*Volunteers Stuart Timmons (left) and Nicole Rodgerson (right) pass out fresh cantaloupes to Winooski community members during VeggieVanGo on Friday, January 28, 2022.*
*Photo by Jenny Koppang.*

Snowy wind whistled through open backpacks one day late last month as Winooski students and community members lined up outside JFK Elementary to carry away as much fresh produce as possible.

For the past eight years, the Vermont Food Bank has provided crates of fruits and vegetables to the Winooski School District every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month through the VeggieVanGo program.

After the students receive fruits and vegetables, members of the community can come through like it’s a farmer's market.

“It offers our community a way of getting more fresh fruits and vegetables, for free,” said Jaycie Puttlitz, the Winooski School District’s Wellness Coordinator.

Puttlitz ensures that VeggieVanGo runs smoothly at their site year-round, orchestrating a schedule in which each class lines up individually before the event is opened to the public at 10 A.M. On an average day, she said, they serve about 300 people.

But the frigid weather this winter so far has added another layer of difficulty for the program, leading to a couple of cancellations in January. But on January 28, despite another day of brutal cold, and with everyone bundled up from head to toe, the program still attracted around 250 people.

According to Puttlitz, the VeggieVanGo program is a response to a severe lack of access to fresh, nutritious food in the Winooski community.

“Winooski is a food desert. We have no grocery store in this area, and many of our families don’t have transportation as well,” Puttlitz said.

Shaws in Colchester, just beyond the I-89 Exit 16 underpass is the closest supermarket for many. Traveling via car is the only safe way to get there — no walking infrastructure connects Main st. in Winooski to Colchester.

About 70 percent of the district’s families automatically qualify for food assistance, according to Puttlitz. This includes, but does not refer exclusively to, new American families.

The VeggieVanGo program offers staple items, like carrots, potatoes, and onions, that almost every community member is familiar with, regardless of cultural background, said Puttlitz.

On January 28, a Vermont Food Bank truck rolled up to the side of the Winooski School District in the blistering snow. Chris Pemberton, who has been a VFB truck driver for almost seven years, unloaded crates teeming with carrots, onions, apples, and cantaloupes.

“When it’s seasonally appropriate we will source from local farms, but a lot of our food is shipped from Florida and California,” Pemberton said.

Winooski is one of Pemberton’s many stops to hospitals, schools, and communities in need spanning from Northern Vermont to Rutland.

On Friday, about five volunteers from Farrell Distributers braved the cold to hand out the fruits and vegetables.

“One of the pillars of Farrell’s values is community. We try to volunteer up to six times a year, usually with the Vermont Food Bank,” said volunteer Nicole Rodgerson. “Because of COVID, this is our first face-to-face community interaction in a long time.”

Her fellow volunteer, Stuart Timmons, balanced a cantaloupe onto a student’s brimming Hello Kitty backpack.

“It’s nice to directly see the people who are getting the rewards from the hard work of the Vermont Food Bank,” Timmons said.

Puttlitz said that up to 500 people overall are served by the VeggieVanGo program, but that number is reduced during the winter because of the cold.

“We had to cancel the first one in January because it was too cold. And then we were supposed to host last week. But again, the temperatures were way too freezing,” Puttlitz said.

The school building is currently undergoing a $51 million construction project, said Puttlitz, limiting the VeggieVanGo program’s ability to gather safely inside.

For more consistent and targeted food support for certain students, the Winooski School District also partnered with the Vermont Food Bank to create the Backpack Program.

“I have a targeted list of about 50 students, who need a little extra food assistance, that each week receive a bag of food,” Puttlitz said.

The items in the bag are usually canned or packaged, said Puttlitz, so the food isn’t necessarily fresh, but durable.

“This food is meant to supplement what they get through the weekend,” Puttlitz said. “It's not meant to replace any meals, just to add to the meal so that they get healthy options like vegetables, fruits, some protein, some whole grains.”

Learn more about the VeggieVanGo and Backpack programs here.