MILTON — More than 200 Santa Rosa County volunteers visited the First United Methodist Church of Milton to bag some 20,000 pounds of potatoes.
GALLERY: Photos from Potato Drop>
They were actually helping residents in need.
During Saturday’s countywide ‘Day of Service,’ the church partnered with the Society of St. Andrew, a nonprofit organization that works to feed people in need with farmers’ help.
“The Society of St. Andrew asks farmers, once they have finished gleaning their fields, to allow volunteers to go in and pick up the leftovers,” said Rev. Kathy Knight, pastor of the Milton church. “The produce is shipped … for a produce or, in our case, a potato drop.”
While being listed as a volunteer site during Saturday’s Day of Service, event coordinators estimated 200 residents attended the potato drop event.
“We are delighted that we were able to get all of this done in such a short period of time and it was because of the goodhearted volunteers from the community who came and volunteered with this project,” Knight said. “The winners are the people of Santa Rosa County who are hungry; they will be blessed.”
Rev. James Tinkey, a program coordinator for St. Andrew, said potatoes were delivered from a warehouse near St. Augustine. “This produce could not be sold for various reasons,” he said. “They were (edible but) not pretty enough or the right size.”
Knight and Tinkey hope to make the ‘potato drop’ a fixture at the church.
BY THE NUMBERS
These statistics provided by the Society of St. Andrew shows need to feed the less fortunate throughout the country
●More than 50 million Americans go hungry.
●The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates more than 25 percent of food grown in the U.S. is never made available for people to eat.
●113 billion pounds of food is thrown away every year.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Community shows support during Potato Drop (VIDEO, PHOTOS)