Et cetera : NCCC Oak 6 helps Feed Iowa First, plans community day

Feeding Iowa First: Oak 6's Dylan, Mario and Andrew creating a layout for the garden beds.

The NCCC team of Oak 6 is working hard in Cedar Rapids with Feed Iowa First, a nonprofit aimed at helping Iowa farmers and citizens create sustainable sources of food.

Oak 6 is helping with Feed Iowa First’s current project, which is to create eight large garden beds for Horizons’ Meals on Wheels program. Meals on Wheels provides food for the elderly and disabled. The hope is to have Horizons providing the majority of their food from their own food sources. Oak 6 has torn down the old garden beds, dug trenches, filled them with gravel, tamped them, and lined them with cinder blocks. These beds will be more accessible to the volunteers, many of them seniors, who help with Meals on Wheels.

The team has also replanted over 3,200 tomato plants, as well as planted over 2,000 seeds of other vegetables. When the weather didn’t permit the team to work outdoors, they set to work refurbishing 30-year-old bee hives, which help increase crop production on farms. By stripping, cleaning, and repainting these bee hives, they are now able to be used as a natural and positive addition to a farm.

On Sunday, April 21, from 1-4 p.m., Oak 6 is sponsoring a community day. Members of the community are welcome to come to the team’s worksite that day, which is located in Cedar Rapids across from the Horizons offices. The team and other volunteers are painting the new garden beds as well as helping plant seeds. There will be refreshments, so feel free to come out and support Feed Iowa First!

Sonia, an Afghanistan war veteran, created Feed Iowa First after working in Iowan food shelters and seeing the kind of hunger happening right here in one of the nation’s leading agricultural states. Inspired to help others, Sonia decided she would help organizations create sustainable farming and food sources.