Autumn Updates
Dear Friends and Supporters,
As the daylight wanes and cold weather comes on, the NCFA crew is packing up our seasonal operations and making plans for the new year. But for now, you can read about endeavors from late summer and early fall. It’s been a busy year! We hope you will join us in ending hunger, reducing food waste, and sharing healthy, culturally-relevant food with our neighbors.
In Solidarity for a Better World,
Mae, Will, Sasha, Alison, May, Mark, Bozena, Nick, Celeste, Maria, Noah, Fatuma, Abby
(The Workers of NCFA)
Program Updates
Foodshare
NCFA workers and volunteers harvesting tomatoes before the frost at Philadelphia Community Farm in Osceola, Wisconsin.
We continue to rescue overstock food from grocery stores and distribution centers through our foodshare program, which we share with community kitchens and food shelves across the Metro Area. Meanwhile, we are expanding our gleaning program with local farms. Since our last newsletter, we held three more gleaning days at Dream of Wild Health Farm, one with Philadelphia Community Farm, and one with Gedef Farm. For the second year in a row, we also recovered local foods from the Woodbury Farmers’ Market in collaboration with Ramsey/Washington Recycling & Energy. With your help, we rescued 5,458 pounds of fresh produce! This food was distributed to several East Metro food shelves, including Merrick Food Shelves, Department of Indian Work, and Christian Cupboard Emergency Food Shelf. A big thank you to everyone who volunteered to make these events a success! If you would like to get on the volunteer list to help out with future gleaning events, please sign up below.
Thanks to funding from the American Rescue Plan, NCFA received almost $50,000 in grant money from Hennepin County (see more below)! We are using most of this money (about $45,000) to purchase fresh foods from local farms, focusing on Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) farmers. Supported farms include Kilimo (a farmer training program for African immigrant farmers) and Dream of Wild Health Farm. We are so grateful to Hennepin County for the continued support!
Nick sitting on top of a mountain of farm-fresh produce NCFA rescued from the Woodbury Farmers' Market with Ramsey/Washington Recycling & Energy.
The workers of NCFA would also like to thank and say farewell to Nick, a NCFA worker of over five years and an instrumental person in developing our foodshare program. Good luck and farewell, fellow worker!
Garden
Produce harvested from the North Minneapolis garden for Shiloh Temple.
The North Minneapolis garden is now put to bed, but through mid-October it produced delicious fresh veggies for folks in the neighborhood and for the Shiloh Temple weekly food pantry. (Shiloh Temple is a prominent church in the neighborhood, and one of the pastors volunteers at the Northside garden!)
We’re looking forward to expanding programming at the garden next season. If you’d like to get involved, please email garden coordinator May at garden@ncfa-mn.org.
Our garden site at Charles Horn Towers (CHT) is still in the process of being transferred over to the Somali American Farmers’ Association (SAFA). Thanks to funding from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, we have been able to pay SAFA workers to tend to the garden. As such, there hasn’t been much need for NCFA volunteers or workers to put in a lot of time, but we have been tending to the Garden in a Box raised beds from the Minnesota Horticultural Society. The produce from these boxes is being donated to residents of the public housing complex.
Produce washing station built by NCFA workers for the garden site at Charles Horn Towers.
NCFA workers Alison and Nick created a washing station to clean and pack vegetables from the CHT garden. This apparatus will stay with SAFA as the site transitions over at the end of the season. We will be sad to say goodbye to this beautiful garden site, but we’re happy that it will be run by an organization with cultural ties to the residents.
Other Updates
We Moved!
We are excited to say that we recently moved offices to Walker Church in South Minneapolis! Walker Church houses several other organizations, including two of our partners, F12 People’s Kitchen and Southside Harm Reduction. Walker Church also holds Tuesday food distributions, which NCFA supports with donations of fresh food. We are looking forward to deeper partnerships with these groups and potential new projects!
Our new office location is 3104 16th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55407. However, we bought a PO Box a couple months ago due to security issues at our former office. Please send any mail to:
North Country Food Alliance
PO Box 6124
Minneapolis, MN 55406-0124
Grants
As mentioned above, we received a $49,998 grant from Hennepin County! These funds come from the American Rescue Plan for COVID relief, and are being used to purchase healthy, culturally appropriate food for people facing hunger. A huge thank you to Hennepin County for selecting NCFA as a grant recipient!
We are also excited to announce that we’re receiving our first-ever grant from the Andersen Windows Corporate Foundation. This will be $5,000 for gleaning and food purchasing from Dream of Wild Health Farm, to be shared with the Department of Indian Work (DIW) Emergency Food Shelf in Saint Paul. We’re so grateful to Andersen Windows for helping us strengthen food sovereignty through our partnership with Dream of Wild Health!
Finally, we recently received word from the Nancy Somers Family Foundation that they will again be supporting NCFA with a $10,000 grant! This is the third year in a row that they have selected NCFA for a general funds grant. We are so thankful for their ongoing support!
SeedMoney Challenge
Contribute to the success of our next garden season by taking part in the SeedMoney crowdfunding challenge! This fundraising campaign is specifically for our North Minneapolis garden site. It starts at 11am CST on Monday, November 15th, and only runs 30 days until December 15th at 11am CST. At the end of this period, SeedMoney will award challenge grants to the 270 top fundraisers. This means that your contribution makes us eligible for additional funding! Furthermore, SeedMoney will be giving out strong start grants to the 50 projects at the top after the first week. NCFA has won both challenge and strong start grants in a previous year, thanks to your generous support.
We invite you to join us in empowering our neighbors in North Minneapolis with abundant access to fresh, healthy foods. Please give generously on our SeedMoney page starting on November 15th. Thank you!
Take Part in Strengthening Food Sovereignty
Join North Country Food Alliance in strengthening food sovereignty in the Twin Cities Metro Area!
As a community-funded non-profit, we rely on your generous contributions to distribute food completely free-of-charge. With your help, we share healthy, culturally-appropriate food with thousands of our neighbors every week.
Thank you for your ongoing support!