Community harvest giveaway happening today
Courtesy Brooke Rice
Tonight (Friday), the Golden Age Club will come alive with the smells of maple syrup, roasted squash, and fire-cooked meals as community members gather for the Community Harvest Box Giveaway, a free event celebrating food sovereignty, cultural connection, and collective care.
Running from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., the event invites families to bring a bag or basket and fill it with locally-harvested foods.
Brooke Rice, founder of Tkà:nios and project lead of this giveaway, recalls how this event first took root.
“Last year, I hunted my first moose,” she said. “I had in the back of my head that elders and mentors like to share your first harvest. It’s just been like a reoccurring spot in a lot of our teachings and our ways to share your harvest, to share your produce.”
What began as one woman’s offering of gratitude has blossomed into a full-scale community initiative grounded in cultural teachings, community care, and collaboration.
This year’s Harvest Box includes an impressive lineup of contributions from across the community, such as moose meat from the Tkà:nios moose harvest, Caughnawaga Maple Syrup, fresh produce from Free Food for Everyone, and Rowy’s pickled goods.
White Pine Woodlands will provide organic chicken and duck eggs and two turkeys and Purple Dragonfly will be donating herbs and products that support the immune and nervous systems and more.
Local organizations are coming together to host a Community Harvest Box Giveaway this evening at the Golden Age Club, celebrating cultural food traditions with moose meat, maple syrup, squash, pickled goods, and more. Courtesy Brooke Rice
Adding to the experience, the Mohawk Cultural Community Homestead will be on-site cooking a community meal, welcoming everyone to share in the warmth and nourishment of food made together. They will also be giving away children’s snowshoes, encouraging families to embrace winter outdoor activities and stay connected to the land throughout the seasons.
For Rice, the Harvest Box is about nurturing wellness through food, reclaiming ancestral practices, and weaving together community ties collectively through shared labour and gratitude.
“To honour and highlight the spirit of community care, consolidate the community and highlight the connection to land, we’re able to create this community harvest box in collaboration with different local harvesters, food producers, grassroots initiatives really dedicated to nurse our families and community with healthy foods that’s culturally rooted,” she said.
The giveaway will operate on a first-come, first-served basis, open to all community members, and families are encouraged to bring their own bag or basket and select what resonates most with their households.
“We want to celebrate our community and be able to feed the community and family with some good food,” Rice said. “What comes from the land and our hands, we strengthen our body and spirit and connect them to each other. We really want to invigorate that ancestral memory.”
Participants can also learn about upcoming opportunities to get involved in the different initiatives, such as future community hunts with Tkà:nios. Including cooking classes, and land-based learning programs. These initiatives all share one goal: strengthening local food systems and reinforcing the values of reciprocity.
“Abundance grows when we care for one another and listen together, connect with one another, and build those relations,” she said.
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“Food, at the end of the day, is medicine,” Rice said. “It’s preventative. It feels good. It brings people together.”
