Sharing shows Batavia gardener's caring

Betsy Zinser really didn't think the food pantry wanted even more tomatoes.

So she called. Just to check.

"They said 'Yeah, they're the most popular thing.'"

Alrighty, then. She'll deliver.

Zinser's not shy about sharing what she grows in her Batavia yard: The Aurora Interfaith Food Pantry winds up with nearly half her garden's crop.

And when it comes to the hot peppers, it's more like 75 percent.

"My husband I like them but the kids don't," she said, "and they love them at the food pantry."

Zinser has eight raised garden beds in her yard from which she produces a veritable cornucopia of food: tomatoes, beans, leeks, peppers, squash, cabbage, cucumbers and more. Her family eats much of the produce, she freezes quite a bit more and then she carts a lot to the food pantry.

She loves sharing.

Back in the day, before she had those neatly organized beds built by her husband as a Mother's Day gift, she had a very large garden elsewhere. Too large.

"I didn't realize how much produce you could get," she said.

And keep on getting. Especially when it comes to zucchini, the scourge of many a gardener.

"You keep giving it to neighbors and they look at you like 'Again? How much can we eat?'"

Even with a smaller garden, she still found herself with more than the family of four could reasonably consume themselves. About four summers ago she heard about the Giving Garden program, then called Plant a Row for the Hungry, and started sharing her extras.

"The tricky thing is, sometimes when the produce is ready, the pantry isn't open," she said.

That's when she opens up her favorite cookbook - "From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce." It's produced by a farming cooperative in Wisconsin and sold at www.macsac.org/atoz.html.