Every summer, Mike Schwieterman grows more than 1,000 pounds of apples, peaches, blueberries, raspberries, tomatoes, sweet peppers, sugar snap peas, green beans and pumpkins—“lots of pumpkins”—in his backyard garden.
His green thumb comes from his grandfather, who always sent him home with “something from his garden,” Schwieterman said.
His love for giving? Well, that’s all Schwieterman.
A construction project leader at Columbia Gas of Ohio, Schwieterman donates a portion of what he harvests to the Norwalk Area Food Bank, something he has done since 2012.
His wife, Chriss, took the lead in volunteering them both to work at the food bank after they’d worked with another local group, ACT, to construct the food bank’s building.
Soon, Schwieterman noticed that while the nonprofit had plenty of packaged and canned goods, fresh fruits and vegetables were a precious commodity. While local gardeners donated produce—mostly vegetables—they weren’t the luscious ripe peaches and fat blueberries that Schwieterman was harvesting. “Those were a delicacy,” he said. “When I saw others bringing in fresh produce, I thought, ‘Why not?’ I can do that on a small scale.”
Schwieterman was already giving away a good amount of what he was growing to friends and neighbors, anyway. And in return for his time and efforts for the food bank, his employer Columbia Gas of Ohio makes monetary donations as part of its Columbia Cares program to incentivize employee community volunteerism.
No one utilizing the food bank’s services knows that the guy who’s helping them find the food they need also donates some of the produce. But Schwieterman quietly hears their gratitude—and it means a lot.
“Growing food and having people appreciate it—it’s a good, good feeling,” said Schwieterman, who was also named the 2018 Columbia Cares Volunteer of the Year. “And it’s on a small scale, but when a number of people like me are doing similar things in the community, we can send people home with a good amount of greens and fruits and vegetables that they would not have had otherwise.”