I think I've mentioned this, but this is in more detail.
You may remember that I volunteer at our small town food pantry. With the County's Main Food Bank warehouse cut of $900,000 in Fed funds, all the pantries are struggling. I stumbled across two gals (there is a 3rd gal too) who have hobby farms. They each have sheep, cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits. These three women have a yearly contract with Costco near us, to haul away, every day of the week, all their discarded produce.
I made a verbal agreement with the first gal that if she had any human edible food for the food bank, that I"d drive up to her (6 miles up hill), take anything she is willing to pass on to fd bank, and then also I would take all of her massive cardboard boxes to the transfer station. She jumped on it!!
The second gal heard and said Oh Yoo Hoo!! I can give you stuff if you also take away these produce boxes!!
Its been going well.
I do skim off some things that I want for us. A package of mushrooms, two bags of broccoli, melons, strawberries, lettuce, etc. I have been freezing many items, dehydrating alot of it, and tomorrow I'll make mango salsa to can.
I take the boxes of produce to the food bank. Much of it they reject cus they are not "perfect". I roll my eyes, but the food bank is the one that has to bear the wrath of the clients who feel entitled to "perfect" food. I skim that rejected produce too, and the rest comes home to my 3 pallet long compost bin.
Tuesday afternoon, the food bank accepted 481 lbs of food that was good enuf for our clients, that Costco was discarding. They've never in my 4 weeks of doing this, accepted this much!!
This and my deep pantry of canned goods has really helped us with our food budget. And oh how I wish I could share with each of you.