Today was a banner day in our partnership with Share Our Strength – we opened our second Good Food Garden and we got to share it with hundres of famlies at the South Beach Food and Wine Festival!  Built on site at the Fun & Fit as a Family event, the Garden was met with incredible enthusiasm--the kind of enthusiasm that encouraged every visitor to reach in and touch, smell, and taste with reckless abandon. Sure, we lost many under ripe tomatoes to curious fingers (like 8-year-old Brian Valdes' above), and ripe ones to taste buds of all ages, but there was so much energy that the garden seemed to regenerate itself every hour.

The most enthusiastic visitors, of course, are the radiant young ladies from the Boys And Girls Club of Palm Beach County, and their fearless leader Lottie Gatewood.  In just a few days, the garden will make its permanent home at their club in Palm Beach, where this very resourceful group of young ladies are starting a food co-op and a program they call "Rise and Shine" to bring the benefits of their Good Food Garden to their whole community. How inspiring!

We’d had already heard a lot about the gals before we met them, but we found the joy and light they carried with them even more beautiful than we had hoped. And their gratitude was immeasurable---so graciously expressed in their laughter and delight as they walked around their new garden. We plucked pieces and fennel and arugula to tuck behind our ears and posed for pictures, but the real fun began as we went through the garden, plant by plant, and talked about their plans for the garden once they got it back home. I'm quite certain that we will hear from them, and that you will find their enthusiasm and gratitude as inspiring as we did!  

This garden brings us one step closer to our goal of increasing access to fresh, nutritious foods for kids all across the country—and one garden closer to a greener, more beautiful planet for all!

Are you ready to dig in?