Month since its kickoff on the Fourth of July with deliveries of watermelon. The hub was founded in 2021 by Hope Sippola and Shayne Zurilgen, owners of the 5-acre Fiery Ginger Farm in West Sacramento, to pool the harvests of local small farms to supply produce to institutions looking for large, bulk purchases. It has since grown to work with more than 40 year-round and seasonal farms from throughout the Sacramento region and as far away as coastal areas and Fresno. Almost two years ago, Spork was approached by Impact Justice, an Oakland-based national nonprofit that works to improve the conditions and outcomes of inmates during and after incarceration, and was key in getting Harvest of the Month off the ground. “They had been working for some time to bring California-grown fresh fruit and vegetables into the prisons, and they were looking for a distributor that was willing to work with them,” Sippola says. Seeing the potential, Sippola and Zurilgen began discussions with Impact Justice representatives, who connected them with Eshelman of CDCR.
“It was a lengthy process,” Sippola says. “We chatted about details, pricing and how the program would work for about a year before we made the first sale and delivery. This was a huge change for CDCR, and there was a lot of paperwork to get us set up as a vendor, as well as for security clearances for drivers and so on.” There’s also ongoing administrative work. “There’s a lot of stuff that’s involved in it that farmers probably aren’t going to have the time or capacity to work with,” she says. “We field all those things, we deliver for them and we market for them.” Sippola says the hub supports family farms and new and ethnically diverse farmers, adding, “We’re traveling less distance to get the food for these large institutions. We don’t purchase anything that doesn’t come from California, whereas other types of distributors tend to purchase from Mexico also. We’re only seasonal and only local.” A ‘win-win-win’ Harvest of the Month is the result of about three years of behind-the-scenes research and planning among the stakeholders, says Heile Gantan, a program associate
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