Working Food – A non-profit organization that works to cultivate and sustain a resilient local food community in North Central Florida through collaboration, economic opportunity, education, and seed stewardship.

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Join our Giving Day!

Save the date! The Amazing Give will take place on Thursday, April 25th from 8am – 8pm. For the past eight years, our region has come together to uplift local nonprofits through this incredible event.

We aim to raise $16,000 this year to support our holistic seed stewardship, youth empowerment, and food entrepreneurship work. While the Amazing Give lasts just one day, all donations made between April 1st and April 25th will help us reach our goal. We deeply appreciate your support!

DONATE BUY RAFFLE TICKETS

We Are Working Food

A non-profit organization established in 2012 working towards a just and resilient local food community where all flourishing is mutual. Our core programs: seed, youth and kitchen help us achieve our mission.

Kitchen Program

Shared commercial kitchen rental + dry, cold, and frozen storage facilities

Youth Program

Holistic, hands-on garden and culinary programs

Seed Program

Regionally adapted seeds, education and research

Working Food on Instagram

Cultivating a resilient local food community since 2012!

As we get ready for The Amazing Give, we've got so

As we get ready for The Amazing Give, we've got something special to share with you. This year, we’ve curated 4 raffle baskets featuring over $700 worth of goodies from our food entrepreneurs, seed collective, and merch store.

Head to the link in our bio to get your raffle tickets to support us this Amazing Give! Our Merch Bundle features all our favorite Working Food designs!

Valued at over $120, this prize includes:
4 - 16 ounce glass cups
4 flour sac cotton towels (featuring new designs!)
4 notecards
4 stickers
2 handmade gardener’s seed soap bars
1 button

Raffle Guidelines:
- Each $5 donation equals one raffle entry for the chosen bundle
- The raffle closes at 8pm on Thursday, April 25th
- The lucky winners will be drawn on Friday, April 26th
- Prizes will be available for local pick up at Working Food. The winner may request shipping for an additional fee

100% of the raffle proceeds directly support Working Food's Youth, Seed, and Kitchen programs.

Our Kitchen Program offers secure, affordable, and

Our Kitchen Program offers secure, affordable, and scalable commissary kitchen access to established and aspiring food entrepreneurs. Since its inception, the program has provided access to essential production, cooking, packaging, and storage amenities to 65 flourishing food businesses in Gainesville.

If you've ever enjoyed a meal at a food truck or purchased products from a farmers market you've likely tried one of the 44 food businesses currently operating out of the kitchen!

Ready to support your local food entrepreneurs? Donate to our Amazing Give campaign today!

This year, we are growing lots of ‘new to us’

This year, we are growing lots of ‘new to us’ tomato varieties! Come see how we trellis them using the Florida weave technique.

#TomatoSeason #PlantingTomatoes #GrowingTips #GardenTips #GardenTechniques #FoodSovereignty #LocalFoodSystems #SupportLocalFood

As we get ready for The Amazing Give, we've got so

As we get ready for The Amazing Give, we've got something special to share with you. This year, we’ve curated 4 raffle baskets featuring over $700 worth of goodies from our food entrepreneurs, seed collective, and merch store.

- Each $5 donation equals one raffle entry
- The raffle closes at 8pm on Thursday, April 25th
- The lucky winners will be drawn on Friday, April 26th
- Prizes will be available for local pick up at Working Food

You can view the prizes and buy your raffle tickets NOW at the link in our bio.

Every day, we’re honored to empower young people

Every day, we’re honored to empower young people through food. Don't just take our word for it: hear directly from the young people who participate in Working Food's programs!

Morgan (left), a Teen Gardener and Young Chef from the Duval Community Garden’s Youth Garden, said “I enjoy everything about being here, mostly gardening, and learning to make new foods. Like, you all teach us how we can make a lot of different foods with the same things from the garden. With just a little bit of stuff we can make a lot of food!”

The Duval Community Garden Youth Garden and Young Chef's Programs are co-led through a partnership between Working Food and The Greater Duval Neighborhood Association.

The Amazing Give is just two weeks away! Join us a

The Amazing Give is just two weeks away! Join us at the inaugural Grove Street Block Party, on April 25, 4-10 PM, hosted by @breadofthemightyfoodbank

This event will transform 10th Avenue into a hub of celebration and philanthropy, with music, food trucks, a pop-up market and more!

Working Food will have extended open hours this day, from 4-8 PM. We’ll have activities for kids, seed saving information, and tours of the community kitchen plus seeds and new merch for sale!

NW 10th Ave will be shut down from NW 4th St. to NW 2nd St. to allow guests to explore the neighborhood.

See you soon
🥕🥑🥦🫐🍎🍊

#GainesvilleEvents #GNVEvents

Every day, we're honored to empower young people t

Every day, we're honored to empower young people through food. We develop our youth garden and culinary programs in partnership with other community organizations like the Cultural Arts Coalition’s George Washington Carver Science Club and the Greater Duval Neighborhood Association.

This past year, Working Food taught 134 gardening classes, 30 cooking classes and 6 specialty classes, with 296 total hours of classes taught in our community.

To support our hands-on educational programs for the next generation of farmers, food entrepreneurs, and social movement leaders working together to build a more resilient local food web, donate to Working Food today! Link in our bio to donate.

Working with 30 farmers, community gardeners and b

Working with 30 farmers, community gardeners and backyard gardeners, we’re collectively tending to a wide diversity of crops, and providing education to ensure the knowledge, skills, and seed are accessible for current growers and future generations to come.

Here's what Alexa Heilman, Nursery Supervisor, Horticultural Therapist (HTR), Education & Outreach Coordinator at @grow.hub has to say about collaborating with us:

"I see the Working Food x GROW HUB collaboration as one of our most important community relationships. GROW HUB's ability to play a part in the important work done by Working Food is so special to us and our staff. Through Working Food's use of our space for seed gardens and storage, and their engagement with our staff, we get many benefits, both tangible and not."

Seeds are one of the most valuable resources for u

Seeds are one of the most valuable resources for us all- nearly every bite of food we eat started from a seed! We steward a wide diversity of crop varieties and provide critical seed saving education. Our seed collective would not be possible without the relationships we've developed with local farmers and community members.

We currently offer 103 different seed varieties, with 75% of them being local varieties. This past year, we sold 5,153 seed packets and donated 238 packets.

Want to support our continual seed saving efforts? Donate to Working Food today and join us on April 25 for The Amazing Give! Link in our bio to donate.

#WorkingFood #TheAmazingGive #GNV #FoodSovereignty #SeedSaving #SeedCollective #FoodTrucks #Entrepreneur #CulinaryProgram #LocalFoodCommunity #CommunityCelebration #FoodIsLove #EatLocal #GrowFood #GrowGommunity #GrowLocal #CulinaryLearning #GardenLearning #CommunityKitchen #CulinaryEntrepreneurs #SeedCollective #TogetherWeGrow #TogetherWeFlourish #SharedAbundance #NCFLFood #NCFLGrowers #NCFLSeeds

Since last spring, we’ve been actively working o

Since last spring, we’ve been actively working on a new project funded and supported by @southernsare entitled, “Local food needs local seed: increasing production and use of locally adapted seed with a farm to community network.”

The main goal of this project is to collaboratively work with local farmers, like those at @siembrafarm and @nicoyafarm to figure out ways that seed saving practices can be incorporated into farm planning.

Read our latest blog post to get the full update on this exciting project! Head to the link in our bio to read.

Spring is in the air with the Working Food Youth P

Spring is in the air with the Working Food Youth Programs! A whole lot of collards from the CRK garden, delicious veggies from @siembrafarm for this month's Young Chefs - Teen class, and Johnny Jump Up Violets adding color and a nice wintergreen flavor to our garden snack plates.

Thanks for a great Young Chefs class, @chefcarlwatts & @greaterduval! Can't believe our FOURTH ANNUAL Young Chefs Pop-Up Restaurant is already next month. What an awesome group of young chefs - can't wait to see them shine!

Did you know that tomatoes are one of the only pla

Did you know that tomatoes are one of the only plants you can plant very DEEP when transferring them into the ground/larger container and they’ll grow roots along their stem? We’re sharing some techniques for re-planting your tomatoes once they’re ready.

1. From the base of the plant, cut the branches off the tomato stem so that there are about 2-3 branches remaining toward the top.
2. If your plant is root-bound, loosen up the roots a bit to encourage them to grow
3. Plant your tomatoes DEEP into the ground so that almost the entire stem will be covered by soil. Roots will grow from there. If you don’t have a deep-enough container or hole, you can also plant your tomatoes sideways. The roots will grow along the bottom of the stem. The top portion of the plant will eventually grow upwards in the right direction.

happy planting! 🍅🍅

#TomatoSeason #PlantingTomatoes #GrowingTips #GardenTips #GardenTechniques #FoodSovereignty #LocalFoodSystems #SupportLocalFood

It's cold tonight: Do you have a plan to protect y

It's cold tonight: Do you have a plan to protect your tomatoes and other other crops sensitive to cold? With temperatures dropping into the 30s, many of our spring and summer plants that have gone into the ground or out in the garden in their pots could be damaged! Bring them inside or prepare to cover any tomatoes, peppers, squash, pumpkin, eggplant, okra and basil.

Worm Castle a collaborative poem* by the CAC's Geo

Worm Castle
a collaborative poem* by the CAC's George Washington Carver Science Club

I feel wiggly and go into the ground
It's quiet here and I can't hear a sound
Some are huge and some are small
Some are too lazy to even crawl

Moving and grooving worms
Boogying in their underground nightclub
Worms don't have eyes
And they care little for light
Because the sun is too bright
And they don't talk so they don't tell lies

Slimy tunnels in the earth
When I get a bump** I can give birth
The good dirt, that's the good word

Let them live in the nature
The breeze passed by
The worm became friends with the fly
They kissed

The worm was breakdancing
The banana was rancid
Worms eat delightfully
They are long and sometimes short
Their mission they don't abort
They like to dance and move around
Kings and queens of a complex underground

Worms are good for the environment
They are super important
Little leaders of a world down below
This is home to us.

* Have you ever played a collaborative poetry game? Each student writes a line, then passes it to their neighbor to write the next line. The second student folds over the top line and passes it, so that the next person can only read the prior line. Like this, we pass around our poems, folding them over one line at a time. The poems soon take on a life of their own. We hope you enjoyed their most recent creation, edited for brevity - a love poem to the worms of our vermicompost!

**citellum, which produces cocoons

@culturalartscoalition Cultural Arts Coalition

We still have tomato plants for sale! We had a lov

We still have tomato plants for sale! We had a lovely time at the recent Spring Pop-Up events out at @grow.hub , sharing our locally grown tomato varieties, and we still have more to share with you!

Stop by Grow Hub during open hours (Mon-Thu 9-1, Sat-Sun 9-3) to get yours! 🍅🍅🍅

Head to the link in our bio to see our updated tomato varieties guide 🍅

“This abundance of berries feels like a pure gif

“This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way… In the presence of such gifts, gratitude is the intuitive first response… Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver. To name the world as gift is to feel one’s membership in the web of reciprocity.”
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, THE SERVICEBERRY, An Economy of Abundance

So grateful for all the abundance we’ve been experiencing in our gardens, especially @greaterduval, and on a recent trip to @fieldandforkuf with the @culturalartscoalition’s Science Club. To see our kids with pocketfuls of loquats and bouquets of flowers, sharing with each other, as well as with snails and worms, we feel hope for the future, and joy in our present moment together. 🌺 🐌 🍇 🍃 🌈

Check out this unique workshop collaboration! Ou

Check out this unique workshop collaboration!

Our Seed Collective Program Director Melissa is partnering up with @a_thousand_leaves_herbshop and @grow.hub to offer a unique event: Paint Medicine!

🌱🖌️🍶

Students will practice pulling color from local medicinal plants to make art while also learning about medicinal preparations and methods through tea, tincture and other ways with these same plants!

The workshop will be hosted @grow.hub on Sunday March 17th from 12-3pm.

To register and learn more, visit the link in bio @a_thousand_leaves_herbshop or @southern_seed_queen.

Our much anticipated spring tomato plant sale is i

Our much anticipated spring tomato plant sale is in full swing! You can get plants now @grow.hub during their regular open hours, but join the mega fun this weekend for their first spring pop-up event!

Live music, food, arts, crafts and other goodies to celebrate spring. Melissa and Sarah will be there in front of the Working Food greenhouse to answer all your tomato growing questions.

🌱🍅

Link to variety list in bio.

We're proud of all that our Youth Program does to

We're proud of all that our Youth Program does to empower young people through food. In one month alone we reached 185 students, the majority of which are in our weekly or biweekly garden programs. We taught 13 cooking classes, 10 garden classes, and co-led four outreach events. In all, we led engaging lessons, from seed to plate, for a total of 46 hours this month! We're proud of all the future leaders we work with each day, and we feel more confident in the resilient local community we're building together - one day at a time! 🌱🍽🌈

The sounds of seed to plate! The best ASMR on the

The sounds of seed to plate! The best ASMR on the internet 😂🌱

Last summer we sowed 4 varieties of African peas (a.k.a. cowpeas, southern peas, or just plain old peas) at both @siembrafarm and @nicoyafarm.

Over the following months, we harvested dried seeds, had fun playing with them with both kids and adults alike, and finally got them all cleaned up - some ready to eat and some ready to go into seed packets.

This past Monday we got to make an incredible African Pea Succotash with @chefcarlwatts, @givinggardengnv and @projectyouthbuildgnv.

Yum!!

😋 🧑🏿‍🍳🧑🏾‍🌾