MENDOCINO CO., 119/26 — About four weeks ago, someone broke into a shipping container behind the Fort Bragg Food Bank. The container had been turned into a freezer. Whoever broke in stole a lot of what was in it and didn’t shut the door.
The freezer ran all night and the condenser blew, said Rachel Clark, executive director of Mendo Food Network, which runs the food bank. The container freezer is limping along, she said.
“We walk in every day with just our fingers crossed,” she said.
The food bank had moved its frozen food into that container after its walk-in freezer, a cold room big enough to walk into, died.
In Ukiah, the food bank’s walk-in refrigerator “is on the blink” and needs a $13,000 repair, said Jacque Williams, executive director of the Ford Street Project, which runs that food bank. The person who looked at it told her the fix might last only a couple of years.
“This thing has just kind of outlived its usefulness,” she said.
The county’s two biggest towns each have a food bank that feeds about 5,000 to 6,000 people a month. Both are getting ready for Thanksgiving. Both have lost federal funding that pays for food and pays farmers to provide food to the food banks.
The Ukiah food bank, at 888 N. State St., gives out an average of 114,620 pounds of food a month to 2,400 households, or 5,875 people, Williams said. The Fort Bragg Food Bank, at 910 N. Franklin St., serves about 1,700 households a month, or 5,000 people, according to Mendo Food Network.
“I do not know of a food bank in rural Northern California that is not struggling financially,” Williams wrote in an email.
A freezer failing for nine years
When Clark arrived in Fort Bragg, she said, she looked up at the walk-in freezer and asked what was going on. Staff told her it had been failing for nine years. They had built a system to catch the water that leaked from it, and they turned it off every month to defrost it. Forklifts couldn’t go inside, so everything had to be carried in by hand. She told the Mendocino Voice in September that the freezer had been leaking and held together with duct tape for years.
After about 30 days on the job, she said, she discovered it had died. In an Oct. 21 letter on the network’s Facebook page, Clark wrote that the walk-in failed and needs to be replaced.
The walk-in is so old that no one makes parts for it anymore, Clark said. Someone has been working on making parts so it can limp along. But she said she was told it will never work at the capacity the food bank needs. She had hoped to have it fixed before the season began. This is the food bank’s busiest time of year, with turkeys, chickens and other proteins. It doesn’t look like that will happen, she said. The goal is to raise money to replace it.
More people with jobs and homes come in
Clark ran a small-business coaching firm before she took over from Amanda Friscia, who announced in April she would step down Sept. 30 after nine years. She’s been on the job about 100 days, she said, and the number of people coming in has grown about 10% in that time. New clients show up every day. A lot of that began last month, she said, after what she called the final effect of the federal tax and spending law known as H.R. 1, or the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
“More families are stretching household budgets, and we are seeing new faces alongside families who have relied on us before,” she wrote in an email.
The people coming in have changed in the last 90 days, Clark said. She is seeing more families.
“We’re seeing a lot more people who have jobs, have homes, have cars,” she said. “We are dealing with our neighbors, our friends, our teachers, city workers, people with small businesses and people who are struggling.”
People are deciding between putting gas in the car to get to work and putting food on the table, she said.
In Ukiah, Williams said, the number of people coming in has grown slowly over time. Gas prices are forcing working families to make trade-offs in their budgets, she wrote. For elderly and disabled clients, the trade-off is often healthcare or medicine.
The Ukiah food bank gets its food from the Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa. When federal USDA funding was cut, Ukiah had to start paying for some food that used to be donated, and for the trucking from Santa Rosa, Williams said. She budgeted an extra $20,925 for trucking and $24,775 for food. Rising diesel prices made that harder. In an April letter to the Voice, Margo Frank of Friends of the Food Bank warned that diesel prices were eating up the extra money set aside for trucking. A donor-designated fund at the Community Foundation of Mendocino County gave $8,000 toward the trucking.
The total amount of food is about the same as last year, Williams said. The Redwood Empire Food Bank buys produce from farmers to fill gaps. What it no longer gets are the federal boxes with canned chicken and other protein, she said.
The Fort Bragg Food Bank’s website asks people to donate food to “help supplement our food losses after federal budget cuts.” Clark wrote that food banks are dealing with “reductions and uncertainty in several traditional food and funding sources.” The federal government canceled a program that paid local farmers to grow produce for the network. Since 2024 it had paid for $451,200 in farm contracts with the network, the Mendocino Voice reported in July. California has since set aside $15 million for one more year of the program.
Williams worries most about January. The Ukiah food bank has enough volunteers now, 19 to 21, but plans to add more. She expects a jump in people who lose CalFresh, California’s food stamp program, under new federal work rules.
“I think we’re all kind of holding our breath for what could happen in January,” she said.
Those cutoffs have already started. Mendocino County has no waiver from the rules because its unemployment rate is under 10%, said Rachel Ebel-Elliott, deputy director of the county Department of Social Services. Five people lost benefits Sept. 1 and about 98 more on Oct. 1, she said. The Nov. 1 count isn’t final, but she expects it to be about the same as October.
“People are on edge,” Williams said of the Ukiah line-up to receive food. Arguments have broken out over who got ahead of whom. “Not serious scuffles,” she said, but “the tensions are high,” and that’s hard on volunteers.
Where to get holiday meals
Both food banks are still giving out holiday meals.
In Ukiah, people sign up for a Thanksgiving basket at the food bank, and there’s a vegetarian choice. The food bank delivers baskets to disabled clients, and regular clients get a special pickup day. Williams said the baskets cost the food bank more than $9,000 last year. The food bank is open Monday and Wednesday from noon to 4 p.m.; Tuesday and Thursday from 9 a.m. to noon for seniors and disabled people; and Friday from noon to 4 p.m. The number is 707-463-2409.
The network gave the Willits food bank, one of its partners, 300 turkeys to hand out, Clark said. It plans to give out about 500 turkeys in Fort Bragg the week of Thanksgiving.
The coast’s Thanksgiving distribution runs Monday through Wednesday, Nov. 23-25, at the Fort Bragg Food Bank, during regular pantry hours. People will get turkeys and holiday food on top of the usual groceries. Seniors 60 and older can shop from 10 to 10:30 a.m. Monday and Wednesday, according to the network’s website. Everyone else shops from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday and 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. Tuesday is curbside pickup, 10 a.m. to noon.
On Thursday, Dec. 3, the network’s new Nourish the Holidays event plans to give holiday food and other help to 1,000 coastal families, Clark said. It runs from noon to 7 p.m. at the network’s Fort Bragg site. The network will hand out 1,000 totes, each with a whole chicken, produce, holiday food that keeps on the shelf, gift cards, athletic passes and coupons. About 25 nonprofits and private businesses are partners. Clark said the network’s board saw a lot of help last year at Thanksgiving and not much through the winter holidays, when children are out of school for two weeks and parents who rely on school food programs have them home.
Nobody has to prove they need the food, Clark said, and nobody has to sign up ahead of time. New clients can sign up the day they come in. “If you need food, come here and see what you can get,” she said.
Ukiah’s yearly holiday food bank drive, in its 40th year, starts Thanksgiving weekend. Last year the drive doubled its usual $100,000 goal, Williams said.
Both food banks take food, money and volunteers. Clark said money helps most, because it lets the network buy what it needs most and move fast when supplies run short. Donations will also go toward the freezer, she said.
To give to the Ukiah food bank, send checks to Ford Street Project, 139 Ford St., Ukiah, or call 707-462-1934. For the Mendo Food Network, go to mendofood.org or call 707-809-5669.
Maybe do one of those Go Fund Me things that people do to raise money for a cause?
You can thank the break ins on Newsom,your mighty blue leader that has shut down prisons. Wants all death row to be on the streets . Sorry but it’s true actions of our politicians have ruined our our country.
I was thinking the same thing, Susan. Do a Go Fund Me! Also, they need cameras!!!
There is no mention of what a new walk-in refrigerator or a new freezer would cost. Granted, more than the current piecemeal fixes, but a community campaign specifically to support the cost of new units especially with the impending increase in food demand would seem a worthwhile endeavor.