Loose Leaf Notes

~ The following first appeared in the spring issue of It’s All About Her, a regional newspaper insert magazine.

When Karen Day relocated to Floyd from Greenville, North Carolina, in 2005, she and her husband, McCabe Coolidge, settled in a remote part of the county, living in a rustic cabin off the Blue Ridge Parkway.   It was a good place to regroup after the activity of Day’s previous job as a Unitarian minister of a congregation, but it wasn’t long before the couple’s interest in community led to another move, closer to town. 

“I realized I was hungry for community and to talk with people who are really rooted here,” says Day, who grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, on family farmland.  Her grandparents had farmed the land, but her own family didn’t even have a garden. “I felt a sense of loss.”

Both Day and Coolidge have a long history of jobs in human services, working in soup kitchens, homeless shelters, community centers and for anti-hunger initiatives.  Day’s favorite part of her minister’s job was working in the community and building relationships.  She knew she wanted to get back to that but gave herself time to see what the needs were in Floyd.   

The sun poured in through the windows at PLENTY! headquarters as Day explained how the non-profit organization that she and her husband founded started from a seed and grew.  From a table in PLENTY!’s country kitchen, she talked about how the organization has drawn a wealth of opportunities and volunteer help, step by step.  Day believes that PLENTY volunteers have been plentiful because PLENTY! projects are fun and bring people together. “People want to help if you make it easy for them to,” she says.

In 2008 Coolidge, a potter, got some people together and started Floyd’s first Empty Bowls, an international project to fight hunger. For $10 attendees of Floyd’s annual Empty Bowls pick out a bowl made and donated by local potters and fill it with homemade soup.   Proceeds from the well attended community shared meals go to Floyd’s New River Community Action Center’s Backpack Program, which sends weekend backpacks full of food home with school children who qualify for the USDA free and reduced lunch program.

Around the same time the first annual Floyd Empty Bowls began, Day was thinning out beet greens at a local organic farm where she and Coolidge had a CSA (community supported agriculture) share. The owner of the CSA suggested she take the surplus beet greens to the Community Action Center.  “We thought it would be great if people could get fresh produce that others can’t use,” Day remembers.

But the Community Action Center didn’t have a cooler and couldn’t handle fresh produce, which is how the idea for the first PLENTY! project, Portable Produce, came about.  What started as the delivery of fresh produce by Day and Coolidge to people in the community who did not have transportation has grown into a volunteer operation of seven weekly delivery routes and as many twenty volunteer drivers (many who work in teams). 

Day considers what PLENTY! does as neighborly, rather than helping the needy.  “We want to extend the tradition that’s always been here of helping each other.”   She smiles as she describes the cycle of giving and receiving that everyone involved benefits from. “It feeds me to sit in a widow’s living room and hear her stories of what it was like to grow up in Indian Valley, Willis or Meadows of Dan.

She didn’t want to stop seeing PLENTY! produce recipients when the growing season was over, so Day started Souper Douper, a monthly fellowship meal that PLENTY! volunteers make and deliver to homes.  Unlike a soup line, everyone sits at the table together, Day says. She describes a recent Souper Douper soup making morning when 15 volunteers showed up.  “We don’t need that many people to make soup, but they like hanging out together.”  

PLENTY’S first Wonder Garden program began in 2009 at Floyd Elementary School and later at Willis Elementary.  With the help of PLENTY volunteers, kindergarteners and lower elementary students plant and harvest vegetables in raised gardening beds at the school.  The children also participate in a class where they learn about plants and enjoy fresh food tastings, “to know what it’s like to eat from the garden,” Day says. 

Alexis Bressler (pictured below on the right, next to McCabe) met Day and Coolidge when they spoke at a Virginia Tech “Civic Agriculture and Food Systems” class that Bressler was in.   She was impressed with PLENTY!’s community model and eventually joined the team as a full-time AmeriCorps VISTA intern . Today, she coordinates PLENTY’s garden programs, which includes a Community Garden that first broke ground in the spring of 2010 on a donated plot of land, adjacent to PLENTY! headquarters.

Community gardeners from the nearby Pine Ridge Apartments were happy for an opportunity to grow their own tomatoes, cucumbers for pickles and more.  Some of the senior residents at the apartment complex, which provides housing for the elderly and people with disabilities, have had gardens all their lives. They were disappointed with the no gardening rule at the apartments and the Community Garden was the perfect solution.  Opening day for the garden this year is April 13^th.  More than a dozen gardeners will be working 19 10 x 10 plots or putting their green thumbs into a community plot.  

Another landmark development for PLENTY! was the opening of its Fresh Food Bank in the fall of 2011.  Day explained how local church food banks are only open once a month and accessing food at the Community Action Center involves an application process.   The PLENTY! food bank, which stocks non-perishable staples as well as fresh food, can serve people with more immediate needs.  It has a walk in cooler and is located in a rented garage next to the PLENTY! office. 

Other PLENTY! projects include Healthy Snacks, provided at snack time to school children who might not otherwise have them, and the Sun Bonnet Gang. The Sun Bonnet Gang involves an outing to the Saturday Floyd Farmers Market, where PLENTY! provides transportation and shopping coupons and everyone wears bonnets. “Our mission is not just to feed people.  It’s about nurturing community,” Day emphasizes. 

In warm weather The Souper Douper Wednesday gatherings morph into PLENTY! Good Free Lunch when the food bank garage is transformed into a café and the menu includes plenty of homegrown ingredients.  This is also the first season for the new PLENTY! farm, 17 acres along the Little River where Day envisions picnics by the river, grandmas telling stories and children popping cherry tomatoes into their mouths.  Two local farmers have agreed to manage the farm, growing for market and for PLENTY! projects on a couple of the acres.

Day, who acts as the group’s volunteer coordinator, as well as its co-director, came up with the name PLENTY!  Although the group operates on shoestring budget and sometimes worries that there won’t be enough food to fill delivery bags, someone or something always comes forth to redistribute the bounty. “We rely on generosity,” she says.    “The surprising thing is that there really is plenty. It’s about trust that there can be enough if we tap into what we can give and how we can receive from each other.”   Colleen Redman

Note:  Day invites people to grow a row for PLENTY, to consider making a donation or helping out at any of their many programs.   She can be contacted at  plenty@swva.net.  Visit the PLENTY! website at plentylocal.org.