The Marine Corps Marathon 10K is seven days away, and I’m still fundraising.

This morning, I headed to the Takoma Park Farmers Market with the goal of drumming up some donations in addition to doing my usual shopping. I expected to make my plug, hand out my fliers, and just hope people would go to the website or send in a check to make a contribution to the Crossroads Farmers Market.

Then, as I was finishing my spiel, one woman bundled up against the cold just about cut me off. “So can I just give you a donation?” she said impatiently. I shut  my mouth and nodded. Then she handed me a $5 bill–less than the checks and PayPal funds we’d been seeing, but enough for a Fresh Check for a family’s week of groceries. Of course! I thought.

In the next few minutes, I got yet more cash. One donor was a man without a coat, wearing faded sweat pants. He was trying to catch a bus trundling closer to us every minute. Yet he took the time to fish a dollar out of his pocket and present it for the cause. If I’d stayed for another hour or two, I could have filled a hat or even quart basket.

I couldn’t stay longer because I had to scoot off to work for this announcement, but I’d learned something for the next time: Community support can come not only in chunks of money over the internet from your network of friends, but can come from total strangers in small but numerous packages.

So as James and Holly Hammond’s “Obama kale” from Waterpenny Farm reminds us, yes, the community kale! Er, can.

With that in mind, I went off and ran eight miles today–farther than I’ve ever run, and almost two miles beyond what I’ll have to do next Sunday.

Thank you to everyone who has given!