At Burgerville, we love to feed our community delicious meals made with locally grown ingredients, which is why every year we celebrate our local farmers on National Farmer’s Day. Their hard work and stewardship of the land allows us to whip up your favorite treats all year round. To celebrate, we are once again teaming up with Farmers Ending Hunger, an organization dedicated to reducing hunger in Oregon and SW Washington.

 

Farmers Ending Hunger began in 2006 with a donation of 163,000 pounds of frozen peas. The peas were processed, packaged, and delivered to the Oregon Food Bank, setting in motion a successful model of farmers and producers teaming up to bring high quality foods to the food bank. For 18 years, the organization —run by just one employee: Executive Director John Burt— has forged relationships with growers across the region and donated more than 35 million pounds of food!

 

This year, we set out to visit one of the farms that donates a portion of their produce to Farmers Ending Hunger. We visited Pearmine Farms, down in Gervais, OR, where they grow corn, cherries, cauliflower, and more. The Pearmines use responsible field management with minimum or no-till methods to reduce soil erosion. The family farm has been donating acres of crops and proceeds of vegetable sales to Farmers Ending Hunger since 2009.

 

On our visit, we met with Molly Pearmine and learned about the cauliflower harvest that was right around the corner. When the weather cools down, the cauliflower is machine-harvested which improves yields, allowing for more crops to be sold and donated. Molly talked about the ways the family is involved in the local community through coaching sports and employing local high school students to work on the farm during the harvests. Thanks to the Pearmines’ donations, they have reduced hunger within the local community.

If you want to support Farmers Ending Hunger, stop by your neighborhood Burgerville on National Farmer’s Day and order a NW Cheeseburger! For every NW Cheeseburger sold on October 12th, we will donate $1 to Farmers Ending Hunger. You can also donate when you order in store or on the Burgerville App!

 

Check out the Farmers Ending Hunger website and learn about how you can adopt an acre and help to end hunger in Oregon and SW Washington: https://www.farmersendinghunger.com/adopt-an-acre/