We are getting to that wonderful time of year where feeling and expressing gratitude is wrapped up in a collective day of celebration.  No experience for any holiday is unanimously felt and we know that what is a joyful celebration of thanks for some can also bring up feelings of hurt and loss for others.  The world is a big and messy place, so often driven by self interest in the guise of service to society.  It can be a tough pill to swallow that despite our greatest wishes and efforts to make positive change on larger issues of human welfare, we are perpetually fighting an uphill battle that barely moves the needle. 

  The other side of that coin though is the recognition that despite the chaos of the political landscape, we can still do good in our communities and lift hearts and spirits with “small” actions.  Those actions always ripple out.  The full impacts may not always be obvious, but they are meaningful and they do change the world.  All good deeds ripple outwards and touch more lives than you can see.  

   Mandy and I try to operate our lives and our business with that principle at the core of everything.  We can’t fix the world, but we can look for ways to fill our corner of it with actions born of goodwill and good intention towards others.  So when I stopped by Comer Coffee to grab donuts and coffee for our crew last month and Kalen caught my ear about wanting to provide a free meal to the underserved of our community, I immediately said “yes, and let’s try and get The Plate Sale involved!”

   So, we are excited to announce that we are hosting a Friendsgiving meal for 125 people in our community that are having a hard time this year.  We’re reaching out to community liaisons to connect us with families in real need, so we can welcome them to an occasion where they can join us and eat or take home a warm meal prepared by incredibly talented chefs who grew up in this community.

   We’ve ordered chickens, grown a field of organic greens, created a fantastic menu, and grown closer as friends in the process.  The unifying theme is “how can we do something good and serve those struggling in our community.”  So….”Friendsgiving.”

   We are also excited that The Comerian has come on board with great enthusiasm and will be providing the dessert for everyone.  

   We are providing as many resources as we can collectively muster and will likely be up for 24 hours smoking chickens and preparing the space, meals, and to-go bags.  We’d be incredibly grateful to anyone who may want to contribute to go to our GoFundMe page to donate funds to buy all the chickens, miscellaneous ingredients, to-go boxes, rent bathrooms and heat lamps etc..  It’s a relatively small amount of funds that we need to accomplish this, so any contribution given in the spirit of goodwill towards those less fortunate will be gratefully accepted and put to good use.   Even a few bucks goes a long way.  Feel free to share the link with anyone you know.  If we surpass what is needed for this event, any funds not used will be given back to orgs that serve the underserved in this community.
 We appreciate any thought of physically helping, but we have all the people power needed and are just asking for help with funding, so we are not currently asking for volunteers.

    Here’s the link below:

Thank you soooo much for considering!!

   Of note for 3PF customers.  Since we’ll be focusing on this event so much, we will not be shipping thanksgiving bouquets this year, but we will be shipping boxes of heirloom chrysanthemums the week before.  Our mums will easily last until the week after Thanksgiving, so we’ve still got you covered with flowers to decorate your home for the holiday if you’d like.  For locals, we will have the store open and flowers in the store on Saturday the 20th if you’d like to come pick some up.  Rachel will be setting up the store and sharing her time between the farm store and the community meal prep, so if anything comes up, she can still provide assistance here.

  Have a great weekend!