A deep connection between the Clark County Food Bank and the county’s 78th Street Heritage Farm has for years provided heaps of fresh vegetables to local families in need.
This year, organizers hope to squeeze even more out of the arrangement.
The food bank itself will take on a larger role in coordinating the volunteers that come through the farm to help tend to its crops each week. The idea is to create a more streamlined operation that makes better use of the farm’s many helping hands, said farm manager Blair Wolfley — making sure volunteers are there to harvest vegetables at their peak, for example.
“There’s opportunities to give people a better product and have more consistencies with the product,” said Wolfley, who works part time for both the county and the food bank.
About 10 acres at Heritage Farm are used to produce vegetables that make their way to the food bank each year. But that land has been managed by multiple programs under multiple organizations, operating somewhat separately. The complicated arrangement created chaos at times with the huge number of volunteers that work on the farm throughout the growing season.
The food bank hopes that by putting more of those efforts under one umbrella, it will have more of those workers in the right place at the right time. It will do so partially with the help of Sydney Leonard, an AmeriCorps volunteer working with the food bank this year.
“We didn’t want to be competing for volunteers,” Leonard said. “We’re all working on the same thing.”
Other organizations will stay involved in those efforts. That includes Churches in Partnership, a collection of area churches that joined forces and started growing food at Heritage Farm in 2009.
Much of what’s grown for the food bank is carrots — miles of carrots. The farm will also produce potatoes, beets, zucchini, cucumbers and other crops this year, Wolfley said. When choosing what to grow, the food bank emphasizes items with a longer shelf life to ensure they’re eaten, Leonard said.
Even as the food bank’s role evolves, Heritage Farm will continue to host a wide range of volunteer groups. Starting in July, even drop-in volunteers can help every Wednesday and Saturday morning.
Last week, a group of students from Portland’s Catlin Gabel school planted rows of sweet onions on a 1-acre plot that will go to the food bank, and eventually local families.
Catlin Gabel regularly participates in volunteer opportunities with its students each year. Last week’s planting added to an already wide range of experiences for Portland resident Emma Hayward, a freshman at the school.
“I really like volunteering in general,” Hayward said.
Making the trip from Portland to Clark County also took the students into a new community to help new people, said math teacher Lauren Shareshian. And with some 3,000 onion plants to put in the ground, it took every hand to finish the job.
“I think the best thing that defines a volunteering experience is feeling needed,” Shareshian said. “It’s nice to be able to make a difference.”
Wolfley, the farm manager, has heard that sentiment before.
“What we’re doing here is just a really good community connection,” he said. “I don’t know anybody who comes here and doesn’t feel better when they leave.”
