pivoting ‹‹ BUSINESSES & ORGANIZATIONS
produce clean, safe foods while supporting our mission and our Junior Crew (youth employees). At most grocery stores, consumers have no idea where the produce comes from or how many people have touched it. But now more than ever, it’s essential to know these things. We reviewed our operation from the ground up. We enhanced our already stringent food safety practices and initiated our “3 Touch” system to provide produce that comes into contact with three people or fewer from harvest to you. Our new protocols far exceed FDA, CDC, and WHO-recommended guidelines, which keeps our crew and customers and your food even safer. Facing lost income week after week, we worked fast to launch farmtakeout.com . Our new online market allows customers to choose from a wide variety of organic produce and eggs, from-scratch baked goods, and local meats and cheeses and then pay in advance and pick up at our contactless drive-through. We also promoted our 2020 Organic CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and Friend of the Farm card membership programs, with a goal of 25 new members. As of today, more than 60 local families get their weekly vegetables directly from us through those programs. We put just as much effort into continuing our mission-focused work. A dedicated team of six works behind the scenes at the farm as full-time advocates on behalf of the youth in our program. They pulled off our second online miracle: They quickly developed an online learning system of high-quality enrichment programs that allows our Junior Crew to continue to earn their hourly wage by completing online class tutorials. We hope to lessen the financial burden felt by our Junior Crew and their families as a result of the pandemic. Our great hope is that these experiences will make us stronger and better at what we do. We are not a group of people who says “we can’t”—that's just not us. Instead, we’ve ensured that our mission to support local youth continues while coming together like never before to provide our community access to clean, safe food. If you would like to learn more, visit us at wardensvillegardenmarket.org.
Growing Optimism, Opportunities, and Organic Produce The Wardensville Garden Market supports health and community. PAUL YANDURA AND THE WARDENSVILLE GARDEN MARKET CREW W WARDENSV I LLE , HARDY COUNT Y
their families. For the first weekend in nearly four years of operation, our doors were closed. The Wardensville Garden Market is a nonprofit organic farm, but we grow more than just vegetables. Our mission is to expand opportunities for local Appalachian youth so they grow to reach their greatest potential. We are the first project of Farms Work Wonders, a West Virginia nonprofit social enterprise that creates living classrooms—our bakery, market, farm, and the soon-to-be-launched restaurant— to provide real-life experiences and create jobs. Our nonprofit believes in a “help ourselves” versus a “help us” model. We create income through sales of our from-scratch baked goods, organic eggs, and produce, with 100 percent of the proceeds invested back into the program. People were still going to need to eat, our plants weren’t going to wait until we reopened to start producing, and our laying chickens didn’t have an on/off switch (at least that we could find). There was no farmers almanac or instruction manual to consult. Still, with a dedicated staff, we knew we’d continue to
when news first circulated about the coronavirus, we knew what our first steps would be—pause, plan, and adapt. On March 13, a full nine days before the governor's stay-at-home order, our senior managers suspended non- essential on-site operations. We closed our bakery and market and told our 70-plus employees—40 of them high school students—to stay home. We promised to keep paying them, and we took stock of our food and made donations to our staff and
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