Season of Sharing: Food chain for hungriest includes Senior Center, food stamps, Food Bank

T. J. Colvin is naturally a little disappointed lately, having moved to Fort Bragg from the Sacramento Valley to enjoy retirement by doing a lot of salmon fishing.

All ocean salmon fishing was banned this year, with a grim outlook for next year.

But Colvin”s spirits were lifted on Tuesday by a Redwood Coast Seniors meal of jeweled pork loin, baked Swiss chard, mashed potatoes, stuffed baked apple and fresh bread.

“Delicious. I”ve never had a bad meal here,” the trim senior told me after we shared a meal that cost me $7.50. Seniors eat as much as anyone could eat for $4.

“The Senior Center is a great place to be in Fort Bragg,” said Colvin, as he ducked into the computer room where a row of post-lunch seniors were surfing the World Wide Web.

The Season of Sharing series of articles so far has focused on the Fort Bragg Food Bank, the beneficiary of the newspapers” annual fund drive. With the Food Bank closed on Tuesday, I wondered how some of the clients there were eating and went to have a taste.

I wasn”t thinking of retirees like Colvin when I went to the Senior Center.

I was thinking of seniors who arrive by the dozens with caretakers, on foot or on the MTA bus.

I was also thinking of two bearded young men and their round-faced female companion, who seems to be struggling to look as tough as her traveling buddies. Like them, she appears to be under 25 years old and carries a backpack that weighs at least 90 pounds.

I was thinking most of all of the drivers of a half dozen truly appalling, rusty automobile skeletons literally held together with bubble gum and bailing wire.

Everybody only gets one trip to the Food Bank per week, which truly can provide vegetables, potatoes, rice and bread for the whole week. Where do they get main dishes the rest of the week? How do they avoid the grease and bad nutrition of cheap fast food?

Food stamps

The county offers food stamps of course, which is now actually a credit card, not stamps.

So my first stop was at Mendocino County Social Services, where I talked to the boss, Carmel Angelo, and the secretary of Sandi Brown, who runs the food stamp program.

As of October 2008 (the most recent month available) there were 3,831 Mendocino County residents receiving food stamps, up from 3,032 in October 2007.

I had wanted to apply and get food stamps for myself, so that I could actually taste the federal program the way I did the Food Bank. But in order to do that, I would have had to commit a crime. While the Food Bank is open to anyone whose income falls below a certain level, food stamps are both income- and asset-based.

Because I have retirement accounts from my days as managing editor of the Napa Valley Register, I am ineligible. In fact, my total assets cannot be over $2,000 in order to be eligible for either Medi-Cal or for food stamps.

Yipes!

Anyone who owns a running car, of course, would be in danger of committing a crime under the program. Critics say this approach discourages all saving for the future, creating a detour on the road to financial independence.

There are hopes that President Obama”s administration will reform food-helping structures to make them more sensible. But perhaps more importantly, there are local hopes for federal programs that are more local, more nutritious and more organic.

The new president”s choice for Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, has spoken about his desire to get more nutritious foods into the USDA food distribution program, Reuters reported.

Home-grown options

Locally produced and organic food is hardly anything new on the Mendocino Coast.

After that filling and tasty lunch at the Senior Center, I ran into Fort Bragg schools nutritionist Petra Schulte outside Granny”s Attic, the Redwood Coast Seniors” thrift store.

Schulte has recently changed her diet to all raw foods. She gets inspiration in her role at Living Light Institute. Her own energy and physique are testaments to the benefit of eating good food.

But can the Food Bank clients who drive the decaying VW vans afford to eat raw food?

Schulte admits that can be dicey.

One affordable solution she likes is for a community effort to help more low income people grow their own food.

There are long standing community gardens in Caspar and Mendocino. A new community garden was created this year by Noyo Food Forest, thanks to Thanksgiving Coffee Company sharing some of its land in south Noyo Harbor.

Schulte acknowledged that low income people are often harried and have a difficult time not gravitating to cheap, fast food for needed calories.

“But eating that kind of food only makes a person more hungry and contributes to the decline in their health,” she said.

I told Schulte about my own distress at the huge pile of purple cabbage heads that drew only limited interest from Food Bank clients. I took two of the giant heads home and found the locally-grown produce sweeter and fresher than imaginable.

True, there are no television ads drumming cabbage burgers into young minds, but Schulte sees hope.

“Cabbage is a great, healthy food to grow in this area. What is needed is education. This takes time,” Schulte said.

She is part of a renewed effort in local schools, including the Noyo Food Forest Learning Garden at Fort Bragg High School.

Young and old are getting opportunities to escape the fast-food culture that has made the United States the most obese nation in the developed world.

Senior Center outreach

Redwood Coast Seniors” contribution to healthy food for those on the margins is significant. I sat down with Executive Director Joe Curren, who said some clients take half their hefty lunch home for dinner.

“There are some people who are truly in need who really benefit from the size and quality of the lunches Redwood Coast Seniors serves,” he said.

Redwood Coast Seniors served a total of 43,330 meals in 2008.

“We serve more meals than any other senior center in the county; and this is the only program with three meal sites: Fort Bragg, Mendocino and Albion. We are also the last large center in Mendocino County offering lunch for a donation,” Curren said.

One hundred sixty-six meals were served on Monday. There hasn”t been a big jump in drop-in meals due to the economic decline of 2008.

Curren points out that the numbers are up dramatically when one looks over a five-year period.

“Meals served at the center are up by more than 25 percent, and home-delivered meals are up by 131 percent from five years ago,” he said.

Those “Meals on Wheels” are a true lifeline to community members who can”t get out. The homebound, like those who come to the center, get gourmet meals prepared by Chef Sal Meza. In addition, frozen meals to cover the weekend are provided.

Curren says rising medication prices is one problem that may actually be worsening the diets of seniors.

“There are many people with very small, fixed incomes who need their medications. When the cost goes up, they may choose to scrimp on food,” he said.

Curren says Redwood Coast Seniors sometimes buys from the Food Bank and has allowed the agency to use the center to give away food in past years.

“We think the Food Bank is great and critically important to this community,” said Curren.

Season of Sharing

The goal of the Advocate-News and Mendocino Beacon”s annual Season of Sharing fund drive is to raise money to help the Food Bank operate year-round, not just during the holidays. Last year the community donated $37,214.15; this year”s target is $40,000.

Contributions received this week brought the total to $28,564 as of Tuesday, leaving $11,436 to raise before the fund drive ends this Friday, Jan. 9.

The Community Foundation of Mendocino County administers Season of Sharing contributions free of charge as a courtesy to the newspapers, so every cent donated goes to the Food Bank. Donations are tax deductible.

Checks should be made out to the Community Foundation of Mendocino County (CFMC), and mailed to Advocate-News, P.O. Box 1188, Fort Bragg, 95437, or you”re welcome to bring them to the newspaper office, located at 450 N. Franklin St.

If you have any questions about our fund drive, call the newspapers at 964-5642.

Donors” names are printed each week, unless they ask to remain anonymous. Donations were received this week from Fiddlers Green Nursery, Betty Lou Hartzell, Glen and Paula Ivey, Paul and Nancy Kemp, Kathleen Kohn Fetzer Family Foundation, Olivia Barrager, Sharon Hansen, Paula Cohen and two anonymous donors.