Collective Power Listening:
Kathleen Wood
Dig In!
Overview
Cooperate WNC recently had the great pleasure of a long talk with local food activist and community leader Kathleen Wood about her work with Dig In! and her path forward in the movement. Kathleen was kind enough to take the time to review Dig In!’s operations in detail, provide some history for Yancey County’s recent food activism, and to volunteer so valuable connections to facilitate our work. Thank you Kathleen!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
community, people, food, garden, folks, Yancey, relationships, dig, model, county, Burnsville, important, scale, churches, participate, dry goods, space
SPEAKERS
Kathleen Wood, Zev Friedman
COUNTY FOCUS
Yancey County
Yancey County Local Resources
PATH: Partners Aligned Towards Health
Mountain Community Health Partnership
Interview Excerpts
On her role in the local food system…
So I currently fill the role of Executive Director, and I was hired with Dig In! as a part time Garden Manager for the 2014 season and then kind of help both roles as a Garden Manager and Executive Director until 2019. And I am transitioning out of the Executive Director role. And the path for me forward is kind of some own personal growth, but actually kind of recommitting my time and my body to growing food with other folks, potentially here in western North Carolina, also, potentially in other states, just where I have relationships with others.
So my growth trajectory now is to kind of do this work. With what I've learned, from Dig In - which has been tremendous - and just on my kind of on my own, and I've been called back to spend more time and work in the soil and with people on a farm. So we'll see where that leads, and Dig In has a farm manager, we have positions that help us share food and build relationships in this community. So like, within our organizational structure, you know, we're very collaborative kind of we work even within our own staffing kind of across organizations and initiatives. So I hope that you get to work with some of the great folks both who are like formal staff, I guess, but also volunteers who really are creating community food security by showing up every week to do this work together.
The importance of relationships in local food…
I think takeaways that we heard from folks who did kind of a front porch listening session is that relationships are really important in rural counties. And so that change often happens through trust, and trust is developed through relationships. And so the food system in particular, and organizations working together, are built around these kind of networks of personal relationship. And as that kind of related into infrastructure, and resources and programming, at the organizational level, it could, you know, it could cut both ways that there was a lot of cooperation happening between individuals that had personal relationships.
On working in the garden at Dig In!....
And the folks involved, and how I'm involved in that community is, you know, we work together on Thursday mornings. And it's an open invitation that people show up when they can and leave when they need to. And we all just kind of were led by our kind of our Farm Manager who makes a list of the things that we need to accomplish together. But often based on our own interests and our abilities, we kind of divide and conquer, and, and typically then ends with eating a meal. And so that community's been really important to me that's really fundamental to like how I feel grounded. Both like spiritually and emotionally and physically is growing food with people. And so that's a place that Dig In hosts and helps facilitate both kind of the land base as well as just making those social connections that I've really benefited from.
On the scope of what Dig In! accomplishes…
So on a weekly basis, starting in June, we have what we now call Harvest Share, and so that is 250 households. So 200 of those households are drive through. Twenty five of those are delivered to our partnership with Mountain Community Health Partnership, and they're the FQHC in Yancey county. I should say 225 are drive thru, and 25 or MCHP. And then we have three other food sharing programs. So the reason that they're different is that they reach people who just have different needs, whether it's like age or other demographics. So we have what's called Cosecha para a Pueblo. And that we started with our Latinx neighbors. And that's food sharing market where we come together once a month, and we specifically plan the garden with crops that are requested for a Latinx diet that are hard to acquire in the grocery store otherwise, and so we share food with about 50 families once a month through Cosecha para a Pueblo, and then we have what's called Garden Share. And that's a food sharing program for our neighbors to get Meals on Wheels delivered. We start that in August, and we go through December. We do that every other week for about 10 weeks, and that's 80 households. And then we participate the summer food program, and that's for families with kids under the age of 18. And that's a food delivery program. For this year we did about 150 families. It's usually around 100. But since COVID has gone up. That program does dry goods and produce and it's a partnership with PATH - Partners Aligned Towards Health, TRACTOR, Reconciliation House, Dig In, and then there are other partners. That's who is on the kind of planning committee. And then there are about 10 to 12 other organizations that that support Summer Food. And then Harvest Share is a very cooperative kind of food sharing program with TRACTOR and Rec House. And then Garden Share and Cosecha are kind of Dig In lead, but with very deep partnerships with MCHP, Rec House, TRACTOR and Sacred Heart, which is the Catholic Church where there's a Spanish community that worship together.
Designing a space to generate enthusiasm for it…
And the things that I think make, for me, those moments meaningful is like, one, we have to pay a lot of attention to design, in the physical space. Like about how people can move through this physical space, and how folks can connect in that physical space. So like pathways and site visibility. And the other part about that is like beauty. We were founded by two crafters, and like, I think there's something that I learned that I didn't appreciate before this job is that that there's such incredible beauty in diversity of plants and species. And where a production model really prioritizes you know, soil for for yield. We always challenge that priority understanding that people want to stay and care for beautiful things. And so that there's a tension to design both of that how people connect in a space but also how that space is cared for and what it feels like.
On what matters…
So in reflecting about leaving this work, that, like, I know, the fabric of my life now is woven into these incredible moments of folks just showing up to a garden. And being present in that moment, both with each other and this space. And I think there are a couple of elements that I find that so rare. Like, I think the kind of opportunities to be, for me the opportunities to be social, while working towards a common goal with my body is like the most meaningful. That is how I want to spend my energy both emotionally and physically. And I just had the opportunity to do this, because we do it on a weekly basis.