Project Porchlight Blog

This year, Wilcox Family Farms is celebrating 100 years of delivering fresh, local eggs to distributors across Washington state. What does that mean for Project Porchlight? That the Wilcox Family Farms Harvest Fest 2009 was an event not to be missed!

On October 3, we made sure to secure a booth at the annual shindig—which features hayrides, bus tours, and free omelettes made from the Farm’s very own eggs. Throughout the day, festival goers of all ages sampled the Farm’s produce and learned about the establishment’s history. “There was an old school house where the children got lessons about the Farm,” says Project Porchlight Outreach and Volunteer Coordinator Sara Southerland. “All day long you could hear the bell ringing out; the kids couldn’t get enough of pulling on the bell’s cord!”

Washington residents must have been in the mood to learn; in addition to soaking up all the information they could about Wilcox Farms, they were keen to learn about what Project Porchlight and partner Puget Sound Energy are doing to help conserve energy. Many festival goers stopped by our booth to grill us for information and pick up a free compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb. “We handed out 250 energy-saving light bulbs, and spread the word that simple actions matter in Washington,” says Sara. Not only that, we also engaged some new prospective volunteers—members of Fort Lewis military reservation, who came out to enjoy the Festival and learn what Project Porchlight is all about.

“We had a fantastic time at the Festival,” says Sara. “We had a lot of success distributing CFL bulbs and making contact with the community. And it was a great event for Project Porchlight to attend; Wilcox Farms is a local producer, with most of their customers in Washington, so it tied in really well with our ideas around energy conservation.”

Today, the fourth generation family-run Wilcox Farms has over 1 million chickens in its coops. It makes deliveries 24 hours a day, including shell egg products and over 150,000 pounds of liquid eggs per week. 100 years has gotten them pretty far. We at Project Porchlight wish them luck in the next 100 years, and thank them for letting us be a part of their celebrations!

Washington state’s oldest local energy utility, Puget Sound Energy serves more than 1 million electric customers and nearly 750,000 natural gas customers in 11 counties. A subsidiary of Puget Energy, PSE meets the energy needs of its growing customer base through incremental, cost-effective energy conservation, procurement of sustainable energy resources, and far-sighted investment in the energy-delivery infrastructure. PSE employees are dedicated to providing great customer service and delivering energy that is safe, reliable, reasonably priced, and environmentally responsible. For more information, visit www.PSE.com.