Posted on The Intelligencer; Mar 27, 2019; By Phil Gianficaro, Columnist
The Fresh Connect Bucks County free farmers’ market proves invaluable for food insufficient residents.
A woman who appeared to be in her 60s stepped out of a car that has seen better days. As she did, the wind blew cold and biting across the parking lot at Warminster Community Park on Tuesday morning, March not quite ready to go out like a lamb. She fastened the top button of her worn cloth overcoat, gathered a few tote bags in her hand, caught my eye, and nodded kindly.
“Pretty chilly to have to stand outside for a while today, huh?” I said with a smile.
“Some of us would need to be out here if the temperature was zero,” she responded.
The woman’s words slammed my emotions into a deep freeze. I watched as she trudged toward the long line of folks waiting for free fruits and vegetables many cannot afford to buy. And so, they show up here, braving the cold, pushing baby strollers forward and their pride aside, holding their children’s hands and holding out hope, trying to make the ends of their challenging lives meet.
In Washington, D.C., a presidential administration has become giddy bordering on braggadocio about an unemployment rate that has dropped to 3.8 percent. Good news, to be sure. But in the next breath, those in power take our breath away in a different way, announcing a plan to strip millions of folks of SNAP benefits. The privileged giveth with one hand, slap coldly with the other. Those who depend on that government program for food hunger for something better.
To fill the gaps, to fend off hunger, those in need come to events like the one in Warminster. Three times weekly at different venues, Fresh Connect Bucks County is a free farmers’ market that delivers produce to some of the 57,000 facing hunger in Bucks County, a third of whom are children. The program is a collaborative effort of the Bucks County Opportunity Council, Philabundance, Rolling Harvest Food Rescue, St. Mary Medical Center, and funding by the United Way of Bucks County. The produce is provided directly from local farms, like Solly Brothers Farm in Warminster.
At each venue, the drill is the same: The big truck pulls up near folks, some of whom have been waiting in line for an hour. Tables are set up. Produce is unloaded. People, proud but needy, shuffle along the tables and fill their bags with 20 pounds of apples, potatoes, carrots, pears, kale, organic greens, and more. They tug up the collars of their worn coats, get back into cars that have seen better days, and hope for better days.
“I keep hearing people say the words ‘food insufficient,’” a woman said, as she loaded two bags of produce into her car. “It’s just a fancy way of saying hungry. I wish people would just say what it is. We’re not food insufficient; we’re hungry people who are thankful for programs like this one.”
Amanda Musselman, food program coordinator for the Bucks County Opportunity Council, said about 100 people were served about 2,000 pounds of fresh produce on Tuesday. Thursday in Ottsville and Friday at Bucks County Community College in Bristol, she expects the same. The lines, the bags, the need, the hunger. Pride put on hold.
If those in power in Washington don’t come to their senses, and SNAP benefits are slashed, leaving many out in the cold, expect the lines in Warminster, Ottsville and Bristol to stretch longer. Much longer.
Because hunger, unlike pride, cannot be put on hold.
Columnist Phil Gianficaro can be reached at 215-345-3078, pgianficaro@theintell.com, and @philgianficaro on Twitter.
