Stretching harvests and helping the community

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – The Eat Well Mobile Market is known for being a discount grocery store on wheels. Now, the market has some free offerings thanks to a ‘food gleaning’ partnership with local farmers and gardeners.

“The thing about food is that almost a third of the food that’s grown in gardens and fields around us, almost a third of it goes to waste,” Michelle Erpenbach, President of Sioux Falls Thrive said. “So the Food Security Network that we’re building around this idea came together and said, ‘let’s see if we can’t save some of that from being wasted.’ So they literally kind of put out feelers to our friends and volunteers and said hey what do you got for leftovers, what do you got for ugly tomatoes, those sorts of things.”

And the harvest was bountiful.

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“203 pounds of produce later, we had 66 jars of salsa, a whole bunch of marinara sauce, some ratatouille base which is vegetable stew and vegetable bean soup. It’s amazing,” Erpenbach said.

The first item on the market shelves is marinara sauce. When customers buy a box of pasta, they get the sauce for free.

“We don’t know what type of hardships anyone carries and that free marinara sauce could’ve been somebody’s meal and I really enjoy that part of it,” Amber Jones Esquibel, the Eat Well Sioux Falls Mobile Market manager said.

This is the first food gleaning project for Sioux Falls Thrive and the Eat Well Mobile Market but the hope is to continue the project and expand it to stretch more harvests and help the community.

“This is all about food security. The food deserts in the community of Sioux Falls are growing exponentially, particularly when we lose some of our major grocers,” Erpenbach said. “This is just one more piece of that puzzle. If we can build a system around food security in this community, it lifts everyone. Everyone does better if everyone has access to food.”

The project is helping other areas of the community as well. The salsa that was created from the ‘food gleaning’ harvest is being distributed to Terry Redlin Elementary and the Boys and Girls Club of the Sioux Empire.

The marinara, vegetable bean soup and ratatouille will be distributed on the Mobile Market. You can follow along on their Facebook page to find out when those items will be in stock.