Kate's Korner - Volunteers: Soldiers of the Soil

Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services (SFBFS) is well regarded in the Sacramento region (and beyond) for a kaleidoscope of reasons. One of those reasons is our huge volunteer base. In 2013, over 5,800 generous citizens of this city and the greater area spent 67,930 hours assisting staff in SFBFS' six programs. The Food program often has the greatest number of volunteers because of the scale of our food distributions and the huge amount of processing and organization needed on-site. The Demonstration Garden is a small (but large in spirit!) component of the Food program and has a small amount of those volunteers. These gardening enthusiasts, ready to labor in the Sacramento heat with shovel and garden shears poised for action, are my saving grace.

Having a garden volunteer makes the difference between a Kate-outside-all-day-running-around-like-a-maniac day and a Kate-happily-accomplishes-everything-and-can-even-attack-that-looming-administrative-housekeeping-piled-on-her-desk day. On certain mornings when the garden and its miraculous bounty and growth threatens to swallow me and my minuscule harvest basket it feels like Christmas when a volunteer walks through the gate. I briefly go over the pressing matters of the day, direct my trusty sidekick to a battle against pests, rogue weeds, wayward fruit or stunted growth and then gleefully attack the rest of the outdoor duties. Without volunteers, I would be working in the garden almost all day, every day. 

Imagine my excitement to find out that we have a couple great high school graduates from the GreenCorp program (job training for teens) coming to work twice a week in the Demonstration Garden starting the end of June. Woohoo! I may have danced, I may have fist pumped the air...I am excited! I was excited about how much we can accomplish and how much time will be left for new projects and development that will make the Demonstration Garden an even greater resource to the community!

So dearest volunteers, or anyone who has ever volunteered, you are sincerely appreciated. That extra help makes all the difference!  

Submitted by Kate Wilkins, Garden, Health and Nutrition Assistant at Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services.