Woodinville Hauls Potatoes Pt 2
I’m Bob Larson. It began as a request for volunteers posted on Facebook to drive from Woodinville to Othello and bring back surplus potatoes for distribution at local food banks. Those volunteers wound up bring back about 10,000 pounds of potatoes and 6,000 pounds of onions.
Woodinville Mayor Elaine Cook says a fellow Rotarian brought it to her attention that the onions came bagged, the potatoes did not …
COOK … “So, what happened was I offered to bag the potatoes. So, last Saturday I went out and I bagged potatoes and then discovered that they were going to go back out.”
So, Cook says she called her City Manager to get some city trucks to help out …
COOK … “So, they went back out on Friday and they were going to bring back much more produce. So, the farmer, I think, told them he had almost 2-million pounds of produce he wanted to send back to Western Washington with them. And so, giant trucks with trailers and some semis went out there on very early Friday morning and brought back that afternoon the produce.”
The haul on the second trip, Cook says was about 100,000 pounds …
COOK … “And then people gathered on Friday to bag the potatoes and unload the trucks with the onions, put them in bins for people to pick up. Even as of yesterday, all those potatoes were not bagged. It was an enormous amount. And, my understanding is that this is going to continue.”
Come back tomorrow for more on this effort to help farmers struggling with lost sales brought on by the coronavirus to find a worthy home for their spuds.
To learn more, there is a Facebook page called EastWest Food Rescue, and an email address set up. It’s eastwestfoodrescue@gmail.com
