In the midst of food insecurity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Farm Runners in Hotchkiss, Colorado has been contributing fresh produce and food — grown by local farmers and ranchers — to all five elementary schools in Delta County.
Farm Runners partnered with Delta County School District to get bags of food to needy families. Since the School District provides breakfast and lunch bags to free and reduced lunch participants, it allows Farm Runners to distribute food. The School District is prohibited from distributing food from external sources. Through April, the business has distributed over 500 boxes of fresh food.
“When all this stuff started happening, we had a meeting about: what are we going to do, because all of our accounts shut down? How do we help the farmers and the community?” said Farm Runners founder, Emma Stopher-Griffin. “We’re just trying to give families something to take home and cook for a few more meals during the week.”
Farm Runners, formed in 2012, is a regional food distributor specializing in custom-harvested farm products. They serve the Roaring Fork, Gunnison, and Grand Valleys of Colorado with local food year-round. They have been building lasting relationships with farmers and help new and established family farms find a market for their product while making it easier for consumers to access the amazing food grown in Western Colorado. Farm Runners is also a certified distributor and the staff regularly undergoes food safety training, making the food boxes project regulated and updated on safety measures.
The food is distributed on Wednesdays and Fridays, with Farm Runners distributing 60 food boxes each day. The “base boxes” contain a starch, fresh greens, fresh fruits, juices and dairy or other products. While the exact contents of the boxes vary, the focus is on distributing fresh produce and value-added products.
“It’s amazing. We get calls from mothers that are so thankful just to get the food, and a lot of them have said they’re thankful it’s not just canned food,” Stopher-Griffin said. “I think having access to fresh greens, fresh eggs, things you don’t typically get — we’ve had a lot of thanks for that.”
In addition, Stopher-Griffin said the project, Community Food Fund, hopes to help local farmers who have faced a cut in business as restaurants close down.
“We’re super blessed to have the farmers and ranchers that we do in this valley that work so hard to produce food. It’s truly amazing how many people we can feed just from the food grown in this community,” Stopher-Griffin said. “We’ve been moving a ton of food for the farmers, keeping the farmers rolling.”
Stopher-Griffin said that the community came together to make the Fund happen, donating either financially or with their time as a volunteer. She recalled that many volunteers at the schools are teachers, who can use the opportunity to see their students from a distance. The effort has been way more successful than they thought it would be.
The Community Food Fund will continue through the end of the May, and Stopher-Griffin hopes to explore ways to continue helping the community in the coming months.
“It’s just really amazing how many people have donated money or donated their stimulus checks for us, saying they want to put it back into the community,” Stopher-Griffin said. “The school is going to be giving out the free and reduced lunch through the end of May, and then it is on my docket to figure out what’s next. I think people are going to need help longer… A lot of our donors really do want to stay within the Delta County area, so we’ll try to figure it out.”
Mckenzie Moore, Delta County Independent Staff Writer, contributed heavily to this article.
UPDATE: May 22, 2020
To date we have been able to send out 1200 boxes of food to Paonia, Crawford, Cedaredge, Hotchkiss and Delta. We are still distributing from the schools in each of these 5 towns and will continue to do so until the district’s final day of free and reduced lunch on May 29th.
Thus far we have raised $19,875 from 250 donors. We have had over 24 volunteers help us distribute the boxes over the past 10 weeks. And we have had so many parents call to say thank you for the fresh food! Those calls make it all worthwhile.
We have supported 29 farmers/producers in our area by purchasing their local veggies, fruit and value-added products. With the summer crops starting to come in, the number of local farmers we will be able to support will only grow.
In the coming weeks we will continue these donation boxes to families in our county. Our plan is to weekly distribute to the Elementary Schools in Paonia, Hotchkiss, and Cedaredge. We may add Delta if things go well.
We will be working with the Food Bank of the Rockies to distribute meals from them along with our fresh boxes once a week on Fridays from 11am-1pm. The Food Bank of the Rockies will be handing out 5 meals to each family on Fridays, and the families will also get our fresh produce on top of that. We will be starting with 20 boxes per location and scaling up from there if needed. This program will start on June 5th and continue each week until Friday August 14th.
