The chartered bus pulls up to the 100-acre Hudson Valley farm, after a two-hour drive from Harlem, and stops alongside a row of crates filled with red and yellow onions. Outside the bus, sprawling green fields have come into view. “Oh my God. That’s a barn,” declares a young girl on the bus, her gaze fixed on the two-story building that has appeared in the distance. “I’ve never been in a barn.”

The 52 people on the bus are employees and patrons of seven New York City food pantries. They have come to J. Glebocki Farms to see where local produce grows. During their tour, the farmer, John Glebocki, leads them through a prep house where workers busily scrub dirt off carrots. Later, they ride through the fields in wagons, past rows of onions, potatoes, and sunflowers, stopping every so often for a closer look at the soil and the plants.

“Mom, I took#this from the dirt!” squeals Brianna Scavellaio-Lapin, the seven-year-old daughter of one of the trip’s participants and food pantry patrons, as she raises the dirt-covered carrot she has just pulled from the ground into the air.

It’s rare for city residents to spend a weekday at a farm, but the source of the tour participants’ excitement wasn’t just their agricultural outing. The food they saw growing wasn’t reserved for the wealthy or the trendy. Despite the poverty of many of the food pantry patrons, much of this farm’s food was reserved for them.

Alexis Scavellaio-Lapin, 5, snacks on an ear of corn as she picks her way through an area of the field that was recently harvested.Alexis Scavellaio-Lapin, 5, snacks on an ear of corn as she picks her way through an area of the field that was recently harvested.Photo: Marc Fader of City LimitsThe Scavellaio-Lapin family’s trip to the Goshen, N.Y. farm occurred courtesy of a unique nine-year-old food justice program called Local Produce Link. The program supplies 44 food panties throughout all five boroughs of New York City with farm fresh produce harvested from one of seven nearby farms in New York State and New Jersey.