42 pallets containing 1200 lbs of potatoes in each were delivered to Citxw Nlaka’pamux Assembly (CNA) for distribution to the community. The potatoes are from Second Harvest, the largest food rescue charity in Canada.

“Second Harvest reached out to everyone that was interested in distributing these produce out to communities,” said CNA Communications Lead, Robin Peterson. “They reached out to us and asked if we are interested in doing potato distribution because they had an overabundance.”

The potatoes were grown in Prince Edward Island and Second Harvest shipped them out across Canada.

“We were trying to decide if we are able to do one or two truck loads to distribute but we figured with all the surrounding communities we should try and distribute two,” said Peterson.

On Tuesday, June 28 the delivery was received by CNA. By Monday, July 4, 23 pallets remained and on Friday, July 8, all of the pallets were completely gone.

“Every community member that came to collect on behalf of their community were ecstatic to receive these potatoes,” said Peterson.

“We didn’t have one frown in the whole crowd. This really goes into the community connection, which is something that we’ve been lacking in the last couple of years.”


Free Potatoes

Moving the large amount of potatoes was no easy task and Peterson said CNA was thankful for the assistance they had in accomplishing this goal.

“We had our summer students on hand and they were vital in moving all of these potatoes. They worked really hard and this was their first week on the job so it was really good first task to do with us,” she joked.

Aside from the summer students, CNA also had outside organizations help out.

“Just to make sure there wasn’t going to be any food waste, we touched base with Loop Resources and they were helpful in sending a couple of farmers our way so we are able to get a couple more potatoes out the door.”