It’s a Tuesday morning at the Bayfair Community Garden and more than 10 volunteers are harvesting fresh vegetables to take to Tauranga’s foodbank.
About 24 banana boxes of cabbage, broccoli, silverbeet, lettuce, cauliflower, beetroot and carrot will be taken to the foodbank.
The foodbank has recorded a record demand of need this Christmas.
This comes as the Bay of Plenty Times six-week Christmas Appeal for the Tauranga Community Foodbank is in its final week.
The garden has been giving produce exclusively to the foodbank for more than 20 years but this year, foodbank worker Jordy Gastmeier is helping harvest every Tuesday to increase the volume.
“When the volunteers heard how many people it’s going to and how we are using it and we’ve been able to work with them to source more,” Gastmeier said.
It means the foodbank can have trolleys filled with “a big bright beautiful trolley load of hand grown produce.”
Utilising land, developing a garden plan and rotating crops are how Gastmeier and the gardens increased their reserves to new levels.
“We also worked to plant only what fruit and vegetables our clients see at the supermarket so it felt familiar,” she said.
This resulted in less silverbeet and more cucumbers and tomatoes.
“But it’s always fun planting a few different things and encouraging people to try new foods as well.”
The garden received a donation of 60 seedlings a month from Bethlehem’s Palmers.
The foodbank still bought produce from its suppliers and the community also contributed, with fruit from citrus trees and avocados popular right now.
Providing the community access to healthy, sustainable food was a passion of Gastmeier’s, whose warehouse manager role at the foodbank included sourcing stock.
“Having as many gardens as we can have in the community is the answer to New Zealanders accessing healthy, affordable produce.”
She said the reason this was important now more than ever was because many of the areas that grew vegetables drowned out in the floods, increasing prices and limiting the ability to eat healthily on a budget.
“It’s so obvious that when you eat healthy when you’re treated with respect and when you’re valued, you’re gonna feel a lot better and that’s what we do here.”
Garden co-ordinator Minako Greet started volunteering 11 years ago, only moving to the co-ordinator role in the past two months.
Gastmeier took Greet and other volunteers to the foodbank to show them how much need there was in the community.
“It’s so good Jordy started working with us because we didn’t know how much the demand had gone up,” said Greet.
The couple spend five months a year in America running their business.