When I am in my 70s, I hope I don’t have to go to work at 4:30 a.m. like Dora Ohlson. Ohlson is one of Noyo Harbor’s most veteran sea urchin processors. She gives me a big smile and a nice greeting every time I see her, about once a week at the Fort Bragg Food Bank.
I first met Dora in 2007 when I was selling real estate. Her family wanted to buy her a house, so she could get out of that quaint little apartment in Noyo Harbor. Dora gave me that spectacular smile the first time we met too. She seemed out of place looking at overpriced half million dollar real estate (which was everything back in 2007). She never did buy into that inflated housing market, luckily. She always remembers our adventure and a little of what is going on in my life. Such greetings are a blessing of newspapering. She says she isn’t at all tired of Noyo Harbor, loving the smells, the hard work and even the urchins. Like most Americans, she doesn’t eat the colorful spiny echinoderms, but is glad others do.
Urchin is an expensive delicacy beloved in South Korea, Russia and Japan. It is getting more popular in the United States, but so far Dora and her cohorts in the business are in a food export business crucial to Fort Bragg’s slim economy.
Being a chicken farmer myself, I know the pleasure there is in creating food for others. The Food Bank gets and gives a lot of this kind of pleasure, distributing approximately 1.1 million pounds of food in 2015 countywide, said executive director Nancy Severy.
Ohlson is fascinated by the cycles in the markets and in the lives of the urchins. She tells me how the fishing and diving crews have to play the wind, waves and tides just right. Like many clients of the Food Bank, she needs this food but works hard to spread the love and share. Fort Bragg is full of people like Dora who work as much as possible, but not enough to pay the bills. Many are seen at the Food Bank.
Dora hadn’t worked that day and was now waiting for the bus to take her back to her little nest in Noyo Harbor where she has lived and worked for two decades.
“I can tell by the wind, if there’s going to be any work,” she said.
The winds of change are very strong this year. I was long ago blown out of real estate and into selling books from the big warehouse I lease next to the Food Bank and writing for this paper. I have written about the Food Bank now for a decade, starting the year before I fortuitously moved next door. When the power goes out in the winter on the block, the Food Bank generators kick on, the robust growling of hope is a soothing sound in all the surrounding darkness and quiet.
My job in the Season of Sharing series is to show how the Food Bank plays this same empowering role in the lives of so many people. The old saying that every person has a novel inside has some truth to it. However, if you have any preconceived notions about Food Bank clients, food, volunteers or low income people in general, be prepared to change your mind. I invite you along with me to meet the many interesting walking feature stories.
As well as meeting interesting people, we will follow a dollar and see how it’s used and reused at the Food Bank. We will follow food from local givers to the food basket or even if it goes bad, to be fed to a farmers’ pigs.
The Food Bank distributes groceries directly to approximately 875 client households, with 1,500 household members, each month from the Food Bank warehouse. Each client household can pick up food once each week and the Food Bank services approximately 2,000 client visits each month.
During the years I have been following the Food Bank, the nonprofit has moved forward under the leadership of Severy, the board, the staff and the volunteers. The food has transformed into something much healthier. Season of Sharing does play a role in it, too. Giving has allowed the Food Bank to transform its functions, building, freezers, food, trucks and services.
“We get the most bang for the buck by seeking out sources of donated food and by qualifying for government programs that provide food at no cost to us. In 2015, for every budget dollar (including all expenses for food acquisition, operations and administration) we acquired and distributed $6.26 worth of food,” Severy said.
I’ve met people who supported the Food Bank for years, then ended up being a needy client. America is a different place now than in 1979, when the Food Bank started.
The Food Bank was started in 1979 by a group of local women, many of whom are still active in community activities. They worked with others in Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake and Mendocino Counties to establish a Food Stamp Outreach program.
The Fort Bragg group raised funds and managed the Greenwood Trucking Company to buy food in large quantities for distribution through a co-op store. Funding for this program came from North Coast Opportunities and CETA, along with donated space at 650 N. Main St. in Fort Bragg. Mendocino-Lake Food and Nutrition Program became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in March, 1979, while at this location. Its objective was to distribute food and improve the nutrition of the needy. A popular Food Bank cookbook was developed.
In June of 1981, the program moved offices to 242 N. Harrison St., where it shared space with the CARE Project. Soon, though, it had to move on due to the availability of more commodities under the Temporary Emergency Food Aid Program and the corresponding need for more space. In June 1982, it moved to 360 N. Corry St. A small storage shed became an office, and the program came to be known as the Food Bank. It soon outgrew this site. In 1984 the Food Bank moved again to 900 N. Franklin St. (now my leased warehouse). At this location it was designated the commodities distribution center for Mendocino County. The Food Bank had ceased having any connection with Lake County, and so in 1988 the program became officially the Mendocino Food & Nutrition Program, Inc. In May 1993, the Food Bank moved into its permanent home at 910 N. Franklin St.
Newcomers are usually surprised at how many people are served and how fast everything moves along nowadays. It is beyond argument that the organization is critical to the community now. It’s still hard for me to think how much our nation has changed since 1979. I was trying to make the varsity basketball team that year, bemused by President Carter and imagining a world would grow out of the 1960s peace and love activism.
Everything has changed. This community, indeed most all communities, now must have a Food Bank.
The last big spike in hunger and unemployment was the economic crash of 2008. The Food Bank was even more critical then than ever. Now, thanks to the givers and the growth, it’s ready for the next big economic crisis, should it come.
Our society, which once had the world’s largest middle class, now has one of the biggest gaps between rich and poor in the developed world. Worse, Fort Bragg has lost its primary industries. Thankfully, many local businesses, churches and nonprofits already support this charity- and in turn are supported by it.
The newspapers first got involved in raising funds for the Food Bank in 1996. “There are many nonprofits in our area who do great work, but one of the fundamental necessities of life is food. No one can function to their potential if they are hungry,” said Sharon DiMauro, publisher of the Advocate and Beacon. “Our goal is to provide seed money the Food Bank can draw from all year, not just during the holidays,” she said.
Checks can be made to the Food Bank and mailed or dropped off at 910 N. Franklin Street. Please put “Season of Sharing” on the memo line. No amount is too small, the Food Bank can stretch every dollar. Your donation will go a long way towards making the lives of your friends and neighbors better. Donor names will be printed in the following week’s edition, unless they wish to remain anonymous.
