What is Grow a Row? The purpose of Grow a Row is to encourage growers (both full-time farmers and backyard or community gardeners) to grow an extra row of food for the express purpose of donation to emergency meal programs.

What does the campaign involve? Loving Spoonful staff and our volunteer Grow a Row Committee collect donated food at the Downtown Farmers Market from June-October, deliver food to 18 agencies that feed their clients, maintain the Acorn donation garden, and preserve surplus produce in our community kitchen workbees.  The campaign starts off in May with a seedling sale and launch party and wraps up in late October with a harvest party and fall cleanup event at the Oak Street Community Garden.

Why is Grow a Row important? Food costs are on the rise. In 2011 the price of fresh produce rose 16% from 2010 prices – making the purchase of healthy fresh food beyond the means of many Kingstonians.  Grow a Row makes more fresh produce available for low-income members of our community.  Last year we collected over 7000 lbs of fresh produce through the Grow a Row campaign! By preserving some of the donated produce that comes in during peak growing times – think tomatoes in September – we are able to extend the amount of fresh local food available to meal programs beyond the growing season.

How can you get involved? There are many ways to participate in the Grow a Row campaign, and we hope you will consider engaging in the way that suits you best.

For the green thumbs:

• Plant an extra row or container at home and donate the produce. Register your garden at any point  and then drop off food at the Downtown Farmers Market Tues & Thurs from 2-4:30 or Sat from 11-4:30 and join the total
• Help maintain the Acorn donation garden at Oak Street Community Garden, or help maintain the donation plot at the Community Garden where you have a plot
• Champion Grow a Row in your workplace by joining the Workplace Challenge – prizes for the workplaces with the highest levels of donation and participation per employee!

For the non-gardeners:

• Consider purchasing a Community Shared Agriculture share or produce from market vendors for donation to Grow a Row
• Volunteer to collect food at the Downtown Farmers Market and/or deliver donated produce to meal programs
• Lend your expertise to help with publicity, fundraising, outreach and event planning

Please help make the 2012 Grow a Row Campaign our biggest and best yet!!

For more information about Grow a Row please contact info[at]lovingspoonful[dot]org or call 613-546-4291 ext. 1871.

Come check out the film and following discussion on Wednesday, February 1 at 7:00pm in Mackintosh-Corry Hall D216 (on the main floor). Donations are appreciated, and will be contributed to reclamation of healthy and organic food to meal programs across Kingston.

Made possible through Loving Spoonful and Queen’s Project on International Development.

1. An immediate increase of $100 per month Healthy Food Supplement for every adult receiving social assistance as a first step towards addressing the inadequacy of current social assistance benefits

2. A fair and transparent way of setting social assistance rates so that people can meet their basic needs and lead a healthy and dignified life

Learn more about the campaign here, and take a few moments to complete the Do the Math survey while you’re there – it is truly enlightening.

Job Contract: 46 weeks starting February 6, 2012

Wage: $20/hour, 20 hours per week

Application Deadline: January 20, 2012 4pm

We are excited to be expanding our Community Kitchen programming in 2012, and are looking for a highly motivated person to join our staff in this role. Please see full details on the position and how to apply here.

Many thanks to the United Way/City of Kingston Community Investment Fund for making this position possible.

We are also saying farewell to Kate Archibald Cross, who coordinated our 2011 Grow a Row campaign and piloted our Community Kitchen Project. Under Kate’s leadership we achieved our most successful year of donations ever – a whopping 7,000 lbs of fresh, local produce delivered to Kingston meal providers where it nourished many community members in need.

Holly Platz will be taking over the role of Executive Director from Susan. She will also continue acting as the Community Gardens Network Coordinator, and will still oversee volunteers for all of our projects. We plan on rolling out our Community Kitchen Program in earnest in 2012, and anticipate hiring a Community Kitchen Coordinator in January. Details on this position will be sent out to the list serv once they have been confirmed, and will also be posted right here on our website.

Happy Holidays!

We are holding a Volunteer Orientation and Silkscreening Social on Wednesday, November 30th from 7-9pm. It will be located in Rm. 217 of the Memorial Centre, 303 York Street. Everyone is welcome to attend, and new volunteers or people interested in volunteering are especially encouraged to come learn about our many projects and how you can get involved. You will also have the chance to silkscreen clothing items with our Loving Spoonful logo! Bring along a t-shirt, sweatshirt and/or cloth shopping bag to be printed. We will also have some aprons on hand for people to print and take home with them. This will be a fun night to get to know the Loving Spoonful team and learn a new skill!

The Acorn Garden is grown for the sole purpose of donating its harvest to Grow a Row, and we are excited to announce that this year we have already collected 6500 lbs of fresh produce, blowing away our original goal of 5000 lbs!

We have a bunch of fun activities planned throughout the afternoon! We will be putting the garden plots to bed for the winter, as well as planting some garlic (which we harvested from our very own garden this year!) There will also be a craft table for the kids, so come out and enjoy the fun!

Don’t miss out on our other activities and workshops we have planned!
3pm: Composting Workshop
4pm: A backyard Hen demonstration
5pm: Time to share a meal!

All are welcome to join us and bring a dish to share, dishes to eat on/with, and your favourite gardening gloves, tools and accesories We hope you can join us in celebrating a phenomenal season here at the garden!

Hope to see you all there!!

Look out for a similar winter promotional event coming your way in February or March 2012. In the meantime we hope you will continue to visit Kingston’s outstanding downtown restaurants and farmers markets in support of a vibrant local food system.