Collaboration Helps Get More Locally Sourced Healthy Food to Area Older Adults

Senior Services, Inc., and Kalamazoo Valley Community College are partnering in the construction of a passive solar greenhouse, also called a hoop house, on the site of the college’s Food Innovation Center at 224 E. Crosstown Parkway. The Food Innovation Center is part of the Bronson Healthy Living Campus in downtown Kalamazoo. NiftyHoops, a Michigan-based company, will install the hoop house on Sept. 18. The public is invited to attend the “seed planting” ceremony, the official start of the hoop house construction, beginning at 9 a.m.

The hoop house will be used to grow vegetables for use in Senior Services kitchens, which produce meals for Meals on Wheels, Food For All, congregate meal sites throughout the city and for events catered by Generations Catering, a division of Senior Services, Inc. “It has long been a goal of ours to incorporate more local vegetables into our meals,” said Senior Services Director of Nutrition Dan Pontius. “The collaboration will allow us to further fulfill our most important priorities of providing quality and nutritious meals to our aging community.”

Senior Services volunteers will cultivate the vegetables. They will receive training and work with the food production staff at Kalamazoo Valley to plant, maintain and harvest the crops. Students in Kalamazoo Valley’s Sustainable Food Systems programs will also participate in managing the hoop house.

“We are delighted to collaborate with Senior Services on this important initiative,” said Kalamazoo Valley’s Director of Sustainable Food Systems Rachel Bair. “Creating more access to fresh, healthy food year-round is a huge part of why the Bronson Healthy Living Campus was created.”

A passive solar hoop house does not require any supplemental heating to grow certain vegetables year-round. Its translucent plastic cover traps the sun’s heat during the day and prevents the ground from freezing. Crops like spinach, lettuce, kale and other greens, carrots and beets grow well and can be harvested through the winter in a hoop house.

The Food Innovation Center site also has a heated greenhouse, outdoor growing areas, an apiary with eight beehives and native plant areas. It includes a classroom, an indoor growing area for hydroponic vegetable production and a food processing facility.

Funding from Eaton Corporation, The Burdick-Thorne Foundation and H.P. Genevieve Connable Fund to Senior Services, Inc., is making this collaborative project possible.