Hawthorne LEAD pose with Mayor Rybak, Susan Moores, and Megan O'hara in front of the Garden Goodies stand near gate 34 after selling out of salads on the opening day of Roots for the Hometeam.

A press release last week announced what Youth Farm LEAD in Hawthorne and Lyndale Neighborhoods have been working on behind the scenes for the last several months:

The Minnesota Twins Community Fund has partnered with Roots for the Home Team to bring fresh produce grown by youth from ethnically diverse areas of the Twin Cities to Target Field.

The produce will be used to create a variety of unique salads that will be sold at the new Garden Goodies cart, located near the Gate 34 entrance, on Sunday afternoon games for the rest of the season.

Hawthorne Neighborhood Project LEAD had the opportunity to develop salad recipes, grow many of the veggies for the salads, and kick off the new initiative by selling these salads at last Sunday’s Twins Game as part of a new initiative called Roots for the Hometeam.”  Hawthorne LEAD helped develop two of the six salads that will be sold at the Sunday home games throughout the summer: the Oishi Asian Chopped Salad and the Silas’ Fiesta Salad.

Youth helped serve over 85 salads before running out just before the start of the game. Registered dietician and project coordinator, Susan Moores was somewhat surprised by the success of the salad cart, and plans to double the number of salads sold for the next Sunday home game on June 10th (at which Lyndale LEAD will be selling salads).

A special thanks to the Hawthorne LEAD for all of their work on the project over the last several months, to Susan Moores and Megan O’hara for working tirelessly to ensure that the project is engaging and consistent with the “Youth Farm way” of youth development, and to Rhys Williams and Co-op Partners Warehouse for their help training us to harvest and process our produce, and for backing us on the produce we were not able to grow ourselves.