Sharing the harvest

Jill Severn

The harvest season’s vegetables, fruits and fragrant herbs remind us of the earth’s generosity. This season’s cuts to federal food benefits remind us of some of our elected leaders’ stinginess. 

In Washington, at least 130,000 people may soon lose their SNAP (aka food stamp) benefits. The rest of our state’s one million SNAP recipients, including elders and children, will get less. There will be new work requirements and restrictions on eligibility for many legal immigrants.  

All of this is bad news. But there is good news, and our neighbors are making it.  

One of our neighbors, Chris Hyde, just celebrated an anniversary. On the website for the Food Source Foundation, he writes, “On September 10th, 2023 I started a group called Souper Sunday. The idea felt like a calling, and listening to and acting upon it has been the best decision of my life. The idea was to make soup for my community for free.” 

He thought that would change the world, and it has. His Souper Sunday Facebook site, the nerve center of his front porch soup distribution project, attracted a growing corps of like-minded people with an array of talents and resources.

Volunteers showed up to tend his front yard vegetable garden and keep it from being overrun with morning glories. People started bringing fresh produce from their gardens, grocery store gift cards and eggs. 

When he needed a freezer, one was donated. Then another one. He keeps a “soup library” in one of them.  

Some people were grateful for the soup, and some for the opportunity to help. There was a lot of overlap. 

A Seattle TV station’s story about this project attracted 1.7 million views. 

Roxanna Groves, a wonderful, whimsical artist, collaborated with Chris Hyde to publish “Bear’s Souper Sunday Cookbook.”  

Soon he branched out from soup to other dishes. He connected with the Thurston County Foodbank. He got leftover Starbucks food and distributed it. He put together food kits, with all the ingredients needed to make a specific dish like spaghetti, or a whole meal.  

Lately he’s been taking his van to Bigelow Park on Sundays to distribute both cooked food and staples. He needed ice to keep some of it cold. On the Souper Sunday Facebook page, he asked if anyone had an ice machine. Within days, one was delivered. 

He was distributing food at the park because “My neighbors have been kind and patient, but they did let me know they weren’t loving the traffic in front of my house.” 

He’s also downtown one night a week for a parking lot dinner that serves all comers, most of whom are unhoused. Several other groups serve dinner in the same place on other nights of the week, and several Souper Sunday people organize and provide some of those meals.  

All of this activity, including the fundraising needed to support it, is coordinated on the now old-fashioned Facebook. Sister groups have sprung up far and wide. 

Chris encourages other people to take on leadership roles in projects like this to spread the benefits to both givers and receivers — what he calls the Sacred Circle of Giving and Receiving. He wants to be part of that circle, but not always the center of it.  

From the beginning, this has been a garden-minded project with an emphasis on local, healthy food, inclusion, mutual support, and community-building. 

These are vital survival strategies for our time. Healthy food, the exercise of our personal power to do good in the world, and the bonds of community strengthen us all. The absence of them makes us weak, vulnerable, foolish and fearful. 

Fear of the future is endemic. So are anger and outrage. But hunkering down and retreating from the world is exactly the wrong response. We are not helpless. 

The example of those Souper Sunday givers and receivers is proof. They are planting seeds of compassion, courage, and perseverance. 

We only grow what we plant — in our gardens, and in our civic and community life. Every seedling matters. 

Sharing our garden vegetable harvest, cooking for people we don’t know, or supporting Souper Sunday won’t solve our country’s problems. But the compassion, courage, and perseverance that  projects like Souper Sunday generate can make solutions possible. 

Helping our neighbors is not everything we need to do, but it’s what we need to do first — and do constantly, year in and year out, generation after generation. Had we been attending to this all along, our democracy would be in a better place. 

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com.