Plants thrive under the right conditions. Sun, soil, water and some love. On the one hand, it seems pretty straightforward to grow something from just a seed. But any gardener knows it's much deeper than that. Too cold when they go in the ground and the root system falters. Too much rain on ripe tomatoes and they split - all those long months of work wasted. A basil blight? These days it's more like when, not if, the blight is coming. It's important to understand the science of gardening because it gives plants the best chance of survival. In the absence of this, however, they will find their way.
Sensitive as they may be, every plant is full to bursting with a passionate, desperate drive to live forever. Plants are selfless - they only really care about their seeds. They will do anything to make sure the next generation can see an improved version of themselves.
I used to garden - never well. It doesn't spark joy but I did it for the tomatoes. A few summers in a row, I grew sungold cherry tomatoes. If you grow cherry tomatoes, you know - you get A LOT of cherry tomatoes. I couldn't pick them fast enough and they fell all over the place.
The next season, there were volunteer tomato plants growing on their own. One in particular was growing just outside the garden box. A single tomato stalk about fourteen inches high with no leaves on it at all - but one single golden cherry tomato at the very very end. The stalk was the width of the thinnest stick and wasn't connected to any other plant! It grew straight out of the ground, right through the straw, and sprouted a tomato at the end before even bothering to grow any leaves. Now, on the one hand, I didn't want to eat the tomato because the plant essentially gave its life to just make that ONE teensy little fruit. That tomato was the most important tomato in the whole garden. On the other hand, if I didn't eat it, it would be so wasteful of the efforts of the plant. So I ate it - it was incredibly sweet and tasty. One of the best tomatoes of my life. Thinking back, though, I should have saved some seeds instead. What a voracious little plant that must have been, to survive with so much drive and determination - and hope for the future.
At the Franklin Food Bank, we are constantly trying to innovate our food assistance programming to make sure it's the best for our clients, staff and volunteers. We are less than two months into our relaunch of Client Choice and in most every way, the program is going extremely well. Still, each day and week that goes by, we are monitoring, measuring and studying all aspects of our program to make sure we continue to make necessary changes. Some changes have been made swiftly because the need was obvious. Others will require more data like surveying our clients and having regular meetings with program staff to discuss what's working. Both of these things are happening now!
A Franklin Food Bank program is like a little plant. We want to make sure it has the best conditions under which to thrive. We know that it will take on a life of its own if it must, like my robust little sungold. But we also know that a much better version of a program is one that takes some science into account. Using all the data we can gather plus the grit and survival instincts we were born with, we hope to continue making Client Choice 2.0 the most comprehensive, respectful and friendly food assistance program around.
