a project

my second day at Our Daily Bread and i already have a project! in between memorizing over 100 volunteer's names, keeping track of who is new, getting people chopping and setting, giving orientation, entering volunteers into the database, checking phone messages, calling back potential volunteers, making phone calls looking for more volunteers, solving problems on the floor, making the computer lab volunteer rounds, answering questions, tracking donations, planning the next day, planning the next week, and smoozing with the employees i am going to be working on resolving our involvement with the Hamilton Crop Circle .

every sunday ODB receives farmer's market leftovers. this week it looked like: a bin of tomatoes, a bin of squash, two bins of greens, a bin of tomatoes and squash, a bin of pears, two bins of apples, a bin of green peppers, squash and eggplant, and two bins of corn. the program also donated eight 50lb bags of green beans and the same of potatoes. this week they just sat there. yesterday, amidst bins of (literally) rotting fruit my supervisor told me of his vision. this summer volunteers manned the delicious fruit and veggies, sorting and prepping it for the line and the chef. see, in order for ODB to serve 700 meals a day, the chef and line volunteers are prepping as fast as they can from 8am till serving time at 10:30. they don't have time for sorting shriveled green peppers and scooping rot out of yellow squash. the produce is beautiful on sunday, but by the time wednesday rolls around it's looking pretty bad. there is some serious foot dragging about the process of getting enough volunteers on this job but the benefits are obvious. the farmers market give ODB the produce and less of it gets thrown away. we are recycling. produce is expensive. while ODB tries to serve nutritious meals every day (they have a mean vegetarian platter) they can't afford to buy produce the quality of the farm-fresh bins received from hamilton. also, our 500 guests can't buy a lot of fresh produce either. some of them insist that that's just fine for them, they don't like veggies anyway, but others love it. after a rigorous clipping and cleaning of 50lbs of green beans today, i watched many guests chowing down on heaping scoops of steamed green beans and kidney beans. i believe that if only 50 people enjoy their plate of fresh and healthy food all of the sorting, cleaning and chopping is worth it. like the chef, cedric said "it don't matter what they do with it once we give it to 'em, we just gotta get it out there".

get it out there! i am glad there's something else to be excited about at this job. all aspects of it are great, but this one i think is going to be particularly rewarding.

on another note, i got my library book today! time for a little cozy reading.