The time-honored tradition of stocking up on food for the winter made a big comeback Sunday afternoon at the sixth annual “Fill Your Pantry Event.”
For four hours, starting at 1 p.m., hundreds of people filled up their cars, vans and trunks with fresh, locally grown, premium quality food. Participants paid no admission to stock up on locally grown dried beans, wheat berries, rye berries, rolled oats, quinoa, whole grain flours, polenta and popcorn. Also available were late-season onions, garlic, winter squash, pumpkins, potatoes, carrots, beets, parsnips, turnips, celeriac, apples and Asian pears, as well as dried peppers and honey.
Volunteers helped people load up their cars outside the Lane Events Center, where local growers had provided the bountiful harvest.
“It’s only 20 vendors, but it’s a lot of food,” said Lynne Fessenden, the executive director of Willamette Farm and Food Coalition, organizer of the annual event. Fill Your Pantry started in 2011 with only a few farms, but it has grown steadily over the past six years.
“I just didn’t know that this many people were willing to buy 30 pounds of carrots or beets,” she said.
Last year, more than 1,500 shoppers purchased 27,000 pounds of food at the event, topped $48,000 in sales.
“I shop here, and I love it,” she said. “I always have my staples for winter.”
For the first time, the event also offered to let people fill their freezers with frozen blueberries, strawberries, tomatoes, beef, pork, lamb and chicken.
Buying local crops is a great way to support small family farms by giving them a way to sell surplus stock, Fessenden said. “Farmers don’t have the facilities to store (this much food).”
Lauren Stalford was working at her family farm’s table Sunday afternoon, answering customers’ questions about the flour and oats that she was selling. Stalford has worked at Greenwillow Grains in Brownsville with her parents her entire life, and her father has been farming in the Willamette Valley for about 40 years.
It was her family’s first time selling at the Eugene event, and she said it made her happy to see the community’s support for small family farms.
“It’ll put me through college,” she said, pointing out that supporting local farms “helps your neighbors — not some CEO on the East Coast.”
Plus, the food simply tastes better.
“I hate to be immodest, but I can’t eat any other flour now,” Stalford said.
Kate Perle and her farm stand, Small is Beautiful, was back at the Fill Your Pantry for the third year. She has been farming for 20 years, selling from her farm stand in Santa Clara on Sundays and growing a variety of produce in smaller quantities.
Perle said that while she understands it might not be as convenient to shop at a farm stand, learning to eat with the seasons has its benefits.
“The taste, flavor, nutrition; they’re not grown to be shipped thousands of miles,” she said. “(The crops) haven’t been in a freezer for six months; they weren’t picked under-ripe.”
The Fill Your Pantry event is a great way to introduce people to a more sustainable way of living for the whole family, she said.
“You can bring your kids here without being distracted by the candy in the checkout aisle ... There’s nothing in here that you wouldn’t feel great about your kid digging into.”
Follow Francesca on Twitter @francescamarief . Email francesca.fontana@registerguard.com .
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