Good Food Box is moving on up!

Our popular Good Food Box program has been steadily growing and it's popularity increasing as more folks are spending $15 once a month and receiving a big bag full of fresh produce, shipped to community pick-up sites in bins of two.  The number of pickup sites, where people pre-pay for their box and pick up is also increasing.   We are also introducing a "local only" box that features Ontario produce, called the Hamilton Eat Local Box (aka The HELo Box).

Today, was a day of and "hellos" and "see you soons" at the end of the volunteer-driven Good Food Box packing day.

We said a gentle farewell (only temporarily) to our beloved Crystle, who has been in charge of communication for the Good Food Box as well as being our Pack-site Coordinator Extraordinaire.  Crystle is leaving us for a brief time to go on maternity leave.

And we said hello to our brand new-to-us conveyor to make packing and shipping our boxes easier!  Well, perhaps this second update is more thrilling for us and our team of volunteers but we are so happy that we wanted to share the news.

We had this system, seen above, we would line up large plastic totes with wheels and place bins (that held Good Food Boxes) on top.  We would then wheel the large gray totes up the line where volunteers would add items to each Good Food Box.  It worked, up to a point -- but then wheels started to come off and we began to dream of a conveyor belt.

This month, for our pack in October, we finally used our new conveyor for the first time.  And we are delighted.  This helps us move  the boxes much more efficiently and means there is less bending for our volunteers too.

So a special thank yous to our supporters: Councillor McHattie and his team.  As well as
Hamilton Community Foundation and the Healthy Community Fund  These funders are key to our growing success.

And of course, our volunteers.  We have a whole team of dedicated volunteers that help us and we cannot thank them enough!

Speaking of volunteers....

We pack boxes on the 3rd and 4th Wednesday of every month, which keeps us busy, so we're looking for volunteers of all kinds as well as volunteers who can use their vans or trucks to deliver the boxes to various sites across Hamilton.  If you can help, contact Juby at jlee@environmenthamilton(dot)org