On Friday, Winnipeg Airports Authority employees came together to lend a hand, er… green thumb, in growing a decades-long tradition of helping fight hunger in the community.
Dozens of team members spent the morning planting Winnipeg Richardson International Airport’s Harvest Garden in support of Harvest Manitoba. The employee-led initiative of seeding, tending, and harvesting a vegetable garden to help local food banks started in 1997, the same year WAA took over the operation and management of YWG. In the 25 years since then, the garden has grown from a few rows near the YWG Firehall to a 4,000-square-foot plot in its current location on Wellington Avenue.
This year, potatoes, carrots, onions, and beets will be grown in the Harvest Garden, which takes about three hours to plant in its entirety. As the crop grows through the summer, the airport’s groundside maintenance team will be checking on the garden regularly to ensure it has everything it needs to produce a bountiful harvest in the fall. It’s crucial the Harvest Garden has a quality yield, as all the vegetables collected from it at the end of the growing season will be donated to Harvest Manitoba to distribute to families across the province.
Since its inception, the Harvest Garden has produced 67,181 pounds of vegetables for local food banks, enough to feed nearly 99,000 Manitoba families in need. As a community-based organization, WAA’s commitment to service doesn’t stop at the terminal doors. We’re honoured to make a difference in any way we can, and this employee-led initiative is a tradition that we’re proud to execute every year.
