SAN ANTONIO – At the Mission San Juan Farm, thousands of pounds of food are grown yearly and donated to families in our community.
For Hunger Action Month, KSAT 12 explored volunteer opportunities at the San Antonio Food Bank, including helping grow crops.
“Mission San Juan is one of the initial Spanish colonies. It’s a national park site. It’s recognized as a world heritage site. This specific property that we are cultivating on has had crops growing on it for almost 300 years. We are use the acequia that pulls water off the San Antonio river and as a result we think this is a cool way to connect agriculture in the past which is why San Antonio is where it is to the present day and hopefully the future,” Mitch Hagney, director of food sustainability at the San Antonio Food Bank said.
The farm is about 50 acres and last year they produced about 300,000 pounds of food at the farm.
“We are standing in a beautiful native squash patch. We also have five acres of peaches, and then we have turnips, beets, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, all that we will be planting for the fall to hopefully get out to families who need it for the rest of the year,” Hagney said.
There are many ways you can help at the San Antonio Food Bank, including volunteering at this special place.
“You are going to be doing things like weeding, mulching, but critically for us harvesting,” Hagney said.
During the fall, volunteer days are every other weekend.
“We have tractors, we have other equipment that we are able to plant, but we need people power to come and actually to be able pull things off oft some of the vines and put them in our crates to go out to the communities who need it,” Hagney said.
Hagney hopes to grow more crops and get the community involved.
“For us, Hnger Action Month which is all throughout September, is a critical time for the community to really pitch in and get involved,” Hagney said.