The Week After the Safety Net
On November 1 and 2, our inbox started filling faster than we could read the messages. Every few seconds another reservation came through the Farm for Better sign-up form. Then another. Then another. The SNAP shutdown had hit, and people were looking for food. Each notification was a name attached to real hunger.
All summer, the pantry had been small and steady. We knew most of the families by name. That changed overnight. Within forty-eight hours, over forty families had signed up, representing nearly two hundred people and dozens of pets. We didn’t stop to plan. We adjusted and kept moving.
We built a new system that same night. Every reservation now connects to our farm’s Google Calendar so families can choose a private pickup time. No lines. No waiting. No crowd of people explaining why they need food. Some families coordinated their slots to carpool and share gas. Others told us at pickup that they wouldn’t need the following week’s box so someone else could use the spot. It worked immediately. The respect people showed for one another stood in complete contrast to a country that spent that week ridiculing them for being hungry.
Every box leaves with the same handling and respect as any customer order. They are packed from the same tables, stamped with the same rabbit logo, and treated with the same care. No one is marked as receiving aid. The goal is that when someone walks away from here, no one else can tell which box they carried. That is what equality looks like in practice.
As the volume grew, we expanded the pantry into our 22-foot travel trailer, the one we lived in while converting our home on this property. The same space that once held our own meals now holds the food that feeds hundreds of others. It’s filled with our farm’s fresh eggs, shelf-stable staples like beans, rice, pasta, and oats. Canned vegetables, pet feed, and basic hygiene items like soap, tampons, toothpaste, and paper goods. Everything inside that trailer was privately funded with no grants, no government programs, and no middlemen. Every item was purchased intentionally so each box could make complete meals, not a random mix of leftovers. Each night we send a follow-up email to every household outlining how the items can be used together and how to stretch them through the week.
People told us their stories while they loaded their boxes. Some had lost benefits, others were still waiting for deposits that never came. One family mentioned their guinea pig, so before the snow came, we sent them home with fresh radish tops from the garden. Nothing goes to waste here. Everyone who eats counts.
That same week, Mountain State Spotlight (Links externally) covered what we have built and how quickly it expanded. They asked how a one-acre farm could feed nearly two hundred people while the state looked for direction. The answer isn’t complicated. We did what the state and every major food agency failed to do. We treated people with dignity.
The failure is not only policy. It’s cultural. It’s a lack of respect. Systems that exist to feed people are built on surveillance and compliance. They make people prove they are poor enough to deserve food. They divide people into those who give and those who receive. We refused that divide. What we have built is equal by design. The only difference is who paid for the box. Everything else is the same in intent and respect.
The People Who Eat Here form was created for that reason. It gives participants a voice in their own story. They can share what brought them here or nothing at all. No names are published and nothing is used for promotion. It exists to document what this looks like from their side. To record that respect and privacy are not extras. They are the foundation. Anyone can use the form if they want their experience recorded. Every story adds to the record of what people are living through.
Farm for Better is not a stopgap or an act of goodwill. It is a functioning system that works because it rejects everything that made people need it in the first place.