Acres of Hope

Acres of Hope is our local Canadian Foodgrains Bank growing project. Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB) is a federally incorporated, nonprofit corporation registered as a charitable agency. Since 1983, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank membership has provided over 1.1 million tonnes of food assistance to people who are hungry in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Eastern Europe. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) provides an annual 4:1 matching contribution to a maximum of $25 million. There are over 200 growing projects in Canada and each growing project has a group of between 10 - 100 volunteers as well as a number of local businesses. Our own community growing project involves a group of people made up of farmers, churches and local businesses who meet together to farm a local 200 acre field. Once harvested, the money from the sale of the grain is donated to CFGB for use in food aid and development projects. (CFGB information was taken from their website http://www.foodgrainsbank.ca/)

This year the field for our project was so wet that for the first time in the project's 14 year history the field went unseeded. The project does qualify for the unseeded acres compensation program so there will still be a donation forwarded to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank but our kids and nephews and niece decided to do something more. For the last couple of summers the kids have been selling produce from our gardens on our farmyard to raise funds for Acres of Hope. This usually results in us and our hired men buying the produce considering no signs are up for advertising and we don't get much traffic on and off our yard! This year, though, Ron's mom decided it would be a great project with the grandkids to grow corn to sell in town to raise money for Acres of Hope. The corn idea grew a bit to include baking by the kids, Grandma, as well as a few donations by some women in the community. Yesterday was harvest day and it took the kids and Grandma, with the help of my sister-in-law and me, less than an hour to pick the five rows of corn that had been designated for Acres of Hope. We arrived at the Credit Union parking lot, set up and started selling at 9:30. By 10:15 all the baking was sold and there were a few dozen cobs of corn left. When the sale ended at 11:30 there were 1 - 2 dozen cobs left, which we gave to a local community group. We have been overwhelmed by the support from our community and raised over $600 just in sales and another $1200 in donations above product sales!!

Grandma and the grandkids before the harvest

Showing off one of the many crates full of corn

Pouring the fudge into the pan. Nathan and Larissa made three desserts all by themselves!

The kids are thrilled with the results from their efforts and are looking forward to doing it all again next year, with a few plans to make it bigger!