Where Land, Food, and Community Meet: Gary Borglund of Generous Harvest

On any given day, Gary Borglund is trying to find someone with a bargain on a large volume of food. He buys it, often from an Amish farmer or a local grower, and gets it to a food shelf that badly needs it. Because the hard truth about food shelves, he explains on East Side Enterprise, is that they rarely get anything fresh. "They get everything but fresh," he says, mostly cans and rescued market goods, and not the nutrients people actually need.

Generous Harvest

That is the problem Gary set out to solve with Generous Harvest, the nonprofit he leads. It started with a single phone call, asking a hydroponic producer to donate product that was about to expire, and grew into a 501(c)(3) that sources fresh produce and eggs from local and Amish farmers for food shelves, especially the rural ones that sit in what he calls food deserts, too far from the metro food bank to get a delivery and too small to fund themselves. The instinct goes all the way back to childhood, from a 40-cent-an-hour greenhouse job to running an egg route out of a used milk truck at sixteen.

Saving small-town main streets

Gary's other hat is Land and Egg Solutions, where he helps cities and small towns figure out what to do with their aging buildings. A current project is the old Burlington Northern railroad station in Taylor's Falls, a tired community space that needs a serious assessment, which he is careful to distinguish from a simple inspection, before anyone opens what he calls a can of worms. He knows the grant world that funds this work, and he knows the politics: everyone loves the old building, but nobody wants their taxes raised to save it. His fix is creative financing and local involvement, because a downtown without an anchor, without a reason to stop, slowly empties out.

Don't do it alone

The thread running through both businesses is the same one that runs through the whole show. Entrepreneurs tend to think the entire load rests on their shoulders alone. Gary's answer is to pull in the right people, the assessment firm with a thousand employees, the grant specialist, the neighbors, and never try to carry it solo.

Not about the money

Gary chooses not to draw a salary from Generous Harvest, using his Land and Egg Solutions work to pay the bills instead so any money the nonprofit has can go toward growth. He is at peace with that.

"I'm not going to make any money, but I'm feeding people. And sometimes it's not about making money."

His closing advice comes back to Hudson's Be Kind project. Give people the time to be heard, he says, because sometimes a conversation, or a handshake deal with an Amish farmer, matters more than the transaction.

"Continue to be kind and reach out to them, because it might be the only kindness they have in their life."

And on adapting when a plan falls apart, which for Gary can mean a refrigerated truck breaking down with a load of tomatoes in 90-degree heat: "If you can't pivot, you really have no business in the business world."

Listen to the full conversation

This is a slice of a warm, wandering conversation that also gets into egg lore, the future of rural Wisconsin river towns, and a project to help feed children in Tanzania.

Listen to the full episode of East Side Enterprise with Gary Borglund at mckinneycv.com/podcast, or on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.