Weald Community Fridge – our unexpected first day!

When I showed up today with forty pre-packed bags of food, I didn’t know if anybody was going to come in and collect them or if I’d end the day taking them all back home and then disposing of them. Each bag contained some fruit and a couple of bakery items; I also had several two litre containers of milk and some litre containers of sauce (vegan mayonnaise and chipotle) and a few random items like granola.

Because of the new guidelines about social distancing (and food handling) we had to pre-pack the food into individual bags which then had to be handed out one at a time, no rummaging in the fridge until the COVID-19 crisis is over!

Our little fridge was soon massively stocked. We gave out the first bag of food at 09:58 and the last at 12:02 and apart from one bottle of chipotle sauce, we gave away every single thing we had received!

Sadly, we don’t know when we’ll get any more outside food to distribute, but our wonderful, shiny, new fridge arrives on Tuesday and we will at least be able to share fruit and vegetables between ourselves. And, of course, you’re all welcome to take fresh fruit and veg for your neighbours who may be self-isolating.

The instructions for adding food to the fridge are on the wall above the fridge itself, please take the time to weigh whatever fruit and vegetables you bring to share, so that we can keep track of how much food we’re distributing – it’s going to be a fascinating process to discover how this Community Fridge is going to work.

Thank you to everybody who came along today – it was lovely to meet so many of you. Enjoy your food!