Yellowbird Foodshed, a Mount Vernon based food distributor created by Benji Ballmer, links residents, restaurants and schools to approximately 30 farms in order to provide the community with fresh food. Although it began just three years ago, Yellowbird now serves over five hundred people through their Community Supported Agriculture program. Every week, they deliver boxes filled with seasonal produce and local products to various drop off locations in surrounding counties and the Columbus metropolitan area.
If anything is worth the money that we’re paying, it’s got to be our food. Most small farmers don’t have time to market themselves. What farmers really want is to focus on growing. What if we stood in the gap and created a mechanism that would allow small farmers to get paid what they deserve?
– Benji Ballmer, founder of Yellowbird Foodshed
Photo: The Yellowbird team (including Benji Ballmer’s daughter, far right) stands in front of their delivery truck, holding some of the vegetables found in their CSA boxes. John Marsh proudly displays an eight pound sweet potato. Courtesy of Alana Zack
Life Along the Kokosing - An Exploration of Knox County 