Source – Loudoun Now
Approximately 350 volunteers gathered at JK Community Farm this weekend to plant 60,000 seedlings in the nonprofit’s biggest event of the year.
The farm is located just outside of Round Hill and grows fresh produce to donate to local food pantries. To date, JK Community Farm has raised 1.5 million pounds of food.
Run by Samantha Kuhn, the nonprofit typically operates with three team members, but each spring, the organization hosts hundreds of volunteers to kickstart the year’s work with a Plant-A-Thon.
“A lot of corporate teams, mostly, but some community members too, will join us in each time slot, and they each have a task of a certain number of rows that they’ll get planted,” Kuhn said.
This year’s crops include jalapeños, poblanos, bell peppers, acorn squash, butternut squash, tomatoes and more.
“People are incredible and it’s just so nice to see everyone coming together to make sure that all of this gets planted, so our food pantries have healthy food. Everything goes to the food pantries, 100%.And this year we’ll donate about 285,000 pounds.It’s all chemical free,” Kuhn said.
Providing nutritious food to community members who are going through a tough time is the nonprofit’s main goal.
“The food pantries’ need is just growing exponentially every day,” Kuhn said.
Loudoun Hunger Relief serves as a distribution hub for the farm’s fresh produce to other nonprofits.
“We love our friends at JK Community Farm,” Executive Director Jennifer Montgomery said. “Having thousands of pounds of fresh produce locally grown is just such a gift to our neighbors here in Loudoun who are facing food insecurity.”
And it’s not just this weekend that the farm benefits from volunteers.
“The more we’re able to harvest, the more food we can get to them. And it’s supply and demand with the plants, so the more that we’re harvesting from them, and they know we need, they’ll produce more,” she said.
Because the nonprofit is volunteer-based, growing the produce is far cheaper – and fresher – than taking donations and buying food from grocery stores.
“We’re growing this for a third of the cost that you could buy it for, because we’re not paying any labor, so any donations we can turn into three times as much food as if they were just buying the food,” Kuhn said.
Learn more about volunteering or donating atjkcommunityfarm.org.