It’s Really Really Free: New Farmers Market Sprouts on Miramar College Campus
Almost everyone who encounters a Feeding San Diego farmers market on college campuses has trouble believing that everything is free. As humans just trying to get by with our daily lives in the fast-moving, hustling 21st Century, we can be forgiven for sometimes being a little suspicious or cynical. After all, there’s an adage drummed into most of us since we were young: Nothing in life is free.
But as we take pleasure in doing on a variety of fronts, Feeding San Diego is proving that adage wrong. This week, students, faculty and staff of San Diego Miramar College perused the pears, butternut squash, spaghetti squash and other food to choose what they wanted to take home to cook. Hundreds participated in San Diego Miramar College’s first “Really Really Free Farmers Market.”
Open to anyone on campus, the farmers market was created to help the entire college community address serious hunger issues.
“These pears are beautiful!” said student Casandra as she picked up and admired the fruit.
The produce Feeding San Diego provides to our community college farmers markets is all perfectly good to eat. We get the produce from farmers, distributors, and retailers for a number of reasons: maybe it is too big or small to be sold in a grocery store or a farm grew an excess of that crop. Instead of sending the wholesome and delicious produce to the landfill or plowing it under, Feeding San Diego delivers this food to sites like Miramar College.
Volunteers and students worked side-by-side, passing out the food and engaging with the participants. The president of Miramar College, Patricia Hsieh, herself joined the line to pitch in and help.
Some of the participants had never cooked squash before. That’s where the wisdom of the community comes in. Along with each produce item, volunteers and staff posted a simple recipe that included that specific produce as the main ingredient.
The campus was all smiles as people left with a bag full of groceries, talking excitedly to their friends. Over the next few months, Feeding San Diego will be opening more farmers markets at campuses across the county.
A hunger-free San Diego is attainable in our lifetime. With our partners across the county, Feeding San Diego will be leading the charge to solve hunger every day, every step of the way.
