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Small Scale Farms does their best to support community members by making sure all people have access to local fresh fruits and vegetables.

Now, they are asking for the community to support them through donations to help fund upgrades that would allow the business to greatly increase the amount of produce they can store and sell.

“If I could pull this off in the next couple weeks, then I would have a fridge before August. I would be immediately in position to handle the amount of food that comes at true harvest season, which is the end of August, September and October,” explained Renee Delaney, founder of Small Scale Farms.

Earlier this year, the fridge and freezer Small Scale Farms were using died with product still inside them, leading to wasted produce and severely limiting the work they do to sell produce for farmers. “We’re moving produce in and out with a two-day time frame with the fridges that we do have; that’s unheard of,” explained Delaney.

Delaney was able to purchase a walk-in fridge and a freezer from another business, but can’t use them without three-phase power, which her site does not have. “A power source, and the installation of that power source and labour. The cost is on me to make that happen, so it’s in the tens of thousands of dollars,” she explained.

An online fundraising campaign has been started to help cover the cost of installing the new power source, with donations already rolling in to help meet the $20,000 goal.

With an updated fridge and freezer, she can do even more to expand programs already in place at Small Scale Farms, including selling pre-cooked meals made with food that may otherwise go bad because the public doesn’t buy it and other programs giving back to the community. “For every person who subscribes to our produce bag, we’re able to put the profit of that toward feeding another person who can’t access healthy food,” added Delaney. “So if you look at that from a systems perspective that’s generating its own abundance.”

Any extra funding will help Small Scale Farms fund day-to-day items like additional staff to help run the business.

This isn’t the first time Delaney and Small Scale Farms have relied on the community to help them expand the business. “I asked the public to support me in a large way when I signed the lease for this building,” she said. “I put it back to the community that I was trying to come up with quite a bit of money to be able to make the jump from a community centre to an actual food hub.”

The public stepped up then, raising enough money to allow Delaney to sign the lease on the building they currently operate out of. She sees the community helping her as just one part of how Small Scale Farms operates as a social enterprise instead of a business.

“What I’m after is systematically, instead of going to the grocery store, and watching the funds leave the community and go into these massive corporations hands, then we could keep it local and reap the benefits of those profits ourselves,” Delaney explained.

For those who want to support Small Scale Farms, but don’t want to donate to an online campaign, Delaney says even making the small switch from purchasing items at the grocery store to purchasing them from her business makes a large impact.

Small Scale Farms is open Wednesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. at 13145 Lundy’s Lane in Allanburg.

Those wanting to support Small Scale Farms efforts to install the new fridge and freezer can make an online donation at givesendgo.com/smallscalefarms. Additional information about the work they do can be found online at smallscalefarms.ca.

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