photo by: Contributed

Annah Steele and Elinor Russo at the "free market" in front of the Ballard Center.

A new partnership between a local nonprofit and the Ballard Center will bring free, fresh produce to the center’s expanding pantry, making healthy food more accessible to North Lawrence.

“We’re always trying to figure out the best way to maximize what we can do for the community,” Nancy O’Conner, executive director of Growing Food Growing Health, said.

Will Averill, chief operating officer at the Ballard Center, said the pantry sees about 70 people per week. Last year, around 7,297 household members were impacted by the Ballard Center’s pantry services, he said.

“The pantry has, as always, been an integral part of the organization,” Averill said. “They only think about child care when it comes to Ballard, but we actually serve individuals and families in the community, and not just through child care.”

And soon, the Ballard Center – which provides early childhood education and needs-based services to individuals and families – will have even more space for its food pantry. A standalone building that will house an ADA-accessible food and clothing pantry along with a dedicated volunteer space for organizing donations, is in the works, as the Journal-World reported.

The pantry offers a variety of things, including free clothing, shoes, work attire, kitchenware, household items, food, and diapers. The current pantry is located in the main building in a space that leaders say is simply too small for its clients.

The partnership with Growing Food Growing Health, a project of the Community Mercantile Education Foundation that provides hands-on educational opportunities while connecting local students with grown fruits and vegetables, will make sure fresh produce is in the Ballard Center’s pantry during its growing season.

“People will be able to come into this annex five days a week and help themselves at no cost to free produce,” O’Conner said. “And we’ll stock that three or four times a week.”

photo by: Contributed

Felix Mueller at the garden at West Middle School, where Growing Food Growing Health grows their produce for their market days.

The fresh produce will likely not find itself inside the building for at least another month. Averill said the hope is for the building to be complete in the next 4 to 8 weeks, but construction may cause delays. But Averill said the goal is open the building in August. In the meantime, Growing Food Growing Health will give away its produce at a weekly “free market” on Wednesdays at the Ballard Center from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

“We’re just trying to be flexible and get food to the people,” O’Conner said. “And when the annex opens, we’ll help with that transition, but I feel really positive because the folks at Ballard have been really great to work with.”

The produce is grown by a group of students at a garden at West Middle School, which is managed by Growing Food Growing Health. The produce is entirely student-grown and is eventually donated to anyone in the community needing access to fresh, sustainably grown vegetables at no cost.

Their “free market” used to be held at Edgewood Homes, which is part of the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority’s affordable housing program, on Wednesdays. Last year, Growing Food Growing Health shared over two tons of produce with the community.

“This is a new direction for us,” O’Conner said. “The market we used to run, the free market at Edgewood, was extremely successful, almost too successful in some ways. But it had its limitations.”

She explained that each week, students and volunteers not only had to gather and prepare the produce, but also set up a market during the week. In addition, there were some limitations on how it could get to the people they wanted to serve.

“If it’s 100 degrees or it’s pouring rain, we still would go,” O’Conner said. “But some of our customers, especially customers that are more sensitive to weather, wouldn’t come out, or if they worked and couldn’t get there between (4 p.m. to 6 p.m.), they couldn’t access produce.”

The new dedicated space to give away their produce will make it more accessible to people, O’Conner said.

“And you can drive right up, there’s a parking lot, there’s a door that’s going to come right into our produce,” O’Conner said.

In preparation for opening the new building, the Ballard Center applied for a $5,000 grant from the Douglas County Community Foundation to bring in a cooler to the building that would hold the fresh produce from Growing Food Growing Health.

“As you walk to the left, there will be this big cooler and then shelves, and we will stock the cooler with produce and then put non-perishable produce items like potatoes and onions on the shelves,” O’Conner said. “And there will just be directions on how to help yourself and recipes.”

Averill said at the Ballard Center, there is a huge focus on eating healthy and their new cook is working to eliminate processed foods and bring in fresh and local produce through a series of grants and generous donations by local suppliers.

“And we have been able to move away from pre-packaged and processed foods and towards healthier eating for our kiddos, which has made a difference, but we’re really happy to be able to offer that to the community as well,” Averill said.

The extra produce from Growing Food Growing Health as well as produce supplied through a grant from the Kansas Department of Agriculture called, “Our Earliest Eaters,” works to bring the farm to the state’s licensed early childcare facilities, Averill said.

“It’s a great program,” Averill said. “It allows us to have a stipend to buy specifically from local producers and then do a lesson around whatever the kind of seasonal produce is. For example, we had purple asparagus last month, and so kids got to do a lesson where they … got to learn a little bit more about the cycle of growing food and a cycle of growing asparagus.”

He said both the grant and the donations from Growing Food Growing Health really allowed the center to expand on the principle of wanting to provide the freshest, most nutritious food to their kids and teach them about it.

O’Conner said that Growing Food Growing Health is getting even more focused on what and how they grow. She said the team is always continuing to work on utilizing the space they have to grow things people actually need.

“And we keep learning, and we learned a lot by serving people at Edgewood. We can grow kohlrabi, but it doesn’t help anybody out, then it doesn’t make sense to grow it because then we could take the same space and maybe grow more tomatoes or more green peppers or things people use and are familiar with.”

O’Conner said it’s really encouraging to see these partnerships come together to just help each other.

“I think when the needs are as great as they are, these collaborations are so important because then we’re greater together than our individual parts and we create kind of a synergistic energy,” O’Conner said. ” … I really have been struck with the North Lawrence community being so welcoming.”