Horse Cave business donates to nonprofit Feeding America

HORSE CAVE — Forty-four-year-old Brian Dennison spent the better part of Thursday morning picking Devotion variety sweet corn out of a 2-acre field in his hometown of Horse Cave.

Dennison’s family runs the Dennison Roadside Market, which he said began in his family’s front yard “on a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood, with a set of baby scales selling tomatoes.”

Thirty-two years later, the business has grown to a large store, selling locally sourced produce and food items.

However, the corn Dennison was shucking on Thursday isn’t for him or his family, and is not headed to the racks inside his family’s store. Instead, it’s being donated to food assistance nonprofit Feeding America, which will truck the corn to regional food banks.

Kathy Dennison, who runs the market and farm with her sons Brian and Matthew and her husband, Paul, said the donation efforts Thursday consisted of harvesting sweet corn and cabbage, all of which was donated to Feeding America.

About 15 workers from the Glasgow office of Farm Credit System, an agricultural lending and aid organization, were helping harvest the food.

“The Farm Credit girls in Glasgow have partnered up with Feeding America,” Kathy Dennison told the Daily News. “They come out here, we supply the food, they pick it, and everything that they pick, we donate.”

By Paul Dennison’s estimate, about 10,000 pounds of corn and cabbage were being donated that day.

Kathy Dennison said the market has been doing this for the past few years. She said the food is taken from the farm to different food pantries around Kentucky. The crops harvested Thursday were headed to Feeding America, Kentucky’s Heartland Volunteer Center, a large food bank in Elizabethtown.

She said the donations stem from a desire to give to those less fortunate.

“I was raised in a very poor family, and I know what it’s like to be on that other end,” she said. “We just try to help people.”

Harvesting began Thursday at 9 a.m. By 10:30 a.m., a wagon loaded with corn was on its way to the Feeding America truck parked in front of the store.

Sarah Adams, a senior financial officer for the Farm Credit office in Glasgow, was helping collect cabbage on Thursday. She said along with people from her office, Farm Credit representatives from the location in Elizabethtown and the headquarters in Louisville were on scene as well.

She said Farm Credit works with Feeding America to connect farmers with the nonprofit and helps coordinate the workforce that comes to farms.

When it comes to picking produce, Adams said it “always gives me chills.”

“It’s always fun and engaging and exciting to get out there in the field,” she said. “We’ve been laughing and throwing cabbage at each other and just really having a great time.”