Joshua Hedge, left, serves food to hungry people at Hawthorne Park Daily Potluck Friday in Medford. 

The Hawthorne Park Daily Potluck, a grassroots gathering that serves free lunches to houseless and hungry community members, has had a rough few weeks.

Joshua Hedge, one of the founding volunteers, is down one vehicle that was central to the operation.

He and his partner, Nicole Herzmark, used it to pick up food donations — from farms and gardens, food banks and food gleaners, cupboards and commercial outlets — and drive them to refrigerators in Medford, Phoenix, Talent and Ashland, and a pantry at the First Presbyterian Church of Medford.

If cooks can’t retrieve the food themselves, Hedge and Herzmark take the ingredients to them, then bring prepared meals to Hawthorne and set up a small smorgasbord near the dog park.

For over a year, Franz Bakery in White City had been donating breads and desserts that were either overstocked or nearing their expiration date. This supply has stopped; the Franz company usually gives discounts rather than donations and is more strictly enforcing this policy chainwide. The potluck team can seek a discount through the corporate office, but the price would still be unaffordable, Hedge said.

Franz broke the news as the potluck team considered expanding its sandwich program, where volunteers whip up 300 to 400 sandwiches at the church for the lunches. Instead, the program likely will be scaled back for now.

“They were our No. 1 donor, and one of the ways that we’re able to provide so much food,” Hedge said.

And at least three top volunteers have stepped aside temporarily for reasons of family and personal well-being.

The result is that the potluck isn’t daily and now operates in a shorter timeframe: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Friday through Monday.

Hedge has encouraged volunteers to arrange meals on their own Tuesday through Thursday if they can.

“It’s hard,” he said. “It breaks my heart because I don’t want anybody to go hungry, you know?”

The potluck sprang from the tragedies of 2020, from social unrest to wildfires.

After a white policeman murdered a Black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis that May, Hedge joined Black Lives Matter protests and memorials in the Rogue Valley.

One of his friends, a man of color who also attended the events, posted a video on social media saying he had spent the day getting verbally abused and didn’t think this way of interacting would help society.

He laid down a challenge: Those who believe that indeed “all lives matter” are invited to join him in Hawthorne Park to prove it by helping to feed those lives.

His call to action reminded Hedge of his father, a preacher who did that kind of work.

“I’d been looking for an excuse to do something good, and that was it,” Hedge said.

The volunteers started feeding a few dozen people at Hawthorne once or twice a week. They served barbecue, pasta salads, peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, snacks and water, Hedge recalled.

Then came the Almeda Fire on Sept. 8, 2020, which tore along the Bear Creek Greenway from northwest Ashland to just outside Medford. Thousands of homes burned, as did the belongings of people without homes who had lived or camped in tents and vehicles along that multi-mile stretch.

Many displaced individuals found their way to the Hawthorne gathering, which drew more volunteers.

“It went from three or four people just trying to help feed some folks to the most desperate effort I’ve ever seen,” Hedge said.

They set up what Hedge described as a “fire-relief effort” at Hawthorne Park, with tents, a kitchen, a medical station, a shower truck and laundry runs. More people began occupying the park.

Later that month, the city closed the park and shut down the operation. Medford police evicted and arrested people. It was during this sweep that officers arrested April Ehrlich, a Jefferson Public Radio reporter.

It was a demoralizing episode. Hedge and his team concluded: “Maybe legally we can’t house these people in the park,” Hedge said, “but this park is public property and we can feed people every day, and they cannot stop us from doing that.

“And so we did.”

Over nearly three years, the potluck has undergone several permutations. It has survived through donations — of food, of time, of money for gas and supplies — and a rotating group of volunteers.

Hedge and Herzmark took over as organizers a little over a year ago. Herzmark, who has an event-production background, helped structure the effort and brought in nurses, teachers and the interfaith community.

The potluck, Herzmark said, humanizes both the served and the serving.

“You’re serving and you’re realizing, ‘Oh, these could be my family members. This could be my mother. This could be my uncle. This could be my grandmother.’ … Once you have that experience, you’re able to kind of see people as human and then advocate better,” she said.

The potluck has no regular menu. Meals depend on the cooks and contributors. Hot soups and stews often appear in fall and winter, fresh salads in spring and summer. Some donors — called “food bombers” — drop off dishes unscheduled.

Like a family-style feast, “everybody comes and they bring a dish,” Hedge said. “And the dish that they bring isn’t just about, ‘Oh, what could I scrape together?’ It’s, ‘Oh, this is the dish that I love to make, and I want to share my dish with you.’”

A woman recently gave dozens of pounds of pasta and beans, loads of rice and tomato sauce — “the basics that we can then send off and our cooks can do magic with,” Hedge said.

Hedge estimates that 100 to 120 eaters turn up most days, around 200 on the heaviest days. Not just unsheltered folks, but those whose resources are stretched thin.

On a recent bright and cool Friday, in the shade of a large northern catalpa, a potluck regular, Curtis Gadsberry, 57, grabbed a helping of Mexican lasagna, a slice of Little Caesars cheese pizza — he chose it over pepperoni — and a cup of fruit from a cobbler. Also on offer were chicken-stuffed casserole, yogurt, grapes and donuts. A young girl served lemonade.

Gadsberry, who has a residence and a car — he often eats his potluck meals on the hood — has been coming since the beginning, he said. He has food stamps and gets food vouchers from elsewhere, but they only go so far.

The potluck, he said, has “been a blessing to me, bro.”

That day, Hedge, sporting a burgundy fedora, and fellow volunteers served about 105 of their neighbors.

“We really just want to make sure that people are getting fed,” Hedge said, “and the more help we have from the community, the more bellies that go to bed full. And that’s what we care about.”

To volunteer or donate, visit the potluck website (www.hawthornepotluck.org/who-we-are).

A GoFundMe has been set up to help Hedge and Herzmark buy a new vehicle.