Guadalupe County observes Texas Food Connection Day
(Seguin) — Today is the day that you will be reminded of exactly where the food on your table comes from. Today is Texas Food Connection Day in which urban and rural neighbors are encouraged to come together and celebrate food and the work that goes into growing it.
Here in Guadalupe County, the Farm Bureau works to further ensure those conversations by treating the public to $1 hamburgers. Each year in February, the local farm bureau office grills the hamburgers in its parking lot.
Darin Klaehn, the president of the Guadalupe County Farm Bureau board of directors, says while $1 burgers might sound amazing, the dollar amount symbolizes much more than just a good deal.
“Normally, the dollar represents the amount of money that is shared amongst the farmers and ranchers. It’s less than that but that’s kind of where the number the $1 comes from. That’s what our gross profit is that we have to share,” said Klaehn.
Klaehn says this longtime tradition has been critical in getting the community to thank a farmer or rancher. He says there’s no better way than to observe this day than food.
“So, we cook 300 burgers. That’s the number we normally do. So, we have 300 hamburgers that we are going to cook. We start serving at 11 a.m. It is a first come first serve. When we run out, unfortunately, it usually happens about the first hour and half that we run out and we will have burgers for $1 and we will have drinks and chips for $1,” said Klaehn.
Klaehn says the Texas Food Connection Day event remains the perfect way to feed growing appetites — appetites for both food and knowledge.
“One of the big things that we want people to understand is where their food truly comes from. Who grows it? Who provides it? So instead of focusing that HEB provides it, it is the farmers and the ranchers of the community, of the state that are growing the food that everyone eats and then on top of that, it is the when you happen to see a tractor driving down the road, the safety on how wide our equipment is, how big our equipment is and how slow we move and the fact that at the end of the day as long as everyone moves safely, everyone gets to go home and see their family. So, that’s kind of what we want to bring away from it at the end of the day. ‘Hey, we are here.’ The two are combining more and more on a rapid scale with all the development and let’s be safe. Let’s understand what each person brings and here’s how we do it,” said Klaehn.
Klaehn says while the price of eggs might have been the headline these past few months, it is only a hairline illustration of all the other challenges that were being faced by those in the agricultural industry.
“Last year was one of the hardest ones we’ve seen. We saw triple the price of our fertilizer. We saw quadruple the price of our diesel and then in the drought that we went into, we saw less than one third of our normal production,” said Klaehn.
In any community, food is the one common denominator that that everyone holds interest in. He says even today’s observance is a sample of the community partnerships that go into feeding one another.
“One thing we like to do different is one, we want to interact with the public. We want to have these conversations and then all proceeds that we make off of it goes to the Christian Cupboard. The meat itself is donated by a couple of local farmers who know the importance of it. HEB made a donation as far as some of the chips for the event. That’s how we do it. We want to talk to people. We want everyone involved. We want people to see where it comes from,” said Klaehn.
The occasion was also recently marked by the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court with a proclamation observing today as Food Connection Day in Guadalupe County.
The $1 burger sale again gets underway at 11 a.m. today in the local farm bureau office. The office is located at 325 State Highway 46.