WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – When you think of the Ogdensburg prison closing, it means jobs leaving, buildings sitting empty.
But here’s something you probably don’t know: on the prison grounds, among the barbed wire, guard shacks and prison cells, there’s a football field-sized garden.
Run by a corrections officer and tended to by inmates, local food pantries depend on it because it provides tens of thousands of pounds of fresh produce for local families.
It’s a usual Friday morning at the Church and Community Program’s food pantry in Canton. Fridges and freezers looking bare after weekly donations have been given out.
In the summer, the pantry is used to getting hundreds of pounds of food from a gardening program at Ogdensburg Correctional Facility.
Connie Jenkins remembers the first delivery they received.
“He went to his truck and pulled up a door and the food practically spilled out. I think my jaw really did drop,” she said.
But with the closure of the prison, those deliveries end.
“The abundance from the prison was staggering,” said Jenkins.
When you walk in the back of the food pantry, there’s no shortage of boxed goods or canned goods, but the real loss without the prison program, is the reliable, weekly donations of fresh produce.
“We have a good range of things but we’ve always been short on fresh vegetables. It’s hard to get. They’re not donated from the supermarket,” said Jenkins.
The story is the same across St. Lawrence County – thousands of pounds of free, fresh food no longer available.
The Office for the Aging relied upon it for its food program as did the Community Development Program, which got donations from the prison for neighborhood centers in Canton, Potsdam and Massena.
“To be quite frank, we probably won’t replace the fresh produce. We couldn’t replace the fresh produce,” said Felicia Neahr, executive director, St. Lawrence County Community Development Program.
All these groups say even what they can replace will likely be less fresh, in smaller amounts with less variety, and it will be an added cost in their budgets.
It’s just another example of the ripples caused by the closure of one state prison.
Copyright 2021 WWNY. All rights reserved.
