PA Local Heroes: A Montco mom’s mission to provide friendly foods to all

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Carol Bauer, a mother of four and grandmother of five from Montgomery County, knows what it’s like to work around dietary restrictions.

She has a daughter with celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that’s triggered by eating gluten. Bauer and her family quickly learned how pricey that diagnosis can be.

So, while Bauer — who also has two nephews with food allergies — was volunteering at a local food pantry during the 2010s, she couldn’t help but notice that there weren’t many options available for people who are food insecure while also having to navigate sensitivities or allergies.

“Unfortunately, for a long time, these families were being told, ‘Beggars can’t be choosers, take what we give you,’” Bauer said. “And it wasn’t that these families were being choosy or picky. It was that they could not eat these foods, because they would make them sick or cause anaphylactic shock, which could kill them if they weren’t treated.”

The lack of resources inspired her to start a pantry with fresh produce and foods geared toward special diets. A decade later, Bauer’s Garden of Health, Inc. initiative has grown dramatically. Her work led one Spotlight PA reader to nominate her for recognition in PA Local Heroes, a monthly profile series sponsored by Ballard Spahr.

Bauer serves as chief operating officer of the nonprofit, which distributes food to organizations throughout Montgomery County. What started as a single food pantry in 2015 has morphed into a vast, volunteer-run organization with a 7,500-square-foot warehouse and a farm that gave away 2.1 million pounds of food last year, per Bauer.

Garden of Health has expanded its mission from providing allergy- and sensitivity-friendly foods to supplying “food for all,” Bauer said. The nonprofit gives produce, meat, shelf-stable products, specialty foods, and more to over 70 agencies throughout Montgomery County at monthly distributions, while also directly helping around 50 families with special dietary needs, according to Bauer.

Montgomery County is one of Pennsylvania’s highest-income counties per capita, so residents often don’t realize how many of their neighbors are food insecure, she told PA Local.

National nonprofit Feeding America estimates that there were nearly 74,000 people experiencing food insecurity in Montgomery County as of 2022, the most recent year with available data. That’s 8.6% of county residents. The majority of food-insecure residents — 58% — had incomes too high to qualify for SNAP benefits.

People tend to look at Bauer “like deer in a headlight” when they find out how extensive the problem is, she said.

In its early days, Garden of Health gradually gathered partners, like a church that let the organization take over its community garden and a wholesaler that offered fresh produce. Much of the nonprofit’s growth, however, happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, as food insecurity grew in the county.

In 2020, Bauer distributed food to families from her garage, and she eventually started renting a 1,500-square-foot warehouse space and bought a delivery van. Garden of Health outgrew that space after two years and moved to its current location, which is five times bigger.

“During the height of COVID, we were servicing between 400 and 500 families once a month through a drive-through distribution,” Bauer said.

Garden of Health obtains the food it provides through donations, as well as relationships with food suppliers, she said, like Alderfer Eggs in Telford and Schär, a European company that specializes in gluten-free products.

It raises money for its other costs through networking, getting the word out on social media, and the other relationships it’s built over the past decade, Bauer said. The organization also maintains a 7.5-acre farm on land owned by Hatfield Township, and the farmer who works there is the nonprofit’s only paid employee.

Even after 10 years, leading Garden of Health continues to feel extremely rewarding for Bauer.

“When one of our pantry partners comes to me and says, ‘Hey, because of what you’ve been able to give us, we’ve not only been able to increase the number of people that we’re helping, but we’ve been able to also give them more food,’” Bauer said, “that just makes my heart joyful.”

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