Moscow Food Co-op - Backyard Harvest: Helping Indeed Families in Need

Backyard Harvest: Helping Indeed Families in Need

There’s a new organization in our town and it’s growing big. It’s called Backyard Harvest.

Backyard Harvest was founded by Amy Grey, one of our local Moscow residents, not two years ago. This non-profit organization wants to solve a straightforward but daunting question: how to bring fresh produce to foodbanks in order to serve local families in need? The numbers are grim: every year, 14 percent of Idaho families seek assistance so they can put food on their table. Charity they might receive—but not going hungry doesn’t mean you can eat healthy.
Enter the Backyard Harvest. “It all began,” Amy reflects, “when I was doing some gardening. I had overplanted, and all of a sudden I had 200 heads of lettuce. Now, I like lettuce, but really there’s only so much you can do with it in a short time. So I took it to a local food bank.”
While she was dropping off the lettuce, Amy was struck by what she saw.
“At a food bank, there’s a lot of canned food and non-perishable or processed stuff,” she noted. “But there isn’t fresh produce.”
Naturally, one starts thinking about all the data that’s out there, linking poverty and nutritional problems. One intractable problem remains the relationship between poverty and obesity.
“It just seemed to be a problem that we, as a community, could potentially meliorate,” she says. “So I started to get other gardeners together to see what we could do.”
In 2006, Amy created a website and worked with Tom Lamar at PCEI to launch a pilot project. The idea was simple: the Backyard Harvest would provide a produce pickup for people who had overgrown or wanted to get rid of excess produce. “There was no hassle. You just call; we come get it.”
The goal was 4000 pounds. They collected 4500. By the end of the year, they were serving seven different food banks in Moscow and Lewiston.
Emboldened by this success, Backyard Harvest developed four new programs for 2007.
First, Backyard Harvest launched the Town Orchard Initiative. The idea is that you can register your fruit tree for gleaning, and they’ve already put 200 trees on their list. “I really love this,” says Amy, “because it fits with our whole vision of putting private space in the public domain. It’s very much based on the old colonial idea of common land.” There’s even a possible IRS tax deduction—at one buck per pound!
The second idea was “to grow more to share more.” Backyard Harvest offers seeds and starts for you to overproduce in your backyard. You can also volunteer your backyard for planting, and they’ve been doing some outreach projects through local elementary schools.
Third, Backyard Harvest has launched a “gardened kitchen” idea. They want to provide easy information to help extend the life of vegetables, and they are also collecting recipes.
Finally, Backyard Harvest has called for an “every town initiative”—in short, every town should have its own Backyard Harvest. And steps are being taken in this direction. There’s interest in California (notably in Santa Barbara), and the networks are growing in Lewiston and Moscow.
How effective has it been? Well, last year, Backyard Harvest collected 13,800 pounds of produce.
This new year promises even more. Backyard Harvest has officially constituted itself as a non-profit organization, and it aims to collect 20,000 pounds locally.
How can you participate? Well, first, you can start with the website. There you can find basic facts and guidelines. You can sign up for the monthly newsletter, which also tells you about the ways you can volunteer. Or you can register your fruit trees. You can offer your backyard, or use the seeds and starts program. Finally, you can donate tools and labor.
“It’s all very empowering,” concludes Amy. “And it all fits into our vision of a hybrid between public and private life.”
Social responsibility, it is usually said, begins in one’s own home. In this case, it can begin, more precisely, in one’s own backyard.

Sean Quinlan is an historian of science and medicine at the University of Idaho.