“There’s no cell phones going off right now so that’s good.”
That’s Dennis Conway, a Manager with RBC in Ottawa. He happened to be on his knees in the dirt in the middle of a remote West Ottawa potato field at the time.
Conway and a couple dozen other RBC employees were volunteering with Community Harvest, a vegetable farm operated by the Ottawa Food Bank. The bankers-turned-farmers for a day were helping to harvest a couple thousand pounds of potatoes and onions.
It was tough work under a hot late-September sun, made tougher by the fact very few of the volunteers had ever been on a farm or even gardened before.
“I don’t have a lawn mower, actually,” jokes financial planner Aarash Rafiaie.
“This is very foreign to me but my hands are dirty. I’m right in there,” adds Julia Dawkins.
The bounty is made possible by local farmer, Tom Black, who has set aside 8 acres of his 250-acre family farm so that the Ottawa Food Bank can grow its own food. “This is the fun part, seeing people out enjoying themselves and actually volunteering,” he says. “There are a lot of good people in the world.”
The results are impressive. The operation started by planting a single acre five years ago. Now it’s up to six acres and produces tens of thousands of pounds of fresh vegetables, from beets to zucchini.
“We’re on pace right now to harvest about 80,000 pounds of produce,” says Ottawa Food Bank Executive Director Michael Maidment. “People in need are eating this fresh organic produce in a day or two days from it coming right out of the field.”
For Tom Black, it’s simply more proof that fresh vegetables are good for the heart. “It just feels great. We’re just really happy that it worked out this way. I hope it keeps on going.”
