 Welcome to Insight, produced in partnership with Lakeland Public Television, serving North Central Minnesota. Today we are chatting with Mary Mitchell and Hannah Clem of the Bemidji Community Food Shelf. They have generously agreed to share some of their experience with us, and thank you both for joining us today. Thank you for having us. So let's talk about food and people in need who require help in accessing food for their daily lives. Talk about your role in this community in filling that need. Right. Well, the food shelf was started back in 1982 by several area churches who they were all being approached by not only members of their churches, but folks from the community that were having issues around food insecurity. They just, you know, many of them, you know, they could have, they could eat sometimes, but then other times, you know, toward the end of the month, they were running short of money. They, you know, had to buy gas, they couldn't buy groceries, and needed food. So they decided to come together and form the Bemidji Community Food Shelf. And since then, we've grown quite a lot, and we now serve 3,000 families in the Bemidji area. We see that, you know, there are some people that obviously live in chronic poverty, but many of them are working families that just can't make ends meet. We also have a lot of seniors that are on fixed incomes, and their social security just does not stretch throughout the month, and they need help with food. So that's what we do. We're here to help them. We can't provide all their food, but we can provide some food to help them. And what is also interesting is how this ends up transpiring. The month starts. You might have some money at the beginning of the month. You've just gotten a check wherever that beginning of the month falls in the actual calendar for you. You start to fund your various needs for housing and other needs. And then at a certain point, before you are able to pick up, pick that up, you have a gap. So that is really where you step in. That is. That's exactly right. We also find that our use increases during the summer when kids are home from school. Not only do families have more mouths to feed in the summer, because kids may not be accessing, even though some of the schools offer a summer feeding program, transportation is an issue for many of our, especially rural families, and so they can't take their kids to access these free meals or reduced-rate meals. So we see our use increase during the summer. Also another thing that someone pointed out to me the other day, which I thought was quite interesting, is that daycare expenses increase during the summer. So if you're paying to have your child taken care of and suddenly they're home from school all day, you have these increased expenses. You're the director of the organization, and then, Johanna, are the farm manager. Talk about the role of farms and your program. You're part of this picture in supplying the food to the food shelf. Well, the farm was started, I believe, in 2014. It was our first growing season. And the farm is an acre and a half on property that the food shelf owns. And then we partner with the Developmental Achievement Center, which is right next door, to farm another four acres. The additional four acres were currently in the process of expanding onto. So we currently have about an acre that is in production and another three acres that were cover cropping to improve the soil quality so that we can grow. And then you also have considerable labor involved. Talk about how that actually comes to bear, and you're partnering with other nonprofits as well. A lot of the harvesting is done by hand, the planting is done by hand, cultivation, we do have a tractor, but the maintenance, weeding, we need bodies for that. So we're very fortunate to live in a community where people give their time freely. We have a large number of volunteers that come to contribute their time to the farm, in addition to the incredible number of volunteers that come to the food shelf regularly. So they really contribute to our success in being able to produce for the food shelf customers. What do you grow seasonally? We have potatoes and orange carrots, onions. We grow beautiful onions, cabbages, tomatoes, peppers. Talk about also your distribution facilities. Before we started filming, you were talking about the fact that people think that you're really a small operation, but you're not a small operation at all. In 2012, the food shelf moved to its current location in the industrial park, and our buildings were formerly the Occupational Development Center, where they did manufacturing woodworking of some sort. And so we have kind of a complex of buildings, actually. We have an office area, what we call our store area, and then a large warehouse in the back where we have our walk-in cooler and freezers and a large pallet cooler, and we can also store our trailer, park our van back there, and any excess food, the backlog of food that we store. And then beyond that, we have our raised bed garden outside, and our farm, which Hannah spoke about. We also have a building that we rent out a portion of to a local company, so that's been very helpful. But it is a big operation, and fortunately, the churches that are involved, and now there are 17 churches involved, kind of coordinate the volunteers on a daily basis, and not only church volunteers come on a regular schedule, there are community members that also come in on a regular schedule, too, and work in the warehouse and the store. Because we participate in a federal program, we have to limit the faith part of, we can't proselytize, we can't require people using the food shelf to participate in a prayer before they get their food, and so forth. So I think all of our churches understand that they're very respectful of that. It really is very important when you think about serving community, when you think about doing God's work, what does that actually mean? What does that translate to? As human beings, we all have our priorities. So how can one subvert one's individual priorities to basically serve a greater priority that encompasses your faith partners? Kind of putting their agenda on the back burner and coming together for a bigger cause, because that's exactly what is happening here. How do you communicate with others? How do you engage them in your programs? What type of outreach do you undertake? Anyone is welcome to come to the farm at any time, or the food shelf, to see what we're doing. You can take a self-guided tour of the farm, or we can walk you around and explain what we're up to. But in addition to that, we have two outreach programs that we do at the farm. The assistant farm manager, Candy Bartle, is also acting as our outreach coordinator this year, and she's doing a fantastic job. So she works three days a week for an hour with the Developmental Achievement Center clients. They walk over from their facility, which is right next door, and they garden. And right now they're harvesting lettuce, they're harvesting chard, they're picking peas, they're looking for potato bugs, and they have a really great time doing that. It's the closest thing that we have in terms of garden therapy, so that's a really great program and we'd like to see it continue. And then the other thing that we're working on is what we call the Community Raised Bed Project. That started as garden in a box with the Minnesota Horticulture Society. But basically what it is is we have raised beds that we've offered to families at low-income housing developments throughout the Bemidji area. So you install the raised beds? We do. Yeah. In various community housing projects? Yes. That's wonderful. Yes, it is. And then our Outreach Coordinator, Candy, provides technical assistance to the families that are using them each year. So that's been going for three years now. And so you're teaching people how to fulfill their own needs by educating them on how to grow vegetables, seasonality, crop selection, and then sustainable farming practices as well. So you're basically helping people to not rely on others. And providing a space. In our community, we have a lot of green space, but unfortunately at these particular sites, there's not an established gardening area. So we're providing that too. Do you need additional funding support in order to experiment a bit? Because when you experiment, not all of your experiments are going to succeed. Right. Right. Not all of your crops are going to grow. That's right. Yes. We do. And I think that that's something that we need to look at. We're talking right now about an outdoor classroom and probably reaching out to some funders for that. Right. Are you interacting with the business community in any particular way and family farmers in terms of gaining advice and experience in any particular way that is helping you design your farm for the future? Yes. So we have a, there are a number of farmers who have been instrumental in getting the farm established. They served in an advisory capacity in the very beginning and contributed to the overall design and the knowledge that now is collectively used to keep it going. The Bemidji area farmer's market has been an enormous supporter of the farm project. And then in addition to that, we have a collaborative project with the University of Minnesota. Will be one of five sites in the state to construct a deep winter greenhouse, which really we're aiming to have as a community resource both for education and for a demonstration of that technology. It'll be so interesting to watch him evolve this, this organization over the next years with the help of the community. Mary Mitchell, Hannah Clem, thank you so much for sharing the experience of the Bemidji community food shelf. And thank you so much for your insights.