Group aims to grow food for families

EVERETT – An Everett group is hoping to put 10 acres of unused city-owned river bottom land back to work providing produce for local food banks.

By next week, plots in the Snohomish River Valley will be available to farm as part of an initiative called the Red Barn Community Farm.

Eventually, the land should provide fresh produce for food banks and those who want to do subsistence farming but don’t have the acreage.

The community group organizing the farming project, Transition Port Gardner, also hopes to give Snohomish County a lesson in the challenges of the 21st century: diminishing fossil fuel and climate change.

“We’re determined to make this work this summer,” project manager Dean Smith said.

They’ve already run into some obstacles. Smith wanted the land to be tilled and planted last month, but the wet, cold spring has pushed back the start date.

The semiretired mathematician grew up on a 240-acre subsistence farm in the Midwest in the 1950s. He’s been involved with community gardens most of his life.

While the city-owned land in the Snohomish River Valley was being leased to farmers, Smith thought some could be turned into large plots for serious gardeners who want to grow much of what they eat.

The group is offering 20-by-40-foot plots for $100 a year, 40-by-40 foot plots for $150 and quarter-acre plots for $300. The money will go into a fund that pays for general improvements to the land.

The group worked out an agreement with Volunteers of America, which runs a food bank in Everett and a warehouse that distributes food to more than a dozen other local food banks. Volunteers will farm four acres, and all of those veggies will go to the food bank.

“Our goal is to not just provide emergency food, but to provide nutritious emergency food,” said Bill Humphreys of Volunteers of America Western Washington.

The produce from this venture should raise the bar for fresh vegetables and provide produce such as cilantro and scallions that make other dry goods offered by the food bank taste better, he said.