Tag: SNAP

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Breaking Beans Radio Show #32: Kentucky Double Dollars

CFA Admin


Farmers Markets all over the state will be starting back up in the next couple of months. Lexington’s downtown farmers market is open year-round outdoors, and that’s where folks can find CFA’s Kentucky Double Dollar’s Coordinator, Brittany Steffey most Saturdays during peak season. People like Brittany helped Holden Dillman utilize the Kentucky Double Dollars (KDD) program while he was a student at Berea College, which gave him the capability to double the first $10 of his SNAP benefits that he used at the Berea Farmer’s Market putting more money in the pockets of the farmers at that market and more produce, meat, and dairy in Holden’s fridge. In this hour, we travel the state to hear from farmers like Michelle and Nathan Howell of Need More Acres in Scottsville, James and Leta of the Letcher Co. Farmers Market, and Seth Long of Southdown Farm.

Above: Need More Acres Farm, Michelle, Nathan, and children Below: Michelle Howell at Farm Store

Below: Shelby Wheeler interviewing Southdown Farm’s Seth Long 

Below: James & Leta of the Letcher County Farmers Market

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Beyond the Farm: It Takes a Village

CFA Admin

Farmers Markets are vital to creating healthy communities and supporting our farm economy. Adventure with us to the Berea Farmers Market where you will hear from Market Manager, Faye Adams-Eaton and Berea College Student, Gerald Thomas about how they support their local farmers. You will also see marketing strategies they used to increase their Kentucky Double Dollars participation.

Created by Elijah Manning, Madison County Community Ambassador

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Breaking Beans Radio #7: Food and Health

CFA Admin

Aired: August 3, 2016

Image from Floyd County Health Department: Theresa Scott, Becky Derossett, and Bonnie Hale prepare a meal to share with participants of the "Good and Cheap" cooking demo event and discuss the philosophy of how to “eat well - really well – on the strictest of budgets.”
Image from Floyd County Health Department: Theresa Scott, Becky Derossett, and Bonnie Hale prepare a meal to share with participants of the “Good and Cheap” cooking demo event and discuss the philosophy of how to “eat well – really well – on the strictest of budgets.”

For the August Breaking Beans show, Sister Kathy Curtis hosts Valerie Horn, with the Appal-TREE Project (a project of Community Farm Alliance and University of Kentucky) (Val works with Grow Appalachia, too!), and Floyd County Health Department‘s Thursa Sloan, Bonnie Hale, and Christina Tincher.

 

Excerpt from the Floyd County Health Department’s Facebook:

“The Floyd County Health Department, UK Floyd County Extension Family and Consumer Sciences, and Appalachian Roots teamed up for their cooking demonstration featuring LeeAnn Brown’s ‘Good and Cheap Eat Well on $4/Day‘ cookbook and UK Extension’s ‘Chop, Chop Fun Cooking Magazine for Families’ series.

This series of five cooking demonstrations was funded by the Kentucky Department of Health in a campaign to promote healthy eating among SNAP and WIC recipients. This project also targets education regarding food access and the Double Dollars Program available at the Floyd County Farmers Market.”

 

Find other episodes and Breaking Beans stories here:

http://cfaky.org/blog

Download this and other past episodes here:

https://archive.org/details/@breakingbeans

 
 
The Breaking Beans Variety Radio Show airs on 88.7 WMMT (online too!) the first Wednesday of every month at 6pm featuring stories, interviews, recipes, and news from the food and farming worlds in the Appalachian region!

Hosted by Breaking Beans Fellow Sister Kathy Curtis.

 

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Breaking Beans: The Appalachian Food Story Project is an initiative of Community Farm Alliance to tell the story of how local food and farming in Eastern Kentucky can contribute to a bright future in the mountains. Eastern Kentucky is at the point where it can foster a food system that is equitable and accessible to all, provides fresh nutritious food, and serves as an economic generator that builds community wealth. With a rich history of food and farming, stories of how Eastern Kentucky is already growing in that direction – and the challenges along the way – are important for informing people and policy alike.

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Extension Agent Shares His Love for Food

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by Sister Kathy Curtis

make half your plate fruits and vegetablesUntil recently, Joel Worth, the UK Extension Service SNAP agent for Jefferson County, was the Horticultural assistant in charge of the Pikeville Farmers’ Market. Worth is a chef and prior to working for the extension service he was a school nutrition coordinator in Savannah, Georgia.

Worth loves to cook and he never lets an opportunity to feed a person pass him by. If you have attended a meeting at the Pike County Extension office sometime in the last three years, you have benefited from his love of food.

During Worth’s time as market manager for the Pikeville Farmers’ Market, he did “sampling” for the vendors. Sampling, trying a small taste of something before buying it, is regulated by the Kentucky Department of Agriculture and is a great way to promote new or different varieties of produce.

“I found when I did samples last year [at the market] that it increased sales. You let them taste something, you have a recipe card and they go and buy the stuff to make it.”

His love of food and especially cooking was something he got at an early age. But he found while working as a school nutrition coordinator that kids don’t know where food comes from. He said that today’s kids don’t learn how to cook.

“That’s where I got my first love of food: cooking with my mom,” Worth beamed. “I have the type of mom where if it was a rainy day, she didn’t sit me in front of the TV. She’d say ‘come on we’re going into the kitchen and make gnocchi’ or we’d make donuts.”

I don’t know about his donuts but I have had the pleasure of breaking bread with him a time or two and all I have to say is, “Thank you Mrs. Worth.”

Note: A gnocchi is a simple pasta that can be made from potatoes. Joel didn’t have his mom’s recipe handy. I guess after all this time he just knows how to do it without instructions. He says there are tons of simple recipes online. Why not try one out today with your favorite child or two.

Breaking Beans: The Appalachian Food Story Project is an initiative of Community Farm Alliance to tell the story of how local food and farming in Eastern Kentucky can contribute to a bright future in the mountains. 

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Double Dollars: One Family’s Experience

CFA Admin

by Sister Kathy Curtis

The summer of 2014 saw a great opportunity for low income residents of Floyd County, Kentucky when Appalachian Roots became a SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) agent for the Floyd County Farmers’ Market. Due to a grant from Community Farm Alliance and matching funds donated by individuals and local businesses, families who received SNAP benefits were able to leverage their benefits with the Double Dollars program to buy fresh food.

James and JenCUR1130Aprintnifer Lowe were the first Floyd County Farmers’ Market customers to take advantage of this opportunity. I talked to them recently while they were visiting the monastery to celebrate their 14th wedding anniversary.

The Lowes live in a housing authority development in Prestonsburg. James worked full time delivering pizzas until he was diagnosed with LUPUS. When able, he does odd jobs to supplement his disability check. Jennifer is scheduled to start training as a housekeeper with vocational rehab in the spring. Already farmers’ market customers, they were very excited to be able to use their SNAP card and get a bonus. “It helps a lot.”

Using SNAP at the market was easy James said. “I scanned my card for what I wanted to spend and they gave me double. When I would spend $10 they would give me $20.” His favorite items to buy were corn and white half-runner beans but he also liked getting tomatoes and zucchini bread.CUR1130Bprint

I asked them if they grew anything at home and was told they couldn’t have a garden in their complex. James said that working a garden was hard work and he didn’t know that he could do it anymore, which was why he really liked going to the farmers market.

While talking with them, I realized the need for more public education. James said one time he went to the market to get “fresh lettuce to make some kilt lettuce and onions but they didn’t have any”. I explained how the farmers market was a vendors market selling produce that was grown locally and that lettuce didn’t grow well in our area in August. That led into a very good conversation about what the phrase “locally grown” meant and how some large companies have a different idea when they say it in their advertising.

James and Jennifer only used their SNAP benefits at the Floyd County Farmers’ Market this year but more than 146 families redeemed WIC vouchers they received from the health department at the Market which were doubled also. These SNAP and WIC sales represented $3585 worth of income that went directly to our vendors from clients that would not normally buy from a farmers market. And in the words of James Lowe, “It helpCUR1130Cprints a lot.”

Programs like Double Dollars help low income families purchase healthier meal options which in turn provide for a healthier populace. In a region where diabetes and obesity are epidemic, fresh, whole food not only tastes better, it can be life saving.