Dorchester’s Jane Taylor can’t recall when she started volunteering at the various Fair Foods stops around the neighborhood, but she does know that it has become community for her, and something the 79-year-old looks forward to doing at least three times a week.

Taylor, as well as other volunteers like Maria Fernandes, are emblematic of the long-time food surplus distribution organization that now serves more than 3,000 families across Greater Boston with a network of more than 400 volunteers who show up on time every week, unload the truck, set up the tables, and make friends with the clients who have made Fair Foods part of their lives for decades – long before food distribution became a necessity during Covid-19.

“I was brought up a Quaker and service is a part of how we live our lives,” said Taylor last Friday afternoon at the First Parish Church distribution site on Meetinghouse Hill. “All of these sites become their own communities – communities built around feeding people. People come out to help because they believe in it and want to do it. They believe people should have fresh food. Every site is multi-cultural, and you can’t say any one site is this community or that community. It’s one big community centered around food access.”

Taylor first discovered Fair Foods when she was trying to help Southeast Asian families relocate to Dorchester. She said she saw the truck distributing food for their now famous “$2 per bag” and had one of the families go out and get a bag. She was so impressed that she started volunteering the very next week.

“I do remember the first thing I did to help was one day we had big snow drifts and we had to dig out the snow so the truck could get in for the delivery,” she noted with a smile.

Taylor and Fernandes exchanged high-fives as they started the distribution at First Parish last Friday.

Fair Food Operations Manager Liz Boyd said the organization started in Dorchester on a day more than 30 years ago when its founder, Nancy Jamison, was driving past the Pilgrim Church food program in Uphams Corner, felt that she should stop, and did just that. Soon after she sold her car and got a delivery truck to start her own program.

The organization was also one of the first to recognize the potential of repurposing surplus foods. That came, according to the Fair Foods website, when Jamison saw a truck full of edible carrots that was headed to the dump. Figuring that food like those carrots shouldn’t be wasted, she began looking for ways to re-distribute surplus foods rather than throw them out.

The surplus, Boyd said, now comes from trucking companies, food suppliers, and farms. The foods are sorted at a warehouse in Jamaica Plain and placed into bags that sell for $2 each. There’s no consistency on what might come in a bag; much of it is seasonal, and every week is different.

Last Friday, there were 380 bags prepared for the First Parish site. They contained blueberries, yellow squash, English cucumbers, potatoes, grapes, and tomatoes – as well as bottled iced tea drinks. Sometimes, there is meat and dairy.

“It is run of, by, and for the people,” said Boyd. “It is affordable, abundant, and accessible. We are intent on building communities and feeding communities. We operate seven days with five days on site and over 17,000 pounds of food distributed per day. Fair Foods has now picked up enough food to fill the Prudential Tower one and a half times. You don’t need an ID and there are no sign-ups or proof of income required. We make no judgments, and all are welcome.”

As Taylor kept the line of clients moving last Friday atop Meetinghouse Hill, she said those who volunteer do so out of a sense of mission and service.

“At 79, I work four to five days a week because I believe in the program and what it stands for,” she said. “Everyone should have food with dignity, in this or any other country. For all of us, this work is a mission put before us…As one young man put it, the best thing about Fair Foods is helping little old ladies. When you are doing that, ‘heavy boxes become light.’”

Fair Foods now operates more than 40 locations and is now moving to rebuild what had to be scaled back under Covid-19 protocols. In Dorchester and Mattapan, the weekly schedule includes:

•Codman Square Library, 690 Washington St.: Saturdays 2-4 p.m.
•First Parish Church, 10 Parish St.: Fridays 2-4 p.m.
•VietAID, 42 Charles St.: Wednesdays 2-4 p.m.
•Lena Park CDC, 150 American Legion Highway: Tuesdays 2-4 p.m.
•Mattapan Health Center, 1575 Blue Hill Ave.: Alternate Fridays.
•Immigrant Family Services Institute (IFSI), 1626 Blue Hill Ave.: Call 617-288-6185 for day and time.

More information on Fair Foods is available at fairfoods.org.