Prairie Wild partners with Steinbach Family Resource Centre for produce

Prairie Wild and the Steinbach Family Resource Centre (SFRC) have formed a partnership to bring healthy fresh vegetables to families in need.

SFRC was approached by Karli and Riley Friesen to see if they wanted some excess produce they had grown that couldn’t be sold at the market.

“Donating to SFRC was the natural outcome of our two needs meeting: SFRC needed produce to run their nutrition and cooking classes, and we needed a way to successfully use up unmarketable produce. We believe that people should have access to naturally grown food, free of herbicides and pesticides, regardless of their income,” stated Karli in an email.

The produce is donated during the summer once or twice a week and is distributed to families who use SFRC’s programing. Food that is not taken or used is sent to Soup’s On and Steinbach Community Outreach.

SFRC executive director Jo-Anne Dalton said the organization also receives food from Walmart through South East Helping Hands. She said families have a hard time buying fresh produce as they invest money into items that are shelf stable and palatable, such as pasta and canned goods.

“The cost of food is astronomical, especially fruit and fresh produce. The cost of those things have really gone up in the last couple of years…,” she said. “They can’t afford to have their kids not like something or not try something so they have to purchase what lasts a long time, what makes their dollar go the farthest.”

Dalton said over the long-term, eating less fresh vegetables and fruit can contribute to children not developing their eating palates nor developing healthy eating habits.

“We want people to have access to nutritious healthy food for their well-balanced diets for their families, but also the families that we support with kids from age zero to six,” she said.

“One of the biggest things to support their life long nutritional habits is exposing them to different flavours, textures, and tastes in those really critical early years as they’re learning to eat and manipulate food in their mouths and tastes and develop those muscles and those taste textures and things like that.”

Although the produce is for families who are using SFRC’s programming, Dalton said that sometimes there is an abundance and they will post on SFRC’s Facebook and Instagram pages that the food is available to the general public.