Gardeners: Donate Veggie Overflow to Food Pantry

Vegetable gardens are among the most anticipated signs of summer. With this summer's abundant sunshine, periodic rain — along with a lot of hard work — those vegetable gardens are now really beginning to produce. And if you turn your back for a day or two, those squash will be HUGE! 

Often the gardener's next chore — after eating a lot and a bit of basking in the glory of what has been achieved — is figuring out what to do with all that produce.  It's all delicious and healthy, but a family can only eat so much, freeze or preserve so much, and only give away so much to friends and work colleagues.

Why not bring your excess veggies and fruit to Middletown's Amazing Grace Food Pantry, where it will be greatly appreciated and much enjoyed by many families?

Amazing Grace has a walk-in refrigerator that can properly store all those items which need refrigeration, but fresh veggies and fruit don't sit around very long. They are very quickly distributed and tucked into the shopping bags of families who are thrilled to have fresh produce.  

Being able to provide tasty and nutritious meals and snacks for their children is usually out of reach for low-income households, so summer produce is a real treat. 

In the past couple of years, the number of gardeners who donate produce has increased significantly. Amazing Grace serves close to 1,000 families each month from Middletown and beyond.

Donations of produce — and other food — can be dropped off at the pantry at 16 Stack Street on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Drive around to the Delivery Door at the back of the building where there are volunteers.

Call (860) 344-0097 Ext/ 10 or 347-3222 for information.