“Find a need and fill it.”
That’s exactly what Duskie Estes and Farm to Pantry are doing right now to feed the seriously hungry among us.
During my high school years, our family lived on a little hill in Lafayette, California. Down the hill on one side was the Jacuzzi family, whose son Kenny and his medical needs provided the impetus for the development of the Jacuzzi hot tubs and spas.
Down at the bottom of the hill on the other side was the Edgar Kaiser family where I first heard and saw the phrase: “Find the need and fill it,” an apt motto for their Kaiser Cement Company.
Farm to Pantry was founded in Healdsburg in 2008 by Melita Love, who definitely lives her last name. She, the board of directors, Executive Director Duskie Estes and volunteers are dedicated in their hearts and souls to “rescuing food that would otherwise go wasted and getting it to the people in need” throughout the North Bay.
As many of us know, bucolic Sonoma Valley has a reputation of affluence, vineyards and farming.
While Sonoma has many super comfortable residents and part timers for whom their domiciles here are their second or third houses, we also have working poor and hundreds of people who have lost their jobs, homes and dignity before and during the pandemic. As well, our fires over the past five years have robbed many people of their jobs.
So what does Farm to Pantry actually do? They have found a need (hunger) and fill it by gleaning.
In the food sense, gleaning is an old custom dating to biblical times when poor people were allowed to pick up food from farms after they were already professionally picked. Wikipedia’s definition: “Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest.”
Nationally, we have an embarrassing and horrendous food wastage problem while people are looking through garbage cans and waiting hours in lines to get sustenance from the generosity of others. We must get the solution organized.
Back here in River City, aka Sonoma Valley, Farm to Pantry will come and pick excess vegetables and fruits of almost any kind from your backyard plum tree or full-sized farm and take it to places that are feeding our hungry neighbors throughout the county.
Farm to Pantry volunteers have gleaned and distributed nearly five tons of fresh produce, which equals 3,400,000 servings of nourishment. In 2020 alone they gathered more than 250,000 pounds of vegetables and fruits, yielding more than a million servings.
I encountered all of this wonderful generosity at a gathering at Haystack Farm here in Sonoma where Estes and her husband, Chef John Stewart, were providing lunch from their Black Piglet food truck.
The owners of Haystack are in a position to grow vegetables and flowers simply to give them away to feed those in need. In each of the past two weeks, Farm to Pantry volunteers have picked more than 400 pounds at Haystack and delivered 100 pounds of the Haystack harvest to Sonoma Overnight Support (SOS) and to four Burbank Housing centers. And each week they deliver bouquets of flowers to La Luz Center to give to people who come in for COVID-19 vaccinations. Now Sonoma’s Little Paradise Farm has joined the farmed food donation effort.
Duskie Estes has done it all in the food department, from running the Glide Memorial Church kitchen serving thousands of meals daily in San Francisco to running her own Michelin-starred Zazu Kitchen & Farm restaurant that was flooded out of The Barlow in Petaluma. She has starred on several Food Network shows and has written for many national newspapers and magazines. Estes also has a heart of gold and works like H-E-double toothpicks.
Estes seems to live by what a mentor of mine advised me: “Don’t ask anyone to do anything you are not willing to do yourself.”
We need to learn to grow lots of our own food and share it with each other. Founding immigrants on the East Coast purposely planted foods and grew meats different from their neighbors so that they could trade and, together, become self-sufficient. We need to do the same.
If you have a small garden where you grow food, or even a farm or vineyards, plant an extra row purposely to share with others, particularly those in need.
Farm to Pantry could use lots more volunteers in Sonoma Valley, so if you are interested in helping pick or drive or anything else, call 955-9898 or click on “Glean” at farmtopantry.org.
(Editor’s note: Kathleen Hill sits on the board of SOS)
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: