A grant awarded to Henson Chapel United Methodist Church in Vilas allowed the Western Watauga Senior Center to receive locally grown produce from the local food hub from January through September 2025. The grant is a part of the “Come To The Table” program, which is run nationally by Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA and supports faith-based communities in the creation of a more just food system.

Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture is an agricultural-based organization that operates the food hub built on the ideals of supporting local agriculture. Local Food as Medicine, or LocalFAM, is a food access program within BRWIA that helps feed the Watauga County community with locally sourced food. Henson Chapel reached out to BRWIA about the grant in hopes of being connected with the senior center, and LocalFAM helped make this grant money into a program. 

“We don’t rely on seconds, which are like the less-pretty vegetables, and we don’t receive donations of food; we don’t rely on that, so we want to purchase it from the farmers,” said Sam Springs, LocalFAM’s coordinator. “All of the money that comes from those grants, minus anything that we use from packaging or delivering or staff time, but even that is a very small percentage. All of the money goes back into the local economy, which is really important to us.” 

Due to the fact that BRWIA sources strictly from local farmers, the crops they send out are diverse year-round.

 “We set out a schedule for them according to just kind of the seasonality of produce,” Springs said. 

Springs and others within BRWIA worked to make a bi-weekly delivery schedule in the spring and once a month in the winter due to a lack of produce availability in the colder months. 

BRWIA staff members and volunteers were able to produce more than 2,000 pounds worth of produce bags for the senior center, according to the Watauga Democrat. Although funding is heavily reliant on local organizations receiving grants, Springs said they hope to do more work like this in the future. 

“It’s a good way to really uplift the senior population,” Springs said. “It shows them that somebody’s thinking of them and that we appreciate that they’re here.”