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The Food Bank of Edmonton is receiving a huge donation of potatoes thanks to some local plumbers.
Earlier this year, employees at Edmonton-based Mr. Rooter Plumbing decided to put an empty lot near the company's warehouse to good use.
Employees spent weeks planting more than 500 pounds of Russet and Yukon Gold seed potatoes, with the goal of harvesting the potatoes in the fall and donating them to the food bank.
“This year has been tough for many people in our community and we continue to hear about the rapid increase in use of food banks across Canada,” said Geremy Howe, general manager of Edmonton-based Mr. Rooter Plumbing.
“We attach great importance to neighborliness in our company. When the idea of growing food for our fellow Edmontonians came up, we knew it was the right thing to do.”
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The idea comes from service manager Claude Demontarnal. When the company moved into its new space in March, he started thinking about how it could give back to the community.
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“I have experience in gardening. I've done it most of my life, but it was daunting. At first it was not a garden, but a training facility. So that was all grass and we went in and removed the grass and cultivated the dirt that was here and prepared it for planting,” Demontarnal said of the land used for the potato garden.
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He said they chose to grow potatoes because they were easier to grow. Potatoes were also on the food bank's wish list because of their longer shelf life.
Plumbers, employees and their families took part in the potato harvest on Saturday, loading the starchy root vegetable onto a truck. The potatoes will be taken to the food distribution on Wednesday.
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“We love Edmonton and we love giving back to the community,” Howe said. “This potato harvest is a first for us, but we know it will become an annual tradition. We love making our community a little bit better, and we would love for other local businesses to convert some of their land and join us in donating food to those in need next spring.”
Howe hopes the crop will produce 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of potatoes.
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