Okanogan County Community Action Council is “Growing their own”, teaching others how to do the same in a small space, and providing the food bank with fresh produce in the process!

An area previously used to store inventory has turned into a demonstration project in small space gardening, supported almost entirely by the community. Steve Mitzner, a local citizen, provided twelve used apple bins filled with rich steer manure, and Hamilton Farm Supply is donating irrigation and soil additive supplies for the project.  In May, local children and food bank recipients will plant the bins with donated plants and seeds that will provide food for the food bank as early as late June. 

One of the focuses of the project is intensive, small space gardening.  One of the crops grown will be beans, grown from donated pinto beans, to demonstrate the use of the beans that come in food bank bags.

“They are great green beans as well as dried beans” said Autumn Carroll, program manager. 

We are seeing a huge increase in the number of people who want to answer President Obama’s call to community service. 

“This is a perfect example of how we, as a community building organization, are innovating without any outside funding – literally pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps in terms of solving community crises” said Lael Duncan, Executive Director of OCCAC. 

Throughout the summer, volunteers will be engaged in the project, taught techniques, and be taught food preparation.  The program is just one of OCCAC’s programs in their Food for All campaign.  Other programs include Grow a Row, where neighbors grow an extra row of food for donation to local food banks, a gleaning project in partnership with First Harvest, and Return of the Killer Tomatoes – a fun fundraiser featuring a tomato recipe contest, and the first annual Tomato Trot where folks in tomato garb enjoy food and libation throughout the town in late August, raising money to fight hunger.