THREE YEARS of FRESH, LOCAL PRODUCE in EAST Harlem

by Ed Yowell

Slow Food NYC is wrapping up the third successful season of a weekly fresh produce stand at The Children’s Storefront, a school in East Harlem, one of the City’s “food deserts,” where fresh food is a scarce commodity.

At the stand, students, aided by volunteering Slow Food members and school staff sell local produce, acquired from Greenmarket farmers, to other kids, parents, teachers, and neighbors. About eight kids will have worked afternoon shifts during the season, from September through November. They learn math, “If carrots are $1 a pound, how much does 1/2 pound cost?” , spelling, “How do you spell Broccoli?”, entrepreneurship, “Hello, please come to our stand.”, and customer relations, “May I help you?, “Thank you for shopping with us.”

And they learn about real, local food, biodiversity, and taste. When they make produce signs, the kids learn that we don’t just have potatoes, we have Adirondack Red Potatoes and Adirondack Blue Potatoes, as well as Russets, Red, and White. (And they can now spell Adirondack.) We have Yellow, Purple, and White Cauliflowers and Butternut, Carnival, Buttercup, Sweet Dumpling, and Delicata Winter Squash. And each week we have at least three different apple varieties, having garnered recently some customer complaints, “Where are those brown apples (Golden Russet) you had last week? They were the best apples I ever ate”.

Grown-up volunteers give cooking advice, “The Calville Blanc apple is the best for pie.”, “Cut the Sweet Dumpling Squash in half, take out the seeds, bake it, and than mash it with a little butter and cinnamon.”

And, perhaps most importantly, apples are becoming one of the more popular after-school snacks. At the end of each market day, unsold produce goes into the school cafeteria to appear on lunch menus during the week..roasted Adirondack Red and Blue Potatoes are popular.

The stand is not a break-even proposition. We can’t sell fresh, local produce for more than the not-as-fresh, not-so-local produce available at a corner bodega or at the nearest supermarket, about six blocks away. The produce stand is part of the Slow Food NYC Harvest Time program. We are also working with two schools in Williamsburg and one on the Lower East Side. The schools all have edible gardens and good food education programs and, at one, kids sell produce they grow.

The funds that support Harvest Time have been almost solely the result of the support received through your attendance at Slow Food NYC events. With the continued support of Slow Food NYC members and friends, the produce stand will be back in East Harlem next year. If you’d like to support the Slow Food NYC Harvest Time program, you can click here, make a donation, any amount is a great help, and designate it for Harvest Time.