Second Harvest Food Bank enjoys life on the farm
Red and green vegetables alternate in rows, a display of holiday spirit at the Second Harvest Food Bank’s Founders Farm in Irvine.
The farm itself has finally found a more permanent home, at Southwinds Farm & Gardens, just down the street from the Second Harvest distribution center.
While this may fall short of a Christmas miracle, it’s a welcome development for Second Harvest as the Founders Farm prepares for its first harvest in the new space.
“Southwinds likes to showcase that people can have edible landscapes in their backyard and have it in a beautiful way,” said Kelly Alesi, director of supply chain at Second Harvest. “It’s a great partnership for us.”
Alesi said it keeps produce as fresh and early in its lifespan as possible, while also helping maintain a zero-waste status.
Partnerships matter a lot for Second Harvest, as it continues fighting food insecurity in Orange County. One in 10 Orange County residents is deemed food insecure, a number that climbs to one in eight for children.
The coronavirus pandemic brought an influx of cash to many food banks, Second Harvest chief executive Claudia Bonilla Keller said. The food bank made a conscious decision to buy good, healthy food.
“That was received so well by the people that we serve, by the pantry operators, that we said, ‘This has to be the way,’” Bonilla Keller said. “... This not only feeds people, which is our primary mission, but this helps them in so many other ways. We made a commitment to stick to healthy food, produce being a big part of that. We’ve not wavered from that since the end of the pandemic, and we’ve done things like develop a nutrition policy that supports that.
“Then we did this crazy thing — we opened a farm.”
Along with purchasing or rescuing food, Second Harvest has been growing its own produce since 2021. Harvest Solutions Farm, located less than 4 miles from the food bank, uses more than 40 acres of the University of California South Coast Research and Extension Center. It is run through a partnership between Second Harvest, the UC system and Solutions for Urban Agriculture.
Alesi and Second Harvest sourcing manager Rachel Parris oversee that site, and are always looking for volunteers ages 7 and older, from Tuesdays through Saturdays.
On Thursday morning, they guided a small volunteer shift of about eight people, a day after harvesting 40 bins of product — more than 10,000 pounds.
Yes, the holiday rush is on for everyone.
“We know that people are getting ready for the holidays and volunteering is not really a high priority at this time, but we need to get these groups coming in to help us keep this project going,” Alesi said. “To hire professional crews, it’s so incredibly expensive and really drives up the cost of operating this program.”
The first plantings in 2021 were all cabbage, but the farm quickly branched out. Broccoli, broccolini, cauliflower and spaghetti squash are some of the other vegetables currently being grown at Harvest Solutions Farm. They also grow bell peppers, zucchini, honeydew melon and watermelon, depending on the season.
A batch of jalapeños grown at Harvest Solutions Farm earlier this year were a hit at the Second Harvest mobile food pantry in the Oak View neighborhood of Huntington Beach, though they were a bit of a happy accident.
“The transplant company thought they were giving us bell peppers, and they were actually jalapeños,” Alesi said with a smile. “We were watching them grow and we were like, ‘Something is wrong.’”
While the Harvest Solutions Farm has become established, the Founders Farm was always a bit of nomad, spending time in the Second Harvest distribution center parking lot.
“We have a history of farms in this area,” Bonilla Keller said. “We often squatted on little 2- , 4-, 5-acre farms. With the development in this area, they were short-lived.”
Now Founders Farm has its home at Southwinds, just more than a mile from the distribution center and in the shadow of the 133 Freeway.
“We grow more delicate plants here,” said Founders Farm manager Dylan Cromwell, naming off different types of lettuce like romaine and red sail, along with Swiss chard and kale.
Instead of in-ground planting, the Founders Farm utilizes transplant vegetables in raised beds equipped with Garden Soxx, essentially a sleeve for the vegetables to grow in.
The Founders Farm is also taking volunteers on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and is able to accommodate those who might be a bit more immobile since there’s less bending down.
Since the Harvest Solutions Farm opened, more than six million pounds of produce have been harvested for the community.
Bonilla Keller has even gotten into the spirit by growing lots of kale at her house, though she said it’s to the chagrin of her boyfriend.
“We control part of our supply chain,” she said. “It demonstrates to the community that we have this commitment, and it allows us to try different things. I think a lot of people in our supply chain know that we started with a lot of cabbage, but we were able to change the mix of produce very quickly. Now we grow multiple crops at the same time. We responded to what the community and the pantry network was telling us, and we continue to be responsive in that manner.”
Produce grown at the farms comes to the distribution center. It has about 15,000 square feet of cooler space and two dock doors that lock in the cold temperature, set to 35 degrees. Bonilla Keller pointed out a batch of broccoli, that came in the day before and was ready to be shipped out soon.
She compared the operation to a small supermarket; Second Harvest distributed 35.8 million pounds of food last fiscal year. But the addition of the collaborative farm sites has given Second Harvest an additional important component.
What happens when Second Harvest tells Feeding America or people in the community that those most vulnerable are getting local produce?
“Jaws drop,” Bonilla Keller said. “That’s really the story, I think.”
For more information on the Second Harvest farms or to volunteer, visit feedoc.org.
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