Events of Wednesday discussed by Rachel H--Feeding America, Growing Power & Campus Kitchen

I'll fill you in a little but on what we did yesterday, Wednesday April 1st.

Yesterday was a rough day physically and mentally mostly because most of us were so sore  and worn out from our first day at Growing Power, we all really went hard on Tuesday! Wednesday morning we went back to Feeding America and our big task for the day was taking the cereal boxes off of boxes of Cheerios and then packing up boxes with 6 bags of Cheerios each. We had to do this since General Mills donated the boxes and didn't want the "Box Tops" on the boxes to be distributed with the actual cereal. It sounds like a simple task to just remove the all of boxes, but just by the sheer number of boxes that we packed up, it was a daunting task. We packed up a total of three big loads, each needing a fork lift to drop them off. It took us a while to get an efficient system down but once we did it felt good to be part of this bigger machine like being that was able to accomplish a big task that one person couldn't accomplish on their own.

What I like about working at Feeding America is the feeling of accomplishment with the amount of food that you get to prepare for shipment and for the people that need it but I would say it has a very different vibe than when we work outside at Growing Power. Both of which are places doing very positive things but in very different ways. After Feeding America we went to Growing for our second day, as I mentioned earlier, it was a little bit more rough doing a lot of physically demanding work but it was another good day to be working outside. I think it was interesting going from being in a warehouse setting working with boxes of processed food and going right to Growing Power where they meticulously created a system that is so sustainable and so based off of the earth's natural cycles to create high-quality fresh produce. I'm not saying that working at Feeding America was a bad experience by any means but I just find it so much more enjoyable to do work outside and with nature compared to an artificial environment, which is probably the more accurate depiction of food in America.

After Growing Power we went to the "Campus Kitchen" program that's organized by Marquette students and helped them prepare food for 4 families. I thought this was a really cool program because I've never heard of something like this, they use food from the cafeteria that otherwise would have been wasted and give it to people that really need it. I really like this idea and think it goes along with the other themes this week of sustainability and trying to get the most out of your resources. I think this could be something that we all could take back to Hamline and it wouldn't be too difficult to do since there is already the resource of good cafeteria food that is thrown out every day.

Yesterday was a long demanding day of service but it was fun that we were able to go to 3 different places that were all so different but similar in the way they were providing food for people in need. They all are extremely resourceful in where they get their from and all very conscious of how food it wasted.