For many people, the image of a food pantry is one of shelves of canned and boxed food from the grocery store.
With its food preservation program, the Goodman food pantry on Madison’s east side is changing that image, collecting fresh tomatoes, kale and green beans, among other produce, and preparing it for families in need.
“We’re feeding about 100 families with our food pantry that happens three times a week. A lot of the food we preserve goes to the food pantry and some of it is sold at the front desk of the Goodman Center,” said Amy Mach, food procurement and processing manager for the Goodman Center. “We preserve about 3,000 pounds of vegetables each summer.”
All of the food preservation at the Goodman Center happens on site. On Monday and Tuesday nights, volunteers are busy washing and trimming seasonal produce, from green beans and kale to strawberries earlier this summer. Working as a team, a handful of volunteers prepare the fresh vegetables. People assisting in the kitchen use a dehydration machine, and also freeze and can a variety of produce.
Some of the vegetables and fruits are grown in the Goodman Center’s community garden. Other produce is provided by local farms like Vermont Valley.
The Goodman Center has four kitchens and serves 700-800 meals a day during the summer with breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack. The food pantry feeds about 100 families a week.
“Having a preservation program means having frozen or canned vegetables that we know what's in the product, it also means having vegetables and certain fruits all year,” said Patricia Hemming, a volunteer at the Goodman Center, who also uses many of its services. “The Goodman Center saved my life. I have been with this center for three years. When I first started here I couldn't walk from the car to the door.
“Their meals each day and exercise programs saved my life,” she said.
In 2011, Becky Steinhoff, executive director of the Goodman Center, wrote a grant proposal to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund a canning and freezing project. That helped to create a preservation kitchen and youth program where high school students learn to preserve.
For the youth program, the Madison Metropolitan School District partners with the Goodman Center to give East High School students the opportunity to gain high school credit while learning critical employment skills and receive training. The TEENworks program offers teens opportunities in three career pathways: culinary arts, early childhood education and maintenance and grounds.
For the culinary arts, students are coached in a variety of culinary skills, receive information on urban agriculture, in addition to learning to preserve vegetables.
“We have about 50 to 70 kids a year. The students participate in a six-week program for high school students,” Mach said. “They stay with the vegetable they planted until it is preserved. The students are also getting employee training and skills to take into local restaurants.”
“A lot of the students we work with at the Goodman Center are at ‘risk students’. They each are faced with different barriers in life that make them at risk of not graduating, but we are giving them resources to graduate, learn job skills and just do what we can to help,” said Mach.
