CHICAGO – Harvest time is right around the corner. While many farmers sell their products at stores or farmers markets, there’s one Chicago-area farm that isn’t doing either.

What we know:

The eggs from the chickens and the beef from the cows both come from the same farm in far south suburban Manhattan. And they both go to only one set of customers—for free.

“Farm2Veteran is a non-profit that we started in 2020. And our mission is simple: deliver farm-fresh food to veterans in need,” said Michelle Keller, senior director for Farm2Veterans.

She and her farm manager are getting ready to make one of their deliveries. They are loading up 60 cartons of farm-fresh eggs and pounds and pounds of fresh produce, all to take to a local veterans’ home in Joliet.

“We also work with other farmers across the local area as well as nationwide to provide anything supplemental that we don’t do. So all of our produce is done by partner farmers. I’ve had everything from greens to melons to berries, apples, peaches—basically anything you can find in a grocery store,” Keller said.

Keller says they deliver eggs and produce once a week, and meat once every few months. Sooner, if they are told the veterans’ freezers are empty.

“So, typically we try to make it as easy as possible. For our beef donations, we do ground beef, and then we do all the steaks. We don’t really do the roasts or anything larger because most of our veterans are either single or have very small families,” Keller said.

Why you should care:

So why deliver this feast for free?

“So it’s a staggering statistic that one in five veterans will be food insecure at some point in their lives. It’s a much larger number than the average population. A lot of these veterans struggle with the transition from military life to civilian life, or just getting a job, PTSD struggles—honestly even addiction and things that they come across to cope with some of the other struggles that they have,” Keller said.

There are other reasons too that aren’t as complicated.

“We’ve seen where some of these folks can’t even get to, say, a grocery store because they’re in mobility chairs, or they don’t have a vehicle, or they’re in a food desert,” Keller said.

Vivian Coaster is an Army veteran who stopped by to take advantage of this free program.

“A lot of veterans don’t drive, you know, so it’s like, I don’t know, three or four different buses they have to catch, you know, transferring buses. And then you have some disabled veterans as well, you know, they have problems walking or getting around in wheelchairs and all that. So it’s really nice to have it delivered to us,” Coaster said.

She also likes it for the cost and the quality.

“It’s a wonderful program. Because I am a big vegetable and fruit person, and the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables can be really high. I mean fresh stuff—nothing is expired. This stuff is fresh, yeah, and very good,” Coaster said.

Farm2Veterans donates food to nine veterans programs across Illinois and has similar programs set up in eight other states.