"It's the right thing to do," Doyle said. "The thought of children going to bed hungry bothers me very much because children don't really have a say in the choices that are made by adults that lead to them being without the proper food or nutrition."
Doyle is vice chairman of the New Jersey Blueberry Advisory Council. And despite a wet, cool spring that might have provided less than perfect conditions for other produce growers, New Jersey's blueberry farmers have a bumper crop this year. Experts project it will exceed the 53 million pounds of blueberries grown in New Jersey last year.
"When we heard about this program, we were really inspired to want to get involved," Doyle said. "We are putting a nutritionally charged food into the hands of people who might not have been able to afford it or have access to it otherwise."
So fresh from the fields were the sweet, deep blueberries, they still held the warmth of the sun as they were washed, sorted, and carefully placed into pint cartons that were packed into cardboard crates inside the 1,300-acre Atlantic Blueberry Co.
Galletta's family has owned the farm since 1935, and Doyle helps run the sprawling operation in the heart of what is dubbed the "Blueberry Capital of the World." Doyle also owns a smaller blueberry farm in neighboring Burlington County.
"Farmers are usually down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth kinds of people," Galletta said. "Even in this economy, there wasn't a person that didn't want to get involved when they heard about this project."
