The charity rescues vegetables from nearby farm fields to fill food banks
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As food banks in the London area called for urgent donations ahead of the holiday season, Donna Lunn and her team stepped up their efforts to help.
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• Reporter from the local journalism initiative
Published on 01/08/2023 • Last updated 18 hours ago • 2 minutes read
Three ripe tomatoes are growing on an organic farm. (file photo)
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As food banks in the London area called for urgent donations ahead of the holiday season, Donna Lunn and her team stepped up their efforts to help.
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Lunn is the founder of Harvest Bowl, a volunteer-run agency dedicated to reducing food waste by collecting vegetables from farmers’ fields and turning them into dried soup mixes. The mixes are sent to animal shelters and food banks in the counties of London, St Thomas and Elgin, Oxford and Middlesex.
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“This year we upped our game because the food banks called earlier and we said we were making 5,000 complete soup mixes,” she said, referring to the fiscal year that started in March 2022.
The agency is already on track to exceed its target.
In the week leading up to Christmas, Harvest Bowl distributed 2,700 soup mixes to shelters and food banks across the region. The bulk of them – around 1,000 – went to the London Food Bank, Lunn said.
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These donations are in addition to the 1,000 soup mixes that will be distributed throughout the summer and fall. “So we’re on track to be able to donate 5,000 by late spring,” Lunn said.
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Harvest Bowl operates from South Dorchester Community Hall in Malahide Township, a township in Elgin County, south east London, where it collects, cleans and dehydrates collected vegetables. Launched in 2018, the non-profit organization is run by volunteers and has grown to include dozens of partners, including more than 10 food banks from across the London area and as far away as Guelph.
The recipes for the soup mixes are created in collaboration with a nutritionist, while the University of Guelph helps create the labels for the packs. The agency also invites volunteers from churches and youth and school groups in the area to help dry the vegetables, a process done in a tobacco oven.
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The fuel for the dehydrator will also be donated, Lunn said. “It’s really become a community project.”
Lunn sees her group’s efforts as a solution not only to tackling food waste, but also to helping people struggling with food insecurity.
When the agency began, one in 10 Elgin County households was diet insecure, meaning residents could not access adequate food due to financial constraints, Lunn said, adding that the need for healthier, more accessible food options continues to grow .
The reception has been so positive that Harvest Bowl recently started selling its soup mixes at an Aylmer farm.
“We started a small social business because people wanted to buy the soup (mixture),” she said.
So far, the nonprofit has made $4,000, money that Lunn says will be used to purchase condiments for future soup mix donations.
While Lunn envisions further expansion of the nonprofit, she hopes to remain as sustainable and local as possible. But beyond that, she wants others to take similar initiatives.
“We’d rather go the train-the-trainer route and share the model, and then local communities can start using their own resources to do that,” Lunn said.
“They are community solutions to community challenges.”
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