One of the most impactful projects that Full Circle Community Farm participated in during the 2022 season is Feeding America’s Tribal Elder Box Program, a collaboration between all 11 Federally and State recognized Tribal Nations in Wisconsin, Feeding America, Feeding Wisconsin, and a number of other groups. This program provides a monthly shipment of fresh, local produce, meat, and other traditional goods to Tribal Elders in Wisconsin. The food is sourced from small, local Wisconsin farmers, with a focus on sustainable and organic. We love that the program prioritizes sourcing from Indigenous farmers in the region.
The Tribal Elder Box Program was a huge boost for our farm, providing us with a reliable income for the growing season. We’re proud to have contributed our meat, vegetables, and pastured eggs to the boxes throughout the season that ran from May through December.
Our crew working hard to pack up some very large orders of herbs and microgreens packed into individually-labeled bags.
Our Tribal Elder Box Program numbers at a glance:
1,600 1 ounce bags of microgreens
1,600 2 ounce bags of mixed herbs (chives, marjoram, sage, and thyme)
400 bunches of beets
650 heads of lettuce
400 heads of green cabbage
4,200 pounds of root vegetables (beets, radishes, turnips, carrots, and rutabaga)
650 dozen pasture-raised eggs
1,600 pounds of pastured pork
For the final 2022 TEBP box we supplied 2 and 3 lb stew bags of root vegetables, including a mixed assortment of turnips, carrots, beets, radish, and rutabaga. Our coolers filled up quickly with such large orders.
Participation in the Tribal Elder Box Program came with some challenges, including us learning to grow, harvest, pack, and store specific crops on a scale that we’ve never attempted before. Meeting the deadlines also proved a challenge as the 2022 growing season got off to a late start due to a cooler and wetter spring than we’ve experienced in recent years. We know that we weren’t the only farmers who faced challenges such as these, and we appreciate the program’s flexibility as well as contributions from other farms that we were able to source from in a pinch. We were also able to help out other farmers that weren’t able to meet their anticipated assignments by supplementing their contributions with a couple of large orders of pork.
One of the box shipments sent out in 2022. Can you spot our contribution? :) Photo from the Great Lakes Intertribal Food Coalition website.
We’ll be a participating farm again in 2023! For this new season the program has expanded the number of Indigenous producers contributing as well as the number of tribes receiving the boxes. You can help out the project by signing up for volunteer shifts with Feeding America once the program starts back up in the spring. Want to learn more? Check out the links below!
Feeding America: https://feedingamericawi.org/tribal-elder-food-boxes/
Great Lakes Intertribal Food Coalition: https://greatlakesintertribalfood.org/?fbclid=IwAR20P3NhffU-NGJ97g1gMb89l1zD6o8MRbPddZXV-HGL0wXI-OpZGSCvQGU
Feeding Wisconsin: https://feedingwi.org/programs/tribalfoodsecurity/
Collaborators in the program include Feeding America, Feeding Wisconsin, Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, healthTIDE, UW-Madison, Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative, Great Lakes Intertribal Food Coalition, Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Forest County Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk Nation, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Oneida Nation, Menominee Nation, Sokaogon Chippewa Community (Mole Lake Band of Lake Superior Chippewa), St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin, and Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians.
