Helping Hands
Access to fresh fruits and vegetables is a growing problem for low-income residents of Puget Sound. A soft economy, lack of well-stocked, accessible, affordable grocery stores and a shrinking fresh-food supply at community food banks limit options to unhealthy processed foods from gas stations, convenience stores and fast-food restaurants. Hopelink, the biggest provider of emergency food services in East and North King County and partner in this project, estimates a 2% overall increase in clients over the last year, which indicates an increasing need for food in the emergency food system.
Another growing problem is literally a growing problem: during a successful growing season, some local farms have extra produce in the fields and no easy or economical way to harvest it. With volunteer support from the local community, these excess, fresh vegetables can become a valuable and nutritious resource for those in need.
Helping Hands is a program of the Cascade Harvest Coalition in partnership with local Puget Sound small farms, emergency feeding programs (food banks and meal programs), farmers markets, and community volunteers. The program creates partnerships that provide local farm fresh produce to emergency feeding programs through an exchange of community volunteer labor for harvested food.
The program organizes and facilitates:
- Harvest Work Parties that exchange the labor of community volunteers for a portion of the harvested food.
- On-farm Education that teaches the value and role of local agriculture in our economy and environment.
- Emergency Feeding Program Education that builds awareness of our community’s food assistance needs.
This season, there will be five workparties:
July 12, Full Circle Farm, habitat restoration
August 9th, Full Circle Farm, farming practices and harvesting
September 13th, Full Circle Farm, farming practices and harvesting
October 11th, Ames Creek Farm, farming practices and harvesting
October 18th, Ames Creek Farm, habitat restoration
If you are interested in participating in any of the workparties or want to find out more about the program, please contact Tim Bernthal, project coordinator, at tbernthal@gowebway.com.