Open Invitation – if you volunteer in St. Augustine, we’d love to have you join us in
Palatka, and if you volunteer in Palatka, we’d love to have you join us in St. Augustine.
Our next volunteer appreciation party will be on 10/9/2021
From 5pm to 8pm
At Genung's Fish Camp
291 Cubbedge Rd, St. Augustine.
Please RSVP to mary.phillips@epic-cure.org.
Operations:
The Palatka warehouse is down to just needing the hot water heater electrical hook up and having the glass florescent light bulbs replaced by shatter proof LED light bulbs, and we will be ready for USDA inspection. As soon as we pass the inspection, we will order from Farm Share which provides new commodities including produce, dry goods, dairy, and meat for Putnam County. That program is county specific, so you can only receive and distribute in the county specified in the order.
Even after serving 600 families from our Palatka warehouse every Friday, we typically have enough food to allow us to add a new permanent distribution in Pomona Park every Friday at the Pilgrim Congregational Church from 1:30 to 3:00 pm. They serve about 40 families at that location, but we would like to see it grow to 100 or more.
We will add support to the New St. Paul Church located at 245 Lawrence Street in Seville, FL, Volusia County. They currently purchase food to distribute to approximately 20 families on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of each month. They will begin shopping from the Palatka warehouse for items to add to their distributions.
For those of you that have seen the documentary “Wasted: The Story of Food Waste,” you will be familiar with the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. Stone Barns featured prominently in the movie as a center dedicated to eliminating food waste at the farm level. You may recall that Chef Dan Barber spent time in the documentary speaking with farmers about, of all things, the wasted green leaves on a head of cauliflower and how truly insane that waste is.
Stone Barns is a campus of farmers, chefs and educators working together to inspire and reconnect the local community to food and farming. It is a place where people can experience the land, farming, and an ecological food culture; a place that would bring inspiration and innovation to regional food systems, informed by creativity and experimentation. The group teaches farmers and chefs about ecologically and economically sustainable best practices – using everything and wasting nothing.
Sunny and I will meet the Stone Barns team on September 14th to discuss what they do and what we at Epic-Cure do. We strongly believe that there are ways to work together as Epic-Cure opens its first operations outside the state of Florida – in New York. We are excited to discuss the educational aspect of their and our operations, introducing them to Sustain U. and finding ways to collaborate both here in Florida and up north in New York.
For those of you who are interested in learning more, here is the Stone Barns website:
That is not all that your pathologically busy Founders will be up to. On September 11th, we will meet in the Bronx, NY, the executive director of the Renaissance Youth Center (RYC). Their mission is to “empower at-risk inner city youth to fully maximize their potential as productive and responsible
members of society, by offering dynamic, team-building education, music, and sports programs, while instilling the importance of building strong communities.” Along with fellow Board members Greg Boester and Jeremy Manning, we will meet RYC’s Chairman of the Board of Directors Howard Altarescue, its President and CEO Bervin Harris, and its Chief Operating Officer Ginette Diaz. We cannot wait to learn more about their important mission and to share our thoughts around food security, food as medicine, and the power of self-reliance through Sustain U.
For those of you who are interested in learning more, here is the Renaissance Youth Center website:
Speaking of our new Board member Jeremy Manning, he coming to vising from September 21st through the 25th. He will be observing and training so that he can determine what aspects of our work can be replicated in NY. Jeremy is not new to working in the trenches for Epic-Cure. Prior to his accepting a role on the Board, he fought hard as our corporate counsel to create our corporate governance and to create our trademarks. He has been instrumental in our defense of the Good Food for Good People TM trademark dispute, showing great creativity and real dedication to the Epic-Cure mission. He has asked to establish our first non-Florida operations, and we could not be more thrilled – or more confident in success.
Composting…
Our pilot composting program has been underway since July 9th. We finally got the left side of our bin at the Palatka warehouse full and began turning it and filling the right side on 9/3. It still smells good!!
We have our 2nd location!! Lemon Street is a new antique store, cafe and market set to open in October at 715 St. Johns Ave in Palatka. Even under construction it is full of charm!! Can't wait to see it when it is open. Roberta, the owner of the store and member of our Composting Group, has experience composting and we have a source for the leaves/yard debris if she needs it.
Here is our PIPS (Pounds In & People Served) graph:
Notes on the graph:
Pounds in did not increase as much as expected, from 355k to 357k.
With inflation we expect to see a continued rise in need. We are still tracking that 17% of families served lost jobs or hours due to Covid. We are not sure what the barriers are in returning to work but are researching and will let you know what we discover.
Sustain U. – We are set to begin or first 5 Session class of 5 middle school aged students at the Boys and Girls Club in St. Augustine on 9/27. Classes will be on Mondays and Wednesdays from 4pm to 6pm. We are doing a 2 week on, 1 week off schedule with a longer break in December. The 5th session will end on 1/19/22. Maria Crann will be teaching the class and we’ll have our next teachers in training assisting.
Can’t say enough how impressed we are by the efforts of the volunteer helping put the program
together.
Part of the program is that we use as much rescued food as we can and ask for gently used, donated equipment to keep the cost down. Before Covid and without bargain shopping, the average cost for each class was about $100. That included all of the ingredients and equipment needed to prepare the meal/lesson plan in class and for 5 kids to take home to feed a family of 6 at home the next day. That averages out to under $3 per person (36 people) for meal cost and equipment they get to keep forever. I think we can get that cost down this time since our food resources are much greater and we are going in much more organized.
We have a wish list of equipment supplies for the class. They do not need to be new (we love to re-use) but they do need to be gently used.
Refrigerator to store the rescued dairy ingredients - 1
Stand up freezer to store frozen meat - 1
Cutting boards
Sets of dry measuring cups
Sets of wet measuring cups
Sets of measuring spoons
Sets of mixing bowls
Large pots with lids
Electric hand mixers
Immersion blenders
Waffle irons
9x13 baking dishes
Instant read thermometers
Non-stick skillets (high sided)
Vegetable peelers
Whisks
Rolling pins
George Foreman Grills
Crockpots
Kitchen scissors
Plastic wrap
Aluminum foil
Aluminum foil pans (all sizes)
Parchment paper
Gallon Ziploc bags
Wooden skewers
Serrated knives
Awareness:
• We continue to look for a monthly mobile distribution site for a location in one of the following
zip codes: 32257, 32258, or 32259.
• This is in bold for a reason… An easy, impactful way you can help us is to
please save and drop off your grocery store plastic bags. You will be
reducing waste by allowing us to re-use them and you will be saving us
money by reducing the number we have to purchase.
Volunteering:
To hear about ongoing volunteer opportunities, please join our Facebook Volunteer Group. Charity
Roberts, our volunteer coordinator, posts details about our needs every week.
Grants & Fundraising:
The Putnam County Board of Commissioners is having their Workshop on 9/7 to decide how to allocate the $14m in American Recovery Plan funds. We presented before the Commissioners on 7/27 and will be at the workshop to make our final presentation (and learn what our competition is for the funds) to request that they allocated $850k to help us purchase the warehouse. We recently got a bid to re-pave and improve the parking lot, which will be a necessity, and it was a lot more than we anticipated so we will be adding the $140k for that to our request.
We got our first food grant delivery from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. With those provisions in 13 distributions over the course of 1 week, we served 1,443 families, 4,167 people (889 families in Putnam County and 554 families in St. Johns County). 17% of the families served had lost hours or jobs due to Covid. We also gave out food orders to Bread of Life, Feed the Need, Hugs Across the County, and AMVETS.
Andy Ledner, a local (amazing) photographer is donating his portion of the proceeds from sales of
puzzles made from his photographs. If you are interested in purchasing one, or know someone who might be, go to https://sharingsunshine.com/products/st-augustine-puzzles-for-acause?
If you are an Amazon shopper and do not have a charity you are supporting with your purchases, please consider choosing Epic-Cure and login to Smile.Amazon.com when shopping. 1% of all purchases go to support the charity you choose.
The Epic-Cure Golf Event:
We are planning an awareness and fundraising event that will be held on October 25, 2021, at the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club. The golf tournament will be held from Noon until 4:00 pm on the Ocean Course. It will be followed by a seafood buffet with an open bar at the Surf Club Patio – right on the beach!
Check it out:
Anyone who wishes to see Epic-Cure’s financial statements need only ask.
• Please email your requests to Sunny Mulford: sunny.mulford@epic-cure.org
Please watch the movie “Wasted: The Story of Food Waste.”
You can watch it on Amazon or Netflix.
Or, you can "check out" a DVD at our warehouse.