The work of food

Donations & reflecting on who risks their lives for our food

Good morning bread friends!

This past month was a wild ride. As you know, our oven broke and I wasn’t able to bake bread for a couple of weeks. Oddly enough, that was only one of the appliances in our house that needed to be replaced or serviced this month. Throughout June we felt like we hit a string of bad luck around the house honestly… but hopefully, we’re through that rough patch. And we try to remind ourselves regularly that we’re blessed to be able to afford to replace things that need replacing.

Speaking of blessings… I want to acknowledge this morning that this community is a huge source of encouragement to me. By virtue of being the author of these emails, I get to see/feel a disproportionate amount of the good vibes that this community is contributing to the world. I always appreciate the occasional email replies that you send with kind notes, recipes, ideas, or stories. I want you all to know that you’re all awesome. My life is better because you’ve opted into this Bread & Justice thing that we’re about here.

Let’s donate our profits for June

As you know, Bread & Justice is a philanthropic enterprise. It was a bummer to be out of service for part of June, but we’re still donating all profits from the sale of bread from this month to Rooted as our community partner for this month. After all of the bread that you purchased, and all of the generous donations that were made directly to Bread & Justice on our website, this community was able to donate a total of $403 this month to Rooted. I am excited to support them as they provide fresh food to families in the Madison area. They also continue to teach youth to grow their own food and steward land through community gardening.

Supporting families for July

Each month my wife and I spend a bit of time brainstorming what organization Bread & Justice will support for the coming month. This month I’m as excited as ever to share where we landed. For the month of July, we’ll be donating to Family Health La Clinica. This community medical and dental center, based in central Wisconsin, proudly serves migrant workers and their families (including roughly 1,000 farmworkers each year).

Migrant workers and their families have faced untold dangers and risks while trying to work and survive the COVID 19 pandemic. In the midst of this public health crisis, they’ve continued to plant, weed, and harvest various vegetable crops (cucumbers, green beans, etc), work in vegetable processing plants, as well as plant, trim, and harvest Christmas trees across Wisconsin.

Melissa has family in California and in Colorado. The images of migrant workers harvesting in the midst of last year’s wildfires stuck with her. We’re increasing our awareness that wherever we live… we’re all indebted to these workers and their families for the food we eat in this country. The very least we can do is elevate stories of the injustices they face, and work to see that they have access to basic health care.

As always… thank you for caring about both Bread & Justice. 
I love you all. 

Mo Cheeks

P.S. 🥖Bread is available to pre-order for Thursday pick up. Click here to order now!