Hovering around a picnic table at Marra Farm in south Seattle, third-graders from Concord Elementary School chatter nonstop as they smear soy butter over celery and place raisins in wonky lines atop the spread.
The well-known snack of “ants on a log” is a childhood favorite, and today it serves as a teaching tool for a nutrition lesson provided by Lettuce Link, a local program that also provides organic produce to food banks in the Seattle area.
Lettuce Link is part of the nonprofit Solid Ground, founded back in 1974 as the Fremont Public Association. Lettuce Link started out in 1988 with a goal of connecting P-Patch gardeners to food banks, says Michelle Bates-Benetua, Lettuce Link’s program manager. Another part of its mission is to encourage people to grow their own food by offering free seeds and gardening classes at food banks.
Today, Lettuce Link coordinates volunteer efforts (volunteers chip in roughly 4,000 hours of work a year) to grow food for food banks at about 30 different P-Patch gardens as well as backyard gardens scattered throughout the area. Last year, the program yielded more than 22,200 pounds of fresh produce.
Lettuce Link suggests people grow at least one row of fruits or vegetables and that they plant just two extra crops, such as beets, carrots, green onions, herbs, lettuce, pak choi, radishes or squash. Lettuce Link volunteers are asked to wash and bag their produce for easier distribution, then take it to the nearest food bank.
“Our goal is to engage the community, making that connection between that community member and a food bank,” Bates-Benetua says.
Lettuce Link also partners with the organic gardening group Seattle Tilth and coordinates about 100 volunteers to harvest fruit from area trees that otherwise would go to waste. Last year, those efforts brought in almost 14,000 pounds of fruit that was donated to the needy.
“We link community volunteers’ passion for gardening and fruit-tree gleaning to the emergency food system, thereby improving access to fresh organic produce, seeds and gardening resources for Seattle residents living on a limited income,” Bates-Benetua says.
The program maintains a one-acre Giving Garden at Marra Farm in the city’s South Park neighborhood. Last year, the garden produced 14,000 pounds of produce that went to people who had lined up at food banks, meal programs or shelters in the Seattle area. In addition to food, Lettuce Link supplies more than 1,000 food bank clients each year with seeds, plant starts and gardening resources.
Spring and summer are the busiest seasons as food production ramps up, says Bates-Benetua.
“Luckily, we have a wonderful, strong and fabulous volunteer base who make it all possible,” she adds.
Volunteers also help facilitate Lettuce Link’s nutrition and gardening education program for children in the South Park community. They work with about 150 children from Concord Elementary and other nearby schools. Bates-Benetua says students typically care for their own small plot for the season, and learn about soil, worms and nutrition.
“We cook together from the garden, so they learn a bit about seasonality and that eating healthy can be fun,” she says.
So on the spring day that the third-grade class from Concord made “ants on a log” at Marra Farms, they also refreshed two worm bins.
While the snacks were nice, the 8- and 9-year-olds eagerly jostled for position around two wheelbarrows to mix newspaper, leaves and sawdust for worm bedding. It was picture day at school, yet they hesitated for only seconds before delving into a pile of soil to hand-pick worms, centipedes and potato bugs to add to the new bins.
Digging in the dirt was high on 9-year-old Heather Parong’s list of favorites, as evidenced by her grubby pant legs and dirty hands. “We got to discover all kinds of different bugs … like the centipedes had a hundred legs.”
