TAMPA TRIBUNE

April 5, 2010

Free Plant City berries offer leads to donations to help rural poor

By GEORGE H. NEWMAN | The Tampa Tribune

A local farm's decision to offer its strawberries free for the taking led to a more than $6,100 windfall for an organization that provides child care to the rural poor.

The nonprofit Redlands Christian Migrant Association set up a donation bucket at a table at Wishnatzki Farms, which opened its fields March 27. Those who took advantage of the free berries responded with generosity.

The Redlands organization plans to use the money to help more than 200 of its Plant City-area families who lost wages they had planned to earn picking strawberries.

"We had an impromptu fundraiser," said Kathy Vega, the association's coordinator in the area. "A lot of friendly people came to the strawberry field, and we were grateful for every dollar."

January's siege of freezing nights disrupted the timing of this year's harvest, causing a glut of berries to ripen at the same time. Farmers complained that prices didn't cover harvesting costs, and some growers let the fruit rot in the fields.

Wishnatzki Farms President Gary Wishnatzki, a Redlands board member, urged that all visitors make a donation to the organization.

The association was founded by the Mennonite Church in 1965 in the Redlands farming area in southern Dade County, now Miami-Dade County.

The association operates more than 75 child care centers. In the farming areas of Tampa Bay, it has 16 centers serving more than 2,000 children, plus a charter school in Wimauma. All the centers are tucked into rural Florida farming communities, and employ staffs drawn heavily from the migrant farmworker communities they serve.