Care Baskets – weeks 5-8

PLOT Care Baskets

Helping Neighbours with Immediate Food Needs

Week 5 of the Care Baskets — We need to begin with an enormous THANK YOU to Calvin’s Farm Market for providing us with all the super fresh vegetables and fruits at a discounted price. It helped us serve 27 hungry households today! One household was a single mother with two young kids and her very ill senior mother. And no food in the house. Another was an emergency Sunday delivery to an injured senior who lives alone, has no food, and cannot get out. We wish we could do more, a lot more ❤️ The PLOT Bok Choy we planted back in March was ready. And the chives too. Such beautiful care baskets! And we made an extra beautiful basket of care with fresh flowers from the garden for a birthday girl today! ?

‘Wow! What a Feast I have from you! I keep making vegetable miso soup with buckwheat noodles and a variety of vegetables. I can eat it every day, I just change up the vegetables… so so delicious! This soup makes me feel so nourished.’

‘My kids enjoyed the fruits and veggies that were delivered. They love fresh fruit and veggies, they never last long, thank you very much, this definitely helps us out!’

‘Thank you for your kind and generous idea to create grocery bags for those in need. Thank you for your hard work getting all the veggies ordered and picked up, dropped off or brought to the PLOT! Beautiful service to humanity!’

Week 6 of the Care Baskets — Again we begin with a thank you to Calvin’s Farm Market for discounting all their super fresh vegetables for us. And more big thank yous to All Of Oils for their incredibly generous donation of olive oil, and to Studio 73 for the beautiful “We’re in this together” fused glass magnets. And a special thank you to Katheren Szabo for her donation of beautiful cloth masks to help keep our senior recipients safe. Together you helped us fill 26 fabulous care baskets this week!

‘Food insecurity can be so disabling, I am so VERY grateful for these earth angels!!!’

‘They helped me to start feeling better, I was so sick but the the two bags I got helped me get on track, feeling healthy enough to get myself going, thank you.’

Week 7 of the Care Baskets — I want to begin with a big thank you to the volunteer drivers from the United Way, Reed, Kamille, Adeelah, I so appreciated your enthusiastic help in the pouring rain.

Thanks to Tom Zillich’s beautiful article highlighting our Care Basket initiative we have a few more people requesting help: one person asked for a basket for her 87 year old mother who lives alone in Whalley; a disabled woman requested a basket for a family, everyone has been laid off and they have no income. I packed extra bags to take to The PLOT, and two new families came by today. No one left disappointed.

Thank you again to Calvin’s Farm Market. This week a few bags held special treats. I bought some rhubarb for a senior who loves to have rhubarb in her breakfast every day. And baby cucumbers and bean sprouts for a person who loves to cook vegetable miso soups. One person said she was feeling terribly low so I picked her two roses from my garden this morning. I hope our care baskets help people feel less alone in these isolating times. ❤️

‘Cooking a nice big soup with veg from the Newton veg basket project! Everything I need every 2nd Saturday to make best soup ever. Then I freeze and have ‘easy’ food to make when sore. This helping hand has made such a difference in amount of fresh food I am eating! Thanks very much!’

Week 8 of the Care Baskets — We are still going strong, we delivered 33 yummy care baskets this week! Deep gratitude to all of our volunteers for helping us with the deliveries and with weeding in the garden today! Let’s keep strengthening our communities and uplifting each other in times of need. ?