This year was particularly challenging in the face of government cuts that eliminated funding we were counting on from our first ever federally funded grant, which was earmarked for food access. To make up for this shortfall we created a Save Our Soup campaign to find new sources for those funds and raise awareness about food insecurity on the east end, which has been successful (you can watch our Farmcasat episodes about food pantry collaborations here, and the save our soup story here).

Currently, in addition to weekly donations of fresh produce we're also donating several hundred quarts of soup to local pantries, so families have a wholesome, nutritious, and easy meal from the farm in addition to vegetables. The feedback we've gotten from pantries has been overwhelmingly positive, and so we expanded our soup program to essentially turn the Amber Waves kitchen into a soup kitchen. Food pantry patrons now receive weekly "soupons" that can be redeemed at the farm for free hot soup and bread.

This new program has been incredibly popular, we're not quite overwhelmed by the demand yet, but we've upped our daily production so we can meet the growing need. Every week hundreds of people come to the market for free hot soup, and while they're here they learn that we also accept SNAP-EBT, so we're hopeful they'll continue to use Amber Waves as a resource.