P’ville Farmers Market, Pantry Team Up to Fight Hunger

The Pleasantville Farmers Market and Pleasantville Community Garden will be teaming up with a local charity this weekend to help Westchester’s hungry.

Visitors to this Saturday’s farmers market, which runs from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Memorial Plaza, can buy and donate food to Hillside Food Outreach, a Pleasantville-based charity that provides meals for thousands of Westchester residents each year.

Hillside Food Donation Day will allow patrons to buy an extra item of produce from any market vendor. The community garden will have volunteers across the market to help collect the donated goods.

“Hillside has the ability to work with fresh food donations, which, in many cases, is rare,” said Steven Bates, executive director of market operations for Foodchester, Inc., the operator of the Pleasantville Farmers Market. “Food pantries often deal with shelf-stable canned products. Hillside can deal with quick deliveries and storage of fresh foods.”

For the past year, the market and its vendors have been helping Hillside Food Outreach, which was launched 18 years ago, Bates noted.

“They provide interns that would arrive at the conclusion of the markets and go to the six or seven produce farms we have and ask if they had anything they’d like to donate,” he said.

So far this year, more than 6,000 pounds of produce has been donated from farmers to Hillside.

“This is targeting Westchester County, so it’s really from the community for the community,” Bates said.

Kathy Purdy established Hillside Food Outreach out of her home after she saw seniors struggling to get enough to eat.

“My grandmother’s neighbors didn’t have enough food, so I was taking them (for) groceries,” Purdy said. “I did it for about five years, just so it wouldn’t be on my grandmother’s back.”

As word of Purdy’s work spread, others sought her services and the operation grew to become a nonprofit organization. Today Hillside has more than 300 volunteers that home deliver food to 2,500 people throughout Westchester, Putnam and Fairfield counties.

“No one’s more amazed than me,” Purdy said.

The perception of Westchester as one of wealthiest counties in the nation obscures the fact that there are residents going hungry in affluent communities, she said.

“Because it is such a wealthy place, that makes it even more difficult for people because the cost of living is so much higher,” Purdy said. “It’s difficult for seniors, it’s difficult for low-income people, for (elderly) moms who are alone without kids, or who are disabled. We have a lot of cancer patients who can’t work who are in chemo all the time.”

Produce donated to Hillside on Saturday is delivered on Monday mornings to their clients.

“They’re just thrilled to have fresh produce,” Purdy said. “Our clients have a very difficult time getting fresh food. When they go to a pantry, all that’s available is canned stuff.”

The Pleasantville Community Garden was founded by 14-year-old village resident Devon Juros and his parents at St. John’s Episcopal Church last year.

“We were able to grow and gather about 800 pounds of food last year,” said Juros’ father Devin. “We were able to really expand it with the farmers market, and we’re also growing at Pleasantville High School. We talked about doing something new this year to get more notice in town about Hillside and all the great work they’re doing, because a lot of people don’t know about them.”

Juros said volunteers come from groups within Pleasantville and elsewhere.

“We work with Pace University athletics, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, with Temple Beth El in Chappaqua as a mitzvah project for some of their kids, we really work with the larger community that we’re a part of,” he said.

More information can be found at www.pvillegarden.org, www.hillsidefoodoutreach.org and www.pleasantvillefarmersmarket.org