Kids are staying busy this summer at the South Plains Food Bank GRUB Farm.
“Every week you have fresh produce,” says Aaron Shehan, a summer intern with the GRUB Farm.
It’s fresh produce that comes straight from the hands of those students ages 14 to 21. The kids volunteer during the school year and then over summer, 20 of those students are picked to become paid employees.
“Planting, weeding, tilling in between the rows of water, changing the water, fertilizing…I mean, I’ve pretty much learned how to do everything out here,” Shehan says.
GRUB stands for Growing Recruits for Urban Business. Learning is the biggest part of the GRUB Farm, where the kids learn how to plant their own crops along with other valuable life lessons.
“A few weeks ago we taught them about college loans and scholarships and things like that so that they can kind of get an idea of if they want to go to college,” Shehan says. “We want to break the chain of poverty to where we can give these kids the skills that they need after they graduate, so they might not need the food bank to support them. That’s the whole goal of the farm, is to hopefully keep these kids from ever having to use the food bank.”
“They get hooked. It’s just beautiful! They find that they can grow something, they can sell it, and they’re learning the basis of business,” says Lucy Brown, who is a shareholder within the farm.
Shareholders make a one time payment for the entire year where they can choose between a full share, which is 2 bags of produce, or just a half share. Every Thursday and Friday, the shareholders come and pick up their produce in a bag. Shehan says many end up donating that food to those in need.
“Our food goes to the shareholders first, because they’re providing the money to actually help us operate and to keep the kids paid when they work here over the summer. Any of our excess we take to the food bank and that gets donated and can end up in people’s food boxes,” Shehan says.
