Keeping it "Cool" in the New Year

To some people, this may look like just a fridge, but to us it’s not only a thing of beauty, it’s the beginning of something new and exciting that’s been a long time in the making. Thanks to a grant from the CDC and Wyoming Department of Health, this Avantco SS-3R-HC commercial refrigerator is the first stage in a series of kitchen upgrades at the historic Fort Sanders building that will help accommodate increased need in the Shares, Mobile Market, and Kids Out to Lunch programs, as well as make possible the expansion of the Satanka Food and Community Innovation Hub and allow us to open our kitchen to private entrepreneurs who need access to a USDA-inspected commercial kitchen to launch their food businesses!

The new refrigerator was delivered just before our holiday break and the big Soup and Solstice event in December. Getting it into the building proved to be an exercise in ingenuity as the Cowboy Movers crew carefully unboxed it and removed casters to accommodate its height through the back loading deck door. It was a tight squeeze, requiring careful maneuvering with their truck’s lift-gate, multiple dollies and jacks, and the removal of an interior door to get it into its final location in the rear Shares kitchen space, now giving us a much-needed additional 72 cubic feet of refrigerated storage.

Throughout the growing season this year, Feeding Laramie Valley continually found itself in a literal crunch trying to fit produce grown at our farm and garden sites, produce donated by community members, and produce purchased for the Shares, Mobile Market, and Kids Out to Lunch programs, all into our existing refrigerator spaces. It was a frustrating game of jenga that not infrequently required us to reach out to partners across town to borrow fridge space. So much demand for healthy fruits and vegetables is not the worst problem to have, but we’re grateful heading into 2025 that we’ll be able to better accommodate those needs on site now, as well as to support the growth of the local food market by offering space to community members growing their own food product businesses. Follow for more makeover updates to come in the new year!