As we count the hours to Christmas, Food Bank clients are gathering the biggest meal of the year at the North Franklin nonprofit. A joint goal of Season of Sharing and the Food Bank is that everyone can enjoy the great American Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.
The staff is enjoying the gift of giving away all that food this week to much larger and happier-than-usual crowds and shut-in seniors, along with the volunteers. Everybody gets either a turkey or a ham and that’s just the start.
The food is the freshest ever. All the trimmings are available. There are carrots, celery, parsnips, apples, oranges, bags of onions and French bread. Everybody takes his or her favorites. Unlike the rest of the year when food is rationed, this week, nobody goes away without a huge meal. The crowds, volunteers and staff feel and share the joy. There are Christmas presents, all kinds of donated stuff for the kids and Santa too. All week, staff has been toting heavy boxes with ten-pound turkeys and much more to about two dozen shut-in seniors and disabled people.
All this shows just what the Season of Sharing is all about — holiday joy for those who couldn’t afford it otherwise.
But this is as it’s always been. What has changed at the Food Bank? Should more have changed?
High tech is not one of the areas where the Food Bank has invested. As I packed into the morning seniors line on a Wednesday morning, I counted 43 people snuggled along the benches and a row of older men with hands in their pockets standing all around with barely room to breathe. Everybody was friendly but not too much so. What was interesting beyond the sheer number of older folks needing food, was how few were on tablets or cell phones. People mostly read the free books or browsed the free clothes. Many of the clients here don’t have access to the Internet. Many still use land lines and have no cell phone. I know this because I’m always writing about them and trying to get an email to follow up. Back to the pad and paper! So if the Food Bank offered online viewing and ordering, half the people would be left out, which would defeat the whole purpose.
Ten years’ progress
So let’s talk about the progress I have seen since I first walked in the door ten years ago.
The facility can’t get any bigger but now stores a lot more than it did in the past, due to more efficient warehousing. There was a big walk-in freezer purchased with a city grant a year ago and every year there have been upgrades. Much more fits in the same space now than it did back then.
“We’ve slowly been able to rotate out most of our old equipment and vehicles and replace them with newer and safer models,” said Executive Director Nancy Severy.
“This includes our food delivery trucks, our forklift, two electric pallet jacks and other small equipment. We added a sheltered outdoor produce sorting area, upgraded and expanded our walk-in freezer capacity, did a full warehouse lighting upgrade and are just finishing up installation of a solar panel system on the south-facing roof,” Severy said.
Life has gotten better for pets too. Second Chance, which gives free flea and tick treatments and often much more to the dogs of Food Bank clients, is one of several other nonprofits that have made a difference at the Food Bank in recent years.
Severy arrived ten years ago as Executive Director, so the changes I have seen have all been under her term.
“I walked, unprepared, into a wonderful rollicking organization with a big heart and a long history of doing great work bringing food to people who need it. In that regard, nothing has changed. But over the years, we’ve made lots of gains big and small, and have had our setbacks too, of course,” Severy said.
To my eye, the biggest improvement is in the food itself. There were efforts over the years to modernize that Christmas dinner after suggestions from some clients. Tofurkey as an option was tried unsuccessfully. Chicken and fish have been on the menu at times.
The Great American Meal
But it keeps coming back to that “Great American Meal.” People love it for both taste and nostalgia, to repeat that illusory but satisfying dream of jolly Puritans in hats shaped like ships sharing turkey and cranberries with Native Americans.
In the years since, our nation has become ill and obese from a new kind of American meal of fast food, soda pop, sugar and processed foods. The regular weekly meal is where the Food Bank has changed the most over that decade. The Food Bank has worked extensively with local nutritionists and foodies like Petra Schulte to make the food more nutritious. This is very difficult because the Food Bank almost never turns edible food away and likes to leave the choices to their clients who are, after all, adults.
“There are probably a few different reasons for the better quality of food. One is that Jim, our warehouse manager, cares a lot about healthy food and is knowledgeable about it — so he makes good choices when acquiring food and of course I totally back him up on this. The Farm to Family Program of the California Association of Food Banks, which is a conduit for fresh produce from California farms to California Food Banks seems to have improved its produce availability and quality over the years,” Severy said.
“We get large quantities of this fresh produce of moderate quality through Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa, and we take as much as we can fit in our truck weekly, being careful to choose types of fruits and vegetables that will last for a whole week. We’re also tremendously grateful to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, which brings us gorgeous produce every week — fresh picked from their gardens — and to all the local backyard gardeners who bring us the overflow from their gardens. We also have experienced volunteers who sort, stock and tend the display produce from our many sources. We’re fortunate that volunteers who have a special appreciation for fresh produce have gravitated toward those tasks. And we continue to receive good produce daily from Harvest Market and other small groceries — which adds a lot of much-appreciated variety to our produce offerings,” Severy said.
As nutritious as it gets
It’s not as easy at she makes it sound, having watched for so many years. Stuff comes in as big donations and it’s a scramble to put it all away and manage to serve it before it goes bad.
I would recommend eating Food Bank food to anyone and everyone. It makes me eat a much wider variety of foods. I just don’t buy dibs and dabs of yams, raisins and oddball squash at the grocery store, yet the variety has benefited my health.
“We apply for grant funding each year to buy basic, simple, nutritious foods such as brown rice and dried beans and try to make these available to clients every week. We’re also pleased that the Emergency Food Assistance Program USDA commodities program has been offering canned vegetables with low salt, and canned fruit with lower sugar content. They also have gone to a basic plain peanut butter without sugar and other additives,” Severy said.
While the Food Bank has greatly improved on their food, there is still no Food Bank app for your phone. Severy said don’t look for one soon.
Season of Sharing donors, Dec. 9 through Dec. 20: Nancy Milano and Amy Salo, Craig and Rosemarie Walter, Bruce and Roslyn Moore, Ronald and Lola Brashear, Francis and Sallie Richards, Lyme Redwood Forest Co., Audrey Lederer, Noyo Women for Fisheries, Steven Berger and Paul Hughmanick, Anne Malmquist, Margaret and Karl Kramp, Susan Larkin and Jim Ehlers, Ronald and Susan Munson, Karen Horne, Craig Blencowe, Kate and Al Lee in memory of Charles and Jean Lee. $5,955 has been raised to date.
Checks for the Season of Sharing 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.
