Binney Wells doesn’t keep a large garden, but it yields more than she needs.
A modest surplus — two plastic bags of kale greens and one of green beans — moved her to visit the Hopkinton Food Pantry last week and make a donation.
“We don’t need all of this; we’ve eaten a lot of it,” she said. “They need it. And I don’t even know who they are, but this is a wonderful food pantry that supports a lot of families in town.”
Shared Harvest of Hopkinton, a community organization working to prevent food waste and promote food security, designated four dates this summer for fresh egg and produce donations, two of which are upcoming: Aug. 19 and Sept. 2. Donations take place from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the center’s lower, outdoor level.
Shared Harvest was born out of an observation by brothers Kyle and Griffin Pellerin that the surplus vegetables in their family garden would go to waste if they couldn’t be salvaged. The Pellerins also knew from volunteering at the town’s food pantry that access to fresh produce was limited.
Each donation day since the organization’s launch in 2020 has counted on the help of town residents, volunteers with the Lions Club and donations from Work Song Farm in Hopkinton.
“The generosity of local gardeners and farmers has enabled food pantry recipients to have a veritable ‘farmers market’ of their own where they can choose from an array of seasonal fresh local vegetables,” the organization said in a statement.
Until recently, Wells said she hadn’t realized there were people experiencing homelessness in Hopkinton. Now, whenever she passes by the food pantry on her way to her exercise classes at the Slusser Center, she thinks not only about them but about the many more whose finances, increasingly cramped, may be teetering on the edge of precarity.
“With the price of gas, the price of food, it’s going to get worse,” she said.
Tomatoes are ripening in her garden. Next time, she’ll bring some by the food pantry. “It’s obvious they’re doing good stuff,” she said.
The Slusser Center is located at 41 Houston Drive, Contoocook.
