Disclaimer: even though today is my last day at the office for the summer (still giving a tour tomorrow though!), this post is not going to be a proper reflection or goodbye. Sorry friends.

All summer long, two close friends of mine, Charlie and Emma, have been working as the Chief Administrative Officers of a Middlebury College start-up nonprofit called Middlebury Foods. The idea behind this project is that they buy produce and meats in bulk to reduce overall cost, so then the food can be packaged as grocery boxes at lower costs. After hearing detail after detail of the workings of taking over this project, I had a free weekend to help out and volunteer at the delivery. My work actually started a few weeks ago when I helped Emma make phone calls to past customers to ask how they enjoyed their orders and help them with this month’s order. On Sunday, I traveled to the very exciting Vermont Refrigerated Storage to help pack up the food boxes to deliver to families. We lined up produce crates in an assembly line fashion and added a mix of potatoes, yams, broccoli, tomatoes, corn, mangoes, kale, plums, etc. etc. etc. to each depending on the specific orders. They offer three different types of produce boxes, and two types of meat packages, so we assembled according to those. The real challenge came when we had to fit about 150 different “boxes” (some were boxed meat, some where bagged produce, and some had both) into a Subaru and a 7-passenger College van over the course of two days. Have no fear, we did it successfully, and it was exciting to meet all the people who were actually receiving these groceries. Right after the packaging process, we drove to Ferrisburgh and Vergennes to the pickup sites to bring them to customers’ cars. We repeated the process on Monday afternoon, and then traveled to the Brandon and Middlebury sites to finish the month’s deliveries. MiddFoods reached a record number of orders this August, and will be expanding to a new delivery site in Bristol for September, making a more convenient spot for many, and drawing in more new customers too. I’m really excited to be a part of this project now, and looking forward to future deliveries. *thumbs-up emoji*