Mukilteo gardeners teams with food bank to provide healthy produce to families

Mukilteo Food Bank volunteer Rose Marie Tamburri sorts through the radishes grown by members of the Mukilteo Community Garden. Members of the garden harvested greens and radishes that was donated to the food bank. Such donations give food bank clients healthier choices.

Nathan Whalen

Editor

Dozens of socially conscious green thumbs are ensuring the poor and needy have healthy food. Gardeners at the Mukilteo Community Garden make sure a portion of the produce they grow is donated to food banks in Mukilteo and Lynnwood.

Their efforts have been a big help. Last year, around 2,000 pounds of produce benefited people struggling to find affordable, healthy food.

 “When the community garden has that stuff, we don’t have to purchase it,” said William Sacherek, president of the Mukilteo Food Bank.

Around 600 people stops by the food bank two times a month from their space located in the rear of Mukilteo Presbyterian Church near Boeing.

“It’s nice to have really fresh lettuce and spinach,” Sacherek said.

 The Mukilteo Community Garden is wedged in a park located between Boeing and a residential development. Low flying planes land at Payne Field while dozens of volunteers tend to the garden beds. Everybody who rents a bed has to volunteer 10 hours for the food bank.

“Most of the people are apartment dwellers so they don’t have a place to grow,” said community garden board member Kathleen Eaton.

 Even when hardly anything is growing in the beds, community garden members are helping the food bank. In February 2016, when fresh food donations were particularly lean, a group of community gardeners descended upon a nearby supermarket and asked shoppers to simply buy some fresh fruit and produce for the food bank. That simple request paid off. The food bank received more than 400 pounds of fresh produce.

 Volunteers were recently on hand sprucing up the beds preparing them for the first planting of the season. At the end of April, a team of volunteers descended on the Mukilteo Community Garden to plant seeds in the beds that provide for the food bank. People from Boeing, the Boy Scouts and the Kiwanis helped too.

Sacherek complimented the relationship the community garden has with the food bank noting that the beds provide a consistent source of fresh food.

“We are a nutrition bank, not a food bank,” Sacherek said. Food bank folks are trying to improve the nutritional value of the items on the organization’s shelves. They look for canned vegetables, low-sodium soups and other healthy options. Sacherek said he doesn’t want the food that goes out inadvertently exacerbate someone’s medical condition.

“We’re looking at things we can use that will make a healthy nutritional meal,” Sacherek said.

For people interested in getting involved, he suggested making a cash donation so food bank volunteers can acquire food that specifically meets the communities need. If people want to donate food, he suggested people consider giving food they would like to see served on their own dining room table.

He advised against donating “estate” food, which typically are canned food items that are past its expiration date. Expired food has to be discarded.

If the food bank has too much food, then the extra gets doled out to neighboring food banks and the Everett Gospel Mission.

“We’re sharing a common table with our neighbors,” Sacherek said.

More information about the Mukilteo Food Bank can be found at legacy.mukilteofoodbank.org/

Northwest Harvest, a statewide nonprofit that distributes healthy food to participating organizations across the state, maintains a fairly comprehensive list of food banks operating in Washington. The organizations
website, www.northwestharvest.org, has a searchable
list of food banks.

Space is available for people interested in growing food at the Mukilteo Community Garden. The organization has 52 beds for people to grow and it costs between $40 and $60 a year. People renting a bed are also expected to provide 10 hours of community service for the part of the garden that supplies the food bank. More information can be found at www.mukilteogarden.org.