy products as Fresh Connect prepares to be open on Good Friday in Bristol Township.
The Fresh Connect outdoor food market that supplies free fresh produce to needy families in Bucks County normally doesn’t take place on Good Friday. This year it will.
Edie Kwasnoski, nutrition educator for Rolling Harvest Food Rescue, prepares to hand out jugs of milk during a Fresh Connect pickup in Ottsville on Thursday.
“Because of the need we decided to do it this Friday,” said Joseph Cuozzo, director of development for the Bucks County Opportunity Council, which runs the market on Fridays from noon to 1 p.m. in Bristol Township at the Gene and Marlene Epstein Campus of Bucks County Community College off Route 413.
“Last week and this week, we’ve seen a 40% increase,” Cuozzo said, in the number of people who came out for the free produce and other food. In Bristol Township alone last week, members of 275 households showed up. The people come early and wait in line for the distribution to begin.
The BCOC runs the program with the support of the United Way of Bucks County, Philabundance, St. Mary Medical Center and the Rolling Harvest Food Rescue.
The market also takes place noon to 1 p.m. Tuesdays in the Warminster Community Park and 11 a.m. to noon Thursdays at the intersection of routes 611 and 412 in Ottsville.
This Thursday, the food distributed in Ottsville was handed out to many motorists who stayed in their vehicles, to try to protect both the recipients and Fresh Connect personnel from spread of the coronavirus.
Rolling Harvest takes fresh foods supplied by farmers and delivers them to Fresh Connect as well as to food pantries and charitable organizations so that people in need are provided with fresh produce along with the canned and dried foods normally found at pantries.
Cathy Snyder, founder and executive director of Rolling Harvest, has seen crunch times before, when food supplies for people in need ran scarce, but the coronavirus pandemic has made those days seem plentiful compared to now.
Even in a recession there aren’t so many people out of work as there have been over the past few weeks, with businesses shut down by government order. Normally grocery shelves would be full, so that people who are working could donate to help the unemployed. Right now, she said, “it’s very serious.”
“The food chain has broken down a little bit. … Grocery stores are having trouble providing for customers,” she said, and it isn’t harvest season, so there isn’t a plenitude of fresh fruits and vegetables available for farmers to donate their excess.
“To meet the rising demand, We need more money,” she said. “So many people need food who never thought they’d be asking for food.”
Last weekend, she helped to coordinate a food distribution in the New Hope-Lambertville area for the first time. More than 120 motorists showed up, along with 143 people on foot. She estimated that 8,300 pounds of food was distributed for more than 1,000 people, including more than 300 children. Immigrants are among the hardest hit.
It’s very clear there are people who are struggling, she said.
Rolling Harvest has to buy some of the products it normally provides to charitable pantries and organizations. But there have been some notable donations, Snyder said, including from Solebury Orchards, McCaffrey’s Food Markets and Fresh from Zone 7, a farm in Ringoes, New Jersey.
Rolling Harvest volunteers were happy last week to pick up more than 500 pounds of yogurt and cheeses from the Fulper Family Farmstead in Lambertville, New Jersey, for distribution to local pantries that could distribute it quickly.
Dana McKenna, a spokeswoman for Fulper Family Farmstead, said the Rolling Harvest took the dairy products and had plans to distribute it the next day. “We just wanted to do it because of the need,” she said. “We want to donate as much as we can.”
With the help of The Deck at the Bucks County Playhouse, the farm also donated another 180 pounds of cheese and more than 60 pounds of curd to the New Britain Baptist Church food larder.
Fulper Farm has been in operation for 100 years, and has about 100 Holstein cows on its 200-plus acres.
“It’s nice to know we’re putting food in the hands of people in need. It’s nice to be here for each other,” McKenna said.
The BCOC also accepts donations and recently held two food drives, which Cuozzo said, were highly successful.
“We’ve seen a tremendous outpouring of support,” he said. He hopes that between the food drives and the help of Rolling Harvest and Philabundance, the Fresh Connect program this week will go smooth logistically so that the families that need food this holiday weekend will be well supplied.
