Donate your extra garden produce

The fourth year of Grow a Little Extra is underway in Thermopolis. The Red Dirt Master Gardeners are encouraging local home gardeners to donate their extra garden produce to help their neighbors in our community. Produce can be dropped off at Broadway Bakery, 509 Broadway, Tuesday-Sunday. Also individuals are able to come by and pick up donated produce.

The Grow A Little Extra team will also be distributing produce to various organizations in our community; including the Senior Center, Canyon Village and Hot Springs Senior Apartments, local church food pantries, Big Horn Basin Children's Center, Thermopolis Head Start and People to People.

The Community Garden, which is managed by the Red Dirt Master Gardeners, has beds designated to grow vegetables for the program. There are seven raised beds and two larger in-ground beds, growing tomatoes, zucchini and three other squashes, peas, green beans, cabbage, spinach, kale and more. A special team of volunteers water and maintain these beds and pick produce to be distributed.

To find out more information about the local Grow A Little Extra program in Thermopolis, contact Kelly Strampe at (307) 870-2726. You can also contact Angela Michel, Cent$ible Nutrition Educator at (307) 347-3431 for Grow A Little Extra information and recipes.

Grow A Little Extra is a partnership with the UW Extension's Cent$ible Nutrition Program and Master Gardener Program. It falls under the greater umbrella of The Wyoming Hunger Initiative; a program spearheaded by First Lady Jennie Gordon, and launched in 2019 with the goal of ending childhood hunger in this state. Since then, the mission has grown to end hunger for every Wyomingite, of whom 86,000 are estimated to struggle with food insecurity. The initiative's work is done by increasing awareness and supporting the work of local anti-hunger organizations through innovative programs.

In addition to Grow a Little Extra, the initiative's programs currently include "Food from the Field", streamlining donations of game meat to food pantries; "Food from the Farm + Ranch", keeping locally grown protein in local communities; "Wyoming Angel Accounts", eliminating school meal debts in school districts; and infrastructure grants for anti-hunger organizations. Find out more about the init

iative and the Grow a Little Extra program at nohungerwyo.org.