I never used to get excited by spring. In fact,

it used to make me rather depressed, as it meant winter's end. I'm a winter sport enthusiast. I love to be in the mountains  cross-country skiing or climbing. However, as it's done with many things in my life, our food bank has changed my perspective.

Spring is awesome! It now represents the start of one of my favorite aspects of the food bank--when all of the work of our agricultural programs really kicks in. Not so many years ago we did very little with the ag sector. Now we have a suite of programs that gives our food bank families access to hundreds of thousands of pounds of super fresh, hyper-local veggies. What began small and innocently enough has turned into a big piece of what we do here. 

Our Garden Project has built all 25 raised-bed veggie gardens for this year's group of new garden recipients and provided the soil, seeds, starts and support for them to grow their own food. As part of our Food Bank Fresh program, we've signed contracts with 11 great local farmers who will be growing tons of beets, carrots, cauliflower and other vegetables and selling them to us at below wholesale cost. Our gleaning program, Small Potatoes Gleaning Project, is already talking to other local farmers and reminding them that we have more than 100 volunteers who are eagerly waiting for the opportunity to harvest their farms' excess veggies. And Victory Garden participants have been picking up seeds from us that they'll grow into donated produce from their home gardens.

Last year these programs collectively resulted in 300,000 pounds of local produce for our families. In addition to providing a similar bounty this coming year, our ag programs will also continue to bring together a whole lot of amazing people who are growing community from the ground up.

Wow, I love spring. 

Mike and Kelly Wallace are regular donors to our food bank. Every month without fail, we receive a generous donation from this Whatcom County couple. It wasn't that long ago that they were customers here.

Mike and Kelly were introduced to each other by a mutual friend about 15 years ago. Both were relatively new to Bellingham, divorced, and working hard to establish their careers. After dating for some time they realized they were in love, got married, and eventually had a child together.

Their lives changed significantly when they received custody of children they each had from a previous marriage. Almost overnight, their family grew from three to eight. With more kids to feed life got more expensive. Mike and Kelly were both working full-time jobs that paid above minimum wage. However, it wasn't enough to cover all their costs, and soon they were coming to our food bank.

Fast forward a little more than a decade and a lot has changed. Mike is self-employed as a general contractor and is glad that business is picking up as the economy improves. Kelly has been working at T-Mobile for several years, and is now in a position that involves regular travel to corporate headquarters in Bellevue. And all but one of their kids has launched into adulthood.

Mike and Kelly say they support our food bank for several reasons. They both believe it is unfathomable to have hunger in a country as rich as America. "We also love the ingenuity Bellingham Food Bank uses to get good food to those that are hungry." And, they really like that BFB doesn't judge or question people who come. "We didn't qualify for food stamps when we used the food bank, but that doesn't mean we weren't in need."

Thank you Mike and Kelly for all of your ongoing support helping us feed Bellingham's families.