On the way to a meeting last week, I stopped to pick up my CSA share—the last of the winter season. It was robust: three kinds of lettuces, potatoes, and beets—which I immediately transferred into my friend’s bag since I loathe them (please don’t offer suggestions—I’ve tried them every way; they taste like the bottom of a river). There were also the last of the eggs and, crowning glory, a pint of freshly picked strawberries: glistening, red, unblemished—the first of the season.
My CSA membership is one way I try to act locally. I get weeks of vibrant produce, and the farm gets a financial baseline, sometimes the margin between survival and collapse. In a year of slashed federal support for small agriculture, this kind of direct aid feels even more meaningful. Picking up my share gives me the sense I’m contributing to the world I want to live in.
This spring, torrential rains swept through the region. Landslides blocked roads, rivers flooded for weeks, and every field at the local farm—Valley Flora—was swamped in water and mud just as new crops were coming in.
That’s part of the deal with river valley farming—floods bring rich silt—but this time, the damage was a lot. Fences were down. Crops were lost. But friends and family rallied. They replanted strawberry beds, fixed fences, and somehow, the winter shares remained bountiful through the season.
My friend and I loaded the final winter haul—lettuces, eggs, those bright strawberries—into the car and drove to the meeting.
The meeting was for local philanthropic group. At each gathering, two or three local nonprofits present their needs, and every member pitches in $50. It’s not so much that it breaks the bank, but enough to feel like we’re doing something concrete about the Problems of the World. Again, think globally, act locally.
The first presentation came from a local food bank. Until recently, the only safety net in our small, rural community was a once-a-week soup kitchen. But a local woman, a young mom with deep faith, decided she couldn’t keep walking past the unhoused. She went door to door, gathering donations, and started handing out burritos.
Inspired by her, religious leaders created a centralized pipeline for food, clothing, and hygiene products. That was the group asking for our support—specifically, to buy fresh produce weekly, because fresh food builds strong bodies.
Yes, they serve the unhoused. But 85% of those they help are the working poor: teachers, police officers, retail clerks. Many depend on SNAP or other programs but still need that extra $25 a week in groceries to make ends meet.
While we waited for the next speaker, women at our table murmured about the cuts to Oregon’s food banks. I kept thinking about what $25 of groceries looks like for a family. I don’t think I’ve walked out of a store for under $80 in ages. And I’m lucky: I buy free-range chicken breasts, spring asparagus, gluten-free fancy bread, and stupidly expensive oat milk without much thought. Even I’ve noticed how sharply prices have risen.
This isn’t a confession of luxury. We’re comfortable now, but that hasn’t always been true. I was once a young mother in a depressed steel town with a husband in and out of construction jobs. We often had to visit food banks and stand in line for government cheese. I learned a thousand ways to stretch a meal. I was lucky—I knew how to cook and had the time and stamina to do it.
Nearly every charity I support is about food. Food for rural children in the U.S. Food for kids across the country. Food for the starving in Gaza.
Because food is central. It creates safety, health, the capacity to think and learn and grow. On the drive home that evening, I thought about free lunch programs in schools and how much they matter. I thought: if we could just get this right—if we could at least feed the hungry.
Every major religion tells its followers to feed the hungry: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism. The Sikh tradition of langar, the community meal served to anyone who comes to the hall, moved me to tears when I first witnessed it in Delhi. The memory lives deep in my bones.
All of this filled my heart as I carried those heavy bags inside.
I was starving. In the softening light of evening, I tore apart those in-the-ground-this-morning lettuces, quartered the strawberries, sliced a new onion paper-thin. I drizzled olive oil and cranberry vinegar and stood at the counter, eating slowly, mindfully.
I thought about the mud and fear on the farm, the hands who picked these leaves, the sunshine in each bite. I held up my bowl to the world and prayed: for wisdom to feed others, for strength to do more, for a world that will one day awaken and feed its children.
And because life has washed me into a place where what I do have is actual money, I wrote a check to the food bank. I renewed my CSA share. I planted vegetables in my allotment. Some of it will go to the soup kitchen.
It’s not what I wish I could do—not a Star Trek replicator, not sweeping government reform. But it’s something.
Tell me—what actions are healing to you? What are the ills you’d solve with a magic wand if you could?
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This one brought tears to my eyes. I've been hungry in my life, and was generally graciously fed by friends, family and food banks. We all deserve to have enough food, so I do donate to our local food banks, food items and money, occasionally time.
If I had a magic wand, we would all always have food and a library for reading & learning. One to fill the belly, the other to fill the soul.
My daughter and I have both planted gardens this year. First to feed ourselves with healthy produce, but to also share with others. I am 78 and have planted (and am harvesting from) lettuce, chard, two type of onions, 4 type of potatoes, cucumbers, butternut squash, radishes, dill, tomatoes, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. I do this on a small piece of land where my 840 sq.ft. home is. My daughter does it in another town 40 miles from me. She and her partner also plants and take care of a 4 x 4 planter that is provided by the town they live in. That is strictly for people on the streets, or those struggling. Her town has about 20 of the planters that are planted and cared for by volunteers. I also started donating $100 per month to my local food pantry. I live only on SS, but that is still so much more than many others have. The only way our country and way of life will continue is through love and helping hands.